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Genealogy

“This long genealogy is given for a good reason: to show how this Jesus fulfills the prophecies that tell us the Anointed One will be a descendant of Abraham and David. Some of the women in Jesus’ line are given to show how God is gracious to everyone, even to prostitutes and adulterers. Because some of the women listed weren’t Israelites, but were strangers and foreigners, they foreshadow all the foreigners God will adopt into His church through Jesus. Some of the children in God’s family are conceived under strange circumstances (like Tamar’s twins being conceived as she played the harlot, and like King Solomon being born to adulterous parents). Now that it has been established this is an unusual family, what happens next shouldn’t be a surprise – the conception of a baby under very strange circumstances.” (The Voice New Testament) 

Last night at Pulse Wednesday Night we started a new focus that I am really excited about, what makes it so awesome in fact that it is so simple. Sometimes in youth ministry we can invest so much time in looking for the best curriculum ever and we trust someone from another state in completely different church to give us the curriculum that we need, but the bad thing about this is that the writers don’t know the students at St. Philip’s, and really if I am honest I don’t know a lot either.

I know who does though.

God knows my students better than I ever could.

So, thanks to my genius intern, Marianne we decided to read the entire gospels with our students on Wednesday Nights. By reading a chapter a week we can slowly let the great story ever told sink into the hearts and minds of Pulse Students.

Like I said I am very excited.

Last night we talked about our preconceptions about people.

Sometimes as humans we have the habit of thinking we know more about people than we really do and I think that through Matthew 1, God tells us what He thinks about people. Throughout the genealogy we find plenty of people that really have no place in the family the comes before Christ. Tamar, seduces her father-in-law to keep the family line alive, Rahab is a canaanite prostitute who helps foreigners sneak into a foreign land, and lets not forget the whole David-Bathsheba thing. 🙂

Point is God truly saw these people for who they really were.

He knew their story intimately.

After all He created them and His own image.

Let this be an encouragement as you live your life know that there is no limit to God’s love and grace. The family that God has chosen to associate with is most definitely unusual, but isn’t interesting how unusually amazing and brilliant God is.

His grace is for all people.

Amen.

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Love in the Midst of a Whirlwind.

The last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Nov. 10 – Got married to my best friend, Amy Forsythe Alexander
Nov. 11 – Left for cruise
Nov. 18 – Back in Texas from Cruise
Nov. 19-20 – Couple of days in the Office
Nov. 21-23 – Thanksgiving at Harris and Alexanders
Nov. 23 – Thanksgiving with Howell and Forsythe’s

Like I said the last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Today I would like to share a moment that was so powerful.

Over thanksgiving I had the opportunity to introduce Amy to my cousin Lauren and my Paw Paw Jack Alexander. The implications of this need some explaining.

My cousin Lauren who passed away 7 years ago of spina bifida was always someone that seemed to me to be a conduit of God’s love and grace. She taught me so much about how God’s love is not determined by limitations but that God’s love cast limitations away and that there was no limits to God’s love and grace, and my Paw-Paw like Lauren taught me how to be a man of God.

My wife Amy reminds me a lot of Lauren