Be A Living Christmas Display of Faith – Purity 1215

Be A Living Christmas Display of Faith – Purity 1215

Purity 1215 12/05/2023 Purity 1215 Podcast

Purity 1215 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s photo of “the Hiwassee River, from along
what was once the main way into town, before the dam was constructed in 1940,
creating Hiwassee Lake,” comes to us from Fred Dimmick who shared this scene on
Sunday, reporting that the River’s/Lake’s “water is down about 7 feet for the
winter” showing us that man’s efforts, a dam, can affect the world but try as
we might some things, like the seasons, are completely in God’s hands.  

Well, It’s Wednesday and I share Fred’s photo which
features a reflection of the sky on the water’s surface that looks rather
mountainous as a visual reminder that we will be reaching the summit of another
work week sometime today, Happy Hump Day to you.  

Well, it is December 6^th, and depending
on how you number your days, we either have 19 or 18 days until Christmas, as
many consider Christmas Eve to be Christmas and others base their “days until
Christmas” count on the time of the day from you are counting.  Either way, Christmas is coming, and I hope that
all who read this will keep Christ in Christmas as the more I see of the
holiday displays that go up, the more I wonder if people know the reason for
the season.    

Driving around the capital district of upstate NY I
am delighted to see people decorate their homes for Christmas but wonder and
worry about those who are erecting monuments to “secular Christmas” or are
sharing general nonspecific “season’s greetings” that promote “peace” or “joy”
as general sentiments but don’t share the means to true peace and joy – a covenant
relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.  

I love some of the cartoons, animated, and live
action “Christmas” TV. shows and movies from my youth but as we have moved
forward in time, I fear these “holiday classics” from years gone by are being
elevated a little too high in people’s esteem as huge holiday displays are
erected and merchandise is sold that celebrate characters from Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer, “The Grinch”, “Elf”. Home Alone, “A Christmas Story”, and “National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” – rather than pointing to the light of the world –
Jesus Christ.   I fear that as merry as
these things may make people or even cause them to remember fondly Christmases
of the past and family gatherings around the old Boob Tube, they are missing the
most important thing about Christmas and about life itself – Jesus.   And not for nothing, some of these “holiday
classics” don’t even mention His name.  

Our eternal destiny has everything to do with our relationship
to Jesus and when I see Christmas holiday displays that lack anything that
points to my Lord and Savior, I remember those scary verses in the Bible where
Jesus proclaims “I never knew you” to those who thought they were “safe” but
weren’t.  

It is only faith in Jesus that can save us, of
course, and our outward expressions of what we proclaim to believe won’t matter
in the end because it’s genuine faith in the heart that is only discerned by
God that will be the determining factor of our salvation,  but Jesus did say that you would know His
disciples by their fruit.  And when I see
no discernable reverence for or relationship with Jesus, but see lots of
general holiday hoopla, I shudder to consider the spiritual condition of those
who make merry in December but don’t reflect the Lord’s light any other time of
the year.  

While I don’t know the hearts of men, I have to
think that the less your holiday displays and celebrations have to do with
Jesus, the more likely it is that you are on the outside of God’s kingdom.  

Believe me as a former agnostic, lukewarm “believer”,
cultural congregational attendee, and atheist, I can fully understand the angst
that people can have toward “organized religion” but no number of negative
experiences that we have had with “supposed members of the Body of Christ” or
those pesky “hypocrites in the church” should ever get in the way of our giving
honor and glory to Jesus at Christmas.  
If we profess to believe in Jesus, we should know that He is the only
way to God and He should not take a back seat to anything else when we go to
celebrate Christmas.  

If we have concerns with those “phony” Christians or
hypocrites in the church, we have to do our part to represent the Light of the
world by being “Real Christians” by sharing and showing the love of God and the
gospel of Jesus Christ with the way we live our lives.  We have to turn from the world’s ways to God’s
ways and let His Holy Spirit change us and demonstrate that God is alive and
well and affecting the lives of men on earth.  

Instead of putting up a big display that celebrates
fictional characters of holiday films or tv shows, we should proclaim Jesus –
not just with quaint manger scene – but with the way we live our lives.  

