Relational Bridges

  On this 7th day of Christmas, I am grateful that I belong to a huge family that makes every economic, racial, ethnic, political, national, gender, age or any other "barrier" that mankind has ever devised not the important thing in life. In Christ, all who follow Him are brothers and sisters who share the same Divine DNA given to us when the Holy Spirit united us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am so thankful to the Lord God for doing what none of us could have ever done: made us truly one in the Spirit. Grateful.

On this first day of Christmas, I am so grateful that the Incarnation has taken place in time, an historical fact. I can rest the full weight of my whole life and all that may still be before me knowing that He will keep all His promises to me and will live them out within me by the Holy Spirit.

On the second day of Christmas, I'm glad to be alive...born a second time, by the One who came to rescue, being both God and man. according to the Plan, He is Grace made flesh for the sake of our hearts!

  On this third day of Christmas, I am grateful for eyes to see and ears to hear. It is written that seeing eyes and hearing ears are from the Lord. God, cause me to hear You clearly and to see what You are doing so that, by the power of Your life within me, I might cooperate with you this day. Lord, please wear me like a glove today and do wonders.

On this 4th day of Christmas, which is The Feast of the Holy Innocents, I am celebrating 46 years of covenant commitment with my bride, Yolie. God’s covenant commitment to us has been and is the love that has taken two individuals and made of them a wondrous union, a new creation, a oneness that will never cease to amaze me. 46 years of life together. Thank You, Lord Jesus.

  On this 5th day of Christmas, I am grateful for, odd as it may sound, the pain and sorrow in my life caused by the brokenness of others. I realize that because of going through a valley like the shadow of death, Jesus has forged in me character that could never been forged otherwise. Today I bless those who have cursed me. Because of them, I know Jesus deeper.

  It is a severe, but necessary blow to human pride to finally understand that God’s love for us has absolutely nothing to do with any merit or achievement intrinsic to us. We actually have nothing to commend ourselves to God. We were enslaved and He came to rescue us. We were dead and He came to make us live again. God loves us enough to tell us the truth. We can choose either to trust Him with our whole lives, or we can worship something else; trying to draw life, significance, purpose and identity from it. We can either choose life or death. There are no other choices. It is sheer folly to think that life, with enough information, is something we actually make work. What we need is the Lord Himself; In Him is all the wisdom & insight needed to live.

  I am convinced that the Incarnation did not happen in order to establish another “major world religion”. The Word became flesh in order to restore the relationship with God that humanity lost in the fall. Jesus came to rescue and restore all who will believe, to the Father. There was no other way. His singular life, death and Resurrection, their very uniqueness, is the only thing that can gather the whole world to God. It’s only grace…nothing else meets the need.

  God always acts decisively. He never does something that doesn’t matter. He never gives us something that is unnecessary. He never speaks offhandedly. God promised through the Prophet Isaiah that the people who walked in darkness would see a great Light; an Eternal light that would penetrate the deep darkness of the human heart. God made us for Himself, to know His glory and goodness and share His very life. Our rebellion separated us, but God never abandoned us. He pursued us relentlessly! He spoke into our darkness calling us to return. In Jesus, God spoke His final Word: Rescue! Eternal God the Son became fully man, for His own divine purpose. His birth in a manger was not done to inspire sentimentality or the Christmas card industry. God became what He had never been, man; while being the One no man could ever be, God. Jesus didn’t come in order to show us how to live. How cruel it would have been for Him to do that and then leave. He would have left the entire human race w...

  There is a marked difference between those in whom Jesus lives His life and those who do not have eternal life working in them. When crisis hits, when the rains come down as a deluge, when the winds beat like a hurricane and flood waters threaten to wash the stuff of life away, some houses stand firm, and some are destroyed. Followers of Jesus can stand firm because of the One dwelling in them. The Holy Spirit in us is the same life and power that raised Jesus from the dead. S tanding in the storms of life is not a function of who we are or what we have done but  is solely due to Who Jesus is and what He has done. We are never alone.  Jesus told us that in the world we WOULD have trials and great difficulties, to we are to take heart, because He has overcome the world. Temporal things swirling around us can never alter what Jesus has done and is doing in us. Nothing in life or death can separate us from the Love of God given us; that is for us an eternal artesian well...

  In Hebrews 10:11-14 we read that the daily sacrifices made in the Temple by the Hebrew priests only brought a temporary “peace”. In fact. Because the sacrifices continued day after day without ceasing was a reminder of sin that sticks, is embedded and not removed, only covered for a while until the next time. The human heart was still broken and brokenness to varied degrees was & is all it can produce on its own.   But when Jesus offered Himself as “the Lamb of God Who take AWAY the sin of the world”, true and everlasting peace, shalom, wholeness, soundness of life was established and would be perfected in those who would trust Him and what He had accomplished once for all time.   Those “believers” would be given, as a gift of sheer grace, perfect peace with God. God would make then one with Himself and the Holy Spirit would come to live in and to work out the implications of this holy “shalom” with God. Followers of Jesus Christ are exhorted to remember daily what ...

  When the angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she was to become the mother of the long- promised Messiah, she stated the obvious, that she was a virgin, but she didn’t ask for proof. Gabriel, though gave her a sign. Mary’s aged and barren relative, Elizabeth, had by the promise of God, become pregnant. Gabriel said that Elizabeth was in her sixth month, for nothing was impossible with God. Mary simply believed what was told her. Mary rushes off to visit Elizabeth and when she hears Mary’s voice calling, the baby in her womb (John the Baptizer) leaped for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke God’s Word! 400 years of silence from heaven was broken. “Blessed is she who believed that what God said would take place.” Here, two hopeless cases as far as normal conception were concerned: a barren woman probably in her 80’s and an unmarried virgin…humbled and in dire straits. But they were yielded to God’s will, His Word and His...

 Jesus’ coming defies our expectations. It turns the world’s expectations upside-down to make them right-side-up once more. He comes as the man Who is worth an infinite number of human beings. You see, the Creator is worth more than an infinite number of His creations. He defies what the world would expect of the Lord of the Universe. He come in the greatest humility ever known, as a vulnerable, new-born child. He comes to grow up as we grow up out of infancy into childhood, out of childhood into adulthood. He knew hunger and thirst, tiredness and sorrow like no one has ever known. He lived under tyrannical oppression. His birth was called scandalous in His hometown.  He came in the fullness of time fulfilling over 300 prophecies made about His coming through the Prophets in the Old Testament. He came because, only in His coming as He did, in living as He did, in sacrificing His life and dying only as He could, in rising from the dead as only He did, He could display the Love ...

  What child is this, Who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping? Just who do people celebrate on Christmas? What kind of Baby is this? Knowing the answer to this can change your life. Natural born children have no choice in their parents. You didn’t get to choose your parents & they got what they got…you were it. You weren’t pick out of a group photo. A child has no choice in the matter. Did you ever ask the question, “Why did I get these lousy parents? Listen, all parents will slime their children…Adam’s stain gets confirmed. There is no option open to us as to whether to be conceived or not...we couldn’t shout, “Hey, wait a minute…stop right now! That is true on the whole, with one unique exception. There was one pregnancy that had been planned from eternity. There was one Baby who did have a choice. He made that choice from eternity. He made that choice to be conceived…God the Son chose to come to show us God the Father. The close you get to Him, the closer you get to ...

No child that has ever been born on this earth has a choice as to whether to be conceived or not...save for One. One Baby actually did choose to be conceived, to be knit together by God in His mother's womb & carried for nine months, to be born and to live on purpose. He chose to be born because He had chosen to rescue us from sin and death. He is the only One who chose to be born. He chose for you and me. Grace upon grace.

  As followers of Jesus Christ wait for His return, His Second Coming, we can sometimes, maybe often, feel kind of like the Israelites as they traveled through the wilderness. Sadly, the wonder of the daily provision of the Lord wore thin, and the relentlessness of the wilderness conditions began to cloud their vision of Who God is. Even though He was among them in a tangible way, by a cloud by day and by fire by night. After just over two years of wandering in the wilderness, most of Israel still refused to believe God, to take Him at His Word. Twelve spies were sent into the Promised Land to “check it out”. They saw strongly walled cities, some members of a Canaanite clan that had overactive pituitary glands and seemed like giants, and 10 of those 12 spies referenced their ability to do what God said they were to do in their own human abilities. God never asked them to trust in their own strength. He told them to trust Him. Joshua and Caleb were faithful, believing they could...

  Mark 13:26-33 “26 Then everyone will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. 27 And He will send out His angels to gather His chosen ones from all over the world—from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven. 28 “Now learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branches bud and its leaves begin to sprout, you know that summer is near. 29 In the same way, when you see all these things taking place, you can know that His return is very near, right at the door. 30 I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene before all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will disappear, but My words will never disappear. 32 “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son Himself. Only the Father knows. 33 And since you don’t know when that time will come, be on guard! Stay alert!” There was a time w...

Thinking about Jesus Christ's Second Coming this Advent season when Jesus returns and reigns as the King of kings He is. The old Puritan preacher, "Jonathan Edwards in his sermon “Heaven, a World of Love” puts it like this: "The most stately cities on earth, however magnificent their buildings, yet have their foundations in the dust, and their streets dirty and defiled, and made to be trodden under foot; but the very streets of this heavenly city are of pure gold, like unto transparent glass, and its foundations are of precious stones, and its gates are pearls.... There are many principles contrary to love, which make this world like a tempestuous sea. Selfishness, and envy, and revenge, and jealousy, and kindred passions keep life on earth in a constant tumult... But oh! What rest is there in that world which the God of peace and love fills with his own gracious presence, and in which the Lamb of God lives and reigns, filling it with the brightest and sweetest beams of ...

  God is not limited by what is impossible for us. He is able to make what He has declared take place. What can make life happen in the very place where there is NO possibility of life? The Holy Spirit! What was to happen inside Mary was not going to be the work of any man. It would be the Holy Spirit’s work. She would conceive in her womb the VERY Son of God. You do realize that it was impossible for us to become truly alive on our own? We were as helpless as Mary. Salvation will always belong to the Lord. It will always be His doing to heal, to redeem, to restore, to cause us to KNOW His forgiveness and His mercy. Grace has to be received. We need to say, "Yes!" to it.

I wonder if you knew the following about the manger that Jesus was laid in. Of course, mangers are animal feeding troughs but in ancient Israel they were made of stone - not what you would see in a modern-day nativity scene. Not comfortable, but great for protection. That’s why those who were experts in this matter, the priests, would put their newborn lambs in them for protection. But not just any lamb, the unblemished perfect lambs that were used in the sacrifice for sins. And Bethlehem, where Jesus was born was FAMOUS for their UNBLEMISHED LAMBS used for the sacrifice. These lambs had to be perfect so they would wrap them tightly in cloth and lie them in the manger to keep them safe. This is exactly why the only time mangers are mentioned in Jesus’ birth story it is being told to shepherds. In Luke 2 it says, “This will be a sign for you, you will find a baby wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.”   These shepherds would have understood this powerful parallel because the...

  The season of Advent is one of expectation, not wistful thinking. Jesus Christ IS coming again. He will right all wrongs, bring true justice to bear in every circumstance. He will bring time to an end and humanity will enter into eternity. He came the first time so that we would not have to spend eternity separated from Him and all that can be defined as goodness. The offer to begin, even now, to have eternal life working in you life-transformation by the Holy Spirit is available to all who will believe Him...what He has done...Who He is! In John 11:25-26 “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” By dying to self and coming alive to God by grace through faith, you finally become truly alive. For, if you die before you die, then you won't die when you die!

  This Advent season gives us cause to reflect on why Jesus’ 1 st Advent was necessary for humanity to ever be restored to life as God intended. Love doesn’t demand robot-like responses that have no connection to an actual will. God’s eternal Love given does call for a response of love in return; love that is a surrender to God’s absolute provision for mind, will emotion, body and spirit. That is what Jesus brings us into by the Holy Spirit. The hard truth is, that in Adam & Eve, we all took our place and chose to wander away from God’s presence, believing the lie that God was not enough…we needed something more. The lie was that more knowledge was needed…but, God had not given humanity the knowledge of good and evil because we didn’t need it to be fully human; whole and complete. Such knowledge has made us less than fully human. One result was, ever since the “fall”, humanity has been rudderless. The prevailing winds of the time have filled humanity’s sails, often to gr...

  When Adam & Eve believed & acted on the satanic lie that they needed something more than God, from that moment on, sin became an active, destructive reality for all humanity. We lost our home, the place of belonging, the place that gave us definition, identity and meaning. Home was the Presence of God, central to our life and being. Eden was just a manifestation of God’s perfect provision, love and care. Like Cain, who killed his brother, Abel, humanity has lived “east of Eden”, moving away, running from the Presence of God. Mankind was broken. Sin brought alienation, isolation and brokenness to all people. There was no way for us to find our way home. We were lost to ourselves, to one another and to true humanity. In Luke chapter 15, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep. The Shepherd leaves the 99 sheep who are safe and goes off to the wilderness to find the lost one. Finding it, He carries the sheep on His shoulders and there is great rejoicing…the kind of rejo...