Theme for December: Advent – the Coming

I can’t believe it, it is the Christmas season and I have actually completed 48 going on 49 Bible journaling pages based on my relationship with Jesus. He gave me each month’s theme a year ago and I have spent each month hearing and learning from Him through His word.
So I introduce December with a section of Ann Voskamp’s introduction to “The Greatest Gift.”  May we finish the last few journaling weeks stronger, closer and more in love with our God.

Big and glossy and loud and fast —that’s how this bent-up world turns. 

But God, when He comes —He shows up in this fetal ball. He who carved the edges of the cosmos curved Himself into a fetal ball in the dark, tethered Himself to the uterine wall of a virgin, and lets His cells divide, light splitting all white. 

He gave up the heavens that were not even large enough to contain Him and lets Himself be held in a hand. The mystery so large becomes the Baby so small, and infinite God becomes infant. The Giver becomes the Gift, this quiet offering.

This heart beating in the chest cavity of a held child, a thrumming heart beating hope, beating change, beating love, beating the singular song you’ve been waiting for —that the whole dizzy planet’s been spinning round waiting for. 

Waiting. 

Advent. 

It comes from the Latin. It means “coming.”
This, this, is the love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning. 

It is possible for you to miss it. To brush past it, to rush through it, to not see how it comes for you up over the edges of everything, quiet and unassuming and miraculous —how every page of the Word has been writing it, reaching for you, coming for you. And you could wake on Christmas only to grasp that you never took the whole of the Gift, the wide expanse of grace. 

So now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. 

Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait.
Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. For the Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. For Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can but all of us want: Christmas. 

Sometimes the heart waiting for the Gift . . . is the art of the Gift. 

This waiting, your art —mark it. 

Mark Advent with a counting, a way of staying awake and not missing.
-Ann Voskamp, “The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas”

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Week 48 Remember 
Is 46:9-10
Remember carefully the former things which I did from ages past; 
For I am God, and there is no one else; 
I am God, and there is no one like Me, 
Declaring the end and the result from the beginning, 
And from ancient times the things which have not yet been done, 
Saying, 
    ‘My purpose will be established, And I will do all that pleases Me and fulfills My purpose’

I will remember all He has ever done, for me, for His people
And
I will remember He knows the future and hold all things in His good will.

* tip in made with tracing paper

Week 46
Ps 105:1-6
Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; 
make known among the nations what he has done. 
Sing to him, sing praise to him; 
tell of all his wonderful acts. 

Glory in his holy name; 
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 
Look to the Lord and his strength; 
seek his face always. 

Remember the wonders he has done, 
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, 
you his servants, the descendants of Abraham, 
HIS CHOSEN ONES, the children of Jacob.

   In remembering the wonders the LORD has done, let us not forget that we are made in His image, His sons and daughters, His dwelling place, His ambassadors, a chosen royal priesthood, bearers of the Good News and ministers of reconciliation.  
Remember who you are.

Week 45 REMEMBER 

Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out His Right Hand. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. I will consider all Your works and meditate on all Your mighty deeds.”
Psalm 77:10-12 

Psalm 77 opens as a lament of Asaph; had God forsaken his cries? It seemed He did. But then, right in the middle of his pity party, Asaph comes to his senses. He remembers God’s earlier deeds and ponders over them, considers how the Lord has answered the cries of His people in the past.  

Asaph did the right thing in crying out to the Lord, but he didn’t feel he was getting an answer, or…maybe he just wasn’t getting the right answer.

Sometimes I cry out to the Lord and don’t feel like He’s answering me, but I only believe that because I have an expectation of a certain outcome. Instead, I should have an expectancy in Him, remembering that God is Love, He is a good God, He has wonderful plans for me. 

Remembering that my deliverance came in unexpected ways in the past helps me focus on Him, not my need and not the method. 

Remembering changes my perspective, not necessarily my circumstance. Then Darkness becomes light.

November Theme: REMEMBER…

Psalm 77
1 I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.

2 When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

3 I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.

4 You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.

5 I thought about the former days,
the years of long ago;

6 I remembered my songs in the night.
My heart meditated and my spirit asked:

7 “Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?

8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?

9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

10 THEN I THOUGHT, “TO THIS I WILL APPEAL:
THE YEARS WHEN THE MOST HIGH STRETCHED OUT HIS RIGHT HAND.

11 I WILL REMEMBER THE DEEDS of THE LORD;
YES, I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MIRACLES of LONG AGO.

12 I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

13 Your ways, God, are holy.
What god is as great as our God?

14 You are the God who performs miracles;
you display your power among the peoples.

15 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

16 The waters saw you, God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.

17 The clouds poured down water,
the heavens resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.

18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.

19 Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.

20 You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Week 44 Blessed is the Nation…

Psalm 144:10b-15 From the deadly sword deliver me; rescue me from the hands of foreigners whose mouths are full of lies, whose right hands are deceitful. Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace. Our barns will be filled with every kind of provision. Our sheep will increase by thousands, by tens of thousands in our fields; our oxen will draw heavy loads. There will be no breaching of walls, no going into captivity, no cry of distress in our streets. BLESSED IS the PEOPLE of whom this is true; BLESSED is the NATION whose God is the Lord.”

Worried about ISIS invaders? Political deceit? Losing the hearts of the next generation? Worried about the economy? Job creation? Illegal immigrants? Losing our freedom? 
If God is our Lord we can ask for deliverance and then reap blessings that make our fears seem insignificant, even laughable. Blessed also means HAPPY.  

If ever our nation needed something to smile about its now. Remember it’s the righteous who lift a nation up. If we don’t, who else will?

Week 43 Proverbs 14:34  RIGHTEOUSNESS exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.

It is because of God that you are in CHRIST JESUS, who HAS BECOME for us wisdom from God—that is, OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, holiness and redemption.(1 Co 1:30)

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting peopleʼs sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. WE are therefore Christʼs ambassadors, as though God were making his APPEAL through us. We implore you on Christʼs behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that IN HIM WE might BECOME the RIGHTEOUSNESS of God. (2 Co 5:19-21)

Exalts… what does that mean? It means to raise up or lift up, to cause to grow up. Wow. If I have become HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, then I lift the nation up, we lift it up. WE can help this nation reconcile itself to God just by being His righteousness. 

Yes, sin condemns a nation, but as the righteousness of God in Christ, we have the ministry of reconciliation. 

WE who dwell in His temple appeal to a higher court against the judgment sin has passed upon the nation.

God Bless America.

Week 40

Finishing the Lords Prayer… And lead us not into temptation but rescue us from evil. 

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not TEST Christ. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No TEMPTATION has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be TEMPTED beyond what you can bear. But when you are TEMPTED, he will also provide a WAY OUT so that you can endure it.
1 Corinthians 10:6-13 NIV
The Lord’s Prayer

Adapted from Ted Dekker’s “The Forgotten Way”

My Father, who is of the eternal realm, full of power and love far beyond my comprehension, I declare your name is holy, the full expression of who you are. May the expression of your love and power be manifested here in my earthly experience in the same way it is known in your eternal realm. May your sovereign will be manifested in every waking experience of my life even as it is in your sovereign realm. I know you give me what I need to live on earth -food, shelter, and clothing- even as you give to the birds of the air and flowers of the field. Give me my spiritual nourishment, more of your living word, more of you each day to understand you, know you and walk in your power daily. May I know that I am one with you as I let go of the offenses I have against any other. Please lead me away from the temptation to place other ‘gods’, myself and my stuff, before you, and deliver me from the deception that they can save me. I am already saved in you. You are and yours is the kingdom now, the glory now and the power now and forever. Amen.