So draw close to God this Christmas season and let
people know the reason for the season all year round by walking and talking
with God and by being a living display of His power and glory on the earth
every day.

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Today’s
Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By
John G. Kruis.

(
While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick Google
search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late author’s
work. (https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Scripture-Reference-Counseling-Kruis-ebook/dp/B00CIUJZT2?ref_=ast_author_dp )

This
morning’s meditation verses come from the section on Church, Communion of the
Saints.

Jesus’
high priestly prayer

John 17:6-26 (NKJV)
⁶  “I have manifested
Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours,
You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.
⁷  Now they have known that
all things which You have given Me are from You.
⁸  For I have given to them
the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent
Me.
⁹  I pray for them. I do not
pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.
¹⁰  And all Mine are Yours,
and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
¹¹  Now I am no longer in the
world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through
Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
¹²  While I was with them in
the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and
none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be
fulfilled.
¹³  But now I come to You, and
these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in
themselves.
¹⁴  I have given them Your
word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I
am not of the world.
¹⁵  I do not pray that You
should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil
one.
¹⁶  They are not of the world,
just as I am not of the world.
¹⁷  Sanctify them by Your
truth. Your word is truth.
¹⁸  As You sent Me into the
world, I also have sent them into the world.
¹⁹  And for their sakes I
sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.
²⁰  “I do not pray for
these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
²¹  that they all may be one,
as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in
Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
²²  And the glory which You
gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:
²³  I in them, and You in Me;
that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have
sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
²⁴  Father, I desire that they
also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory
which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
²⁵  O righteous Father! The
world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You
sent Me.
²⁶  And I have declared to
them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved
Me may be in them, and I in them.”

Today’s
verses fall under the seventeenth point of our counseling reference guide
resource’s section on Church, Communion of the Saints.

 17. Jesus prays for the church.

Today’s verses display
Jesus’s love for us and His desire that His joy be fulfilled in us through our
sanctification by His word and in following Him. Jesus’ high priestly prayer
shows that, we are not all God’s children as Jesus specifically prays for those
who believe in Him, and who will believe in Him – that’s us. As Jesus’ disciples’
let’s be an answer to this prayer by seeking to represent Jesus on the earth by
following His example and sharing His message of hope and faith in Him alone.

——————————————————————–

As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.

Today we are sharing from “God is in the Manger-
Reflections on Advent and Christmas” – By Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   

As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work.  This resource is available online
for less than $10 at many sites.

God is in the Manger – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

ADVENT WEEK TWO –  MYSTERY

DAY
FOUR

The Scandal
of Pious People

The lowly God-man is the scandal of pious people
and of people in general. This scandal is his historical ambiguity. The most
incomprehensible thing for the pious is this man’s claim that he is not only a
pious human being but also the Son of God. Whence his authority: “But I say to
you” (Matt. 5:22) and “Your sins are forgiven” (Matt. 9:2). If Jesus’ nature
had been deified, this claim would have been accepted. If he had given signs,
as was demanded of him, they would have believed him. But at the point where it
really mattered, he held back. And that created the scandal. Yet everything
depends on this fact. If he had answered the Christ question addressed to him
through a miracle, then the statement would no longer be true that he became a
human being like us, for then there would have been an exception at the
decisive point.… If Christ had documented himself with miracles, we would
naturally believe, but then Christ would not be our salvation, for then there
would not be faith in the God who became human, but only the recognition of an
alleged supernatural fact. But that is not faith.… Only when I forgo visible
proof, do I believe in God.

The kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying
to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how
they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be
interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior. Twenty
centuries later, Jesus speaks pointedly to the preening ascetic trapped in the
fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, to those of us caught up in
boasting about our victories in the vineyard, to those of us fretting and flapping
about our human weaknesses and character defects. The child doesn’t have to
struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God;
he doesn’t have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he
doesn’t have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn’t have to achieve
any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do
is happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.

Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling
block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s
foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than
human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:23–25^[1]

—————————more
tomorrow————————

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