It is time to come out of hiding

Can anyone hide from me in a secret place? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” says the Lord.

As kids, we played that all-time favorite of kids everywhere - hide and seek. Someone would be tagged "it", cover their eyes, and count to 100 while all the others would scurry off into "secret hiding places". The goal was to not be discovered - you wanted the "best" hiding place ever. This might have worked well in those "fun and games" times of our youth, but as we got older, the game of hiding wasn't always followed by someone seeking to uncover our hiding places! Into adulthood, our hiding places just got a little more "sophisticated" and we aren't as much "physically" hiding as it is we are hiding things emotional and a little harder to conceal!

Maybe we don't think anyone is trying to uncover those places, but God knows them ALL anyway! He doesn't have to work hard to discover them, but sometimes he has to work hard on us so that we come to the place where we realize we have been hiding those hurts and emotional burdens in those secret places! Nothing remains hidden in the presence of Jesus. Maybe that is why we sometimes shy away from really getting really close in our walk with Jesus - we don't want to have those things hidden away so carefully discovered or exposed. If you listen closely as you do draw close, you will hear those all too familiar words, "All come free". The hiding is over!

What are we worried about when God invites us to come free? Could it be that we are concerned we might have to admit we have been wrong in the matter we have held such bitterness over? Could it be the anger we have welled up inside for so long is points to a hugely injured amount of pride on our part that we have been too stubborn to admit? Might it just be there has been way too much of "me", "me", "me" that we don't want exposed to anyone else because they'd see just how self-centered our perceptions have been in a matter? These are all very real things that keep us in hiding for way too long and God isn't going to be content to let us hide forever. He will one day call for us to "come free" and when he does, we need not fear what he will discover - for he knows it all anyway!

In issues of damaged relationships, we could have been "right" in our own eyes for so long we are totally scared and emotionally unprepared to actually see things as God sees them. In issues of wrongs perpetrated on others, we could have justified our "not coming clean" for so long that we actually think it would be okay to allow those wrongs to go along as they have been. The truth is that God isn't afraid to show us his perspective - but in so doing, he also shows us the pathway to totally being "free" of those things that have kept us so bound up in hiding for so long. It isn't good to have hiding places - for they only make us think things have been forgotten or dealt with. The fact remains - the things hidden still exist - they just aren't as easily noticed by us or others. God still sees them, though, no matter how good a job we do hiding! Just sayin!

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant. In that day and time, a very taboo thing. We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God. Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated. We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar. The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish. Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,

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