Describe Him: Father

He is our Father.  But we were His enemies.  For Him to be our Father, we had to be made sons and daughters. 

How did He become our Father?

Romans 5:6-8 calls us without strength, ungodly, sinners, enemies.  Nothing we do can make us His children. 

Rather, it is Christ’s death for us at the time when we were most helpless and estranged from a holy God that has made it possible for us to be His children.

1 John 3:1 declares our adoption as sons being entirely because of God’s love toward us.

What was the incredible demonstration of God’s love that has made our adoption possible? 

Christ’s death and resurrection was the payment that made it possible for us to go from being God’s enemies to being His children.  His blood satisfied the Father’s righteous demands for the punishment of sin. 

How do we become His children?  

John 1:12 says we become the sons of God by believing on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is that simple.  It is in believing the Gospel message we become God's children.

Once a son, always a son. Nothing can change our position as sons and daughters.  The blessings of God being our Father are vast and incredibly great. 

As our Father, He still demonstrates His love toward us in many ways.  Yet these ways aren’t always happy, warm, fuzzy feelings: God also shows His love to us by correcting us.  Hebrews 12:5-8 affirms the chastening of the Lord as a sure sign of  His love towards His children.  If the Lord does not punish and correct us when we go astray, the Bible says we are illegitimate and not His children.  Thus, there are no exceptions: If He is our Father, He will chasten us.

Why does He, in love, correct His children?  Verses 10-11 give the hope and comfort needed when in the midst of chastening: “…that we might be partakers of his holiness”  and to yield “the peaceable fruit of righteousness…” He wants us to become more like Him. Wow.

Once we were God’s enemies.  Christ sacrificed His life so we, through His blood, are now reconciled with God and call Him “Abba, Father.”   Now we are His children and fellow-heirs with Christ.

What greater love than this could there ever be?

Expectations

(Again, am finally getting around to posting what has been a draft in my draft files for quite some time!)

 Just admit it: Life is about expectations.  We all have them, whether they are good or bad. We have expectations of ourselves and expectations of others.  There are certain expectations of events and businesses. Our employers have expectations of us, their employees.  The list could go on.
Some expectations we don’t even realize we have.  That is, until they aren’t met. When this happens, something else happens.  And sometimes, that something else is not always a good thing. (In other words, we sin because of it.)

I was rudely reminded of this recently when I discovered that plans I had for some Christmas projects were not working out like I was expecting them to.  Add to that the general expectation of what “Celebrating Christmas” is supposed to look, feel, sound, and even taste like, and  Christmas this year just hasn’t been quite like I expected it to be.  Mix multiple botched projects with “it doesn’t feel like Christmas” and I realized that I was all-around bummed about all of it. So when a simple project went wrong, it became a much bigger deal than it should have. When my husband asked my why I was down, I immediately knew the answer: My expectations were not being met.  Period. 

To further complicate matters, I have expectations of myself.  Yes, I feel like in order to be the wife, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, and in short, the individual that I’m supposed to be, I need to do this, this, this, and this.  Otherwise, I just don’t measure up.

Where does this mentality come from? 

It comes from no other place than my own heart and perceived interpretation of others’ expectations of me. 

Why do we have them?  And why do they become such a big part of who we are—both on the small and also on the large scale of things? 

I don’t have it all figured out or even have much of an answer to these questions, but I do know that  it is the tangled web of a vicious cycle: we have expectations of others, which makes us then think that they have those same expectations of us, which makes us turn around and demand that others live up to those expectations that they {obviously} have us. More often than not, the whole struggle starts and stays in the mind—it may never even manifest itself in visible ways--but it is still there.  Life becomes a mentality of constantly comparing and measuring up. We’re so trapped in this rut that we don’t know how to get un-trapped. 

  The only cure I know is to preach to myself time and again the Gospel of Christ.  While this does include “I am a sinner and need a Savior,” more specifically it reminds me as a Christian that “Christ died for my sins and He has given provision to live righteously as I obey His Word! This means that when expectations are not met, there is power to produce a righteous response.  In turn, I  can and should live graciously towards others, despite unmet expectations.” 

It is only through the power of the Gospel of Christ that there is victory over anything, even battles of the mind.  

Jesus Loves the Little Children

This past week I had the opportunity of participate in the VBS here. About fifty kids came each day--some of them were from Christian families, but many of them were not. They learned about the life of Moses and the Gospel was shared. Pray for these kids to respond to what they learned throughout the week!

Venicius with the devotional book he won for memorizing all of the verses. He was one of the kids who seemed to always be disrupting class, but when he got the book, he was looking through it very intently.

A few of the kids while they waited for VBS to start...

Game time

Vitória--isn't she cute?

Prize-time with Charliane!

"Pick me, pick me!"

Jaime sharing the Gospel. No decisions were made, as far as I know, but God's Word still went out.

Waiting to say their verses...

Carla, still working on her verse.

Sometimes simply showing you care makes the biggest impact.

Missions Trip, part 2

In sharing about the missions trip, the biggest question is "Where do I even begin?" I could go on and on about all of fun times that we had laughing together over one thing or another, sightseeing in Chicago (the Willis Tower, Michigan Avenue, Giordanos Pizza) and just all of the other everyday things that took place throughout the week. All of these things were a part of the trip, but they were not the real reason for the trip: there was more to it than just having a fun time and sightseeing. Rather, it was about sharing the Gospel with those who have not heard it and ministering to those around us! Everything else was just a bonus.

To sum up the activities of the trip, from Monday to Friday, part of the group worked at a day-camp from 7:30 - 5:00 at Parkwood Baptist Church, and the rest of the group ran a VBS for inner-city kids at the Harbor House about 45 minutes away from Parkwood. On Saturday then, everyone was involved in one way or another with running a three-on-three basketball tournament. We also sang several special numbers for both Sundays and the Wednesday that we were there.

To get a little deeper into what I actually did throughout the week, from Monday to Wednesday, I helped out with the VBS at the Harbor House in inner-city Chicago, working with children who pretty much had no church background. We had a Bible lesson, a missionary story, crafts, games, lunch, and also a time where I shared some about Brazil. More often than not, it would take several minutes to get the kids settled down enough to be able to even begin the lesson, not to mention the various times throughout each activity that we would have to stop in order to regain some semblance of a listening audience. Each Bible lesson, missionary story, game, and even the craft was a challenge. Interestingly however, as little training as these kids had in anything concerning the Bible, many of them often gave the "right answer" upon being asked questions regarding the Bible.

As much of a challenge as these inner-city kids were, by the time Wednesday rolled around and I had to say goodbye to them (as I would be at the day-camp that the rest of the youth group was working at for the rest of the week), I had become rather attached to them. In ways that I cannot explain or even understand myself, God helped me to get past the rowdiness and unruly behavior of these kids and see them for who they really were. As the day drew to a close that Wednesday, an almost desperate feeling began to overtake me as I realized that I would never be seeing these kids again; I felt an almost overwhelming responsibility to do my part in sharing the truth of God's salvation with them. I probably will only find out in heaven what kind of lasting fruit will come of those three short, yet totally amazing, stretching, and challenging days that I got to spend with around 30 precious kids!

(more yet to come...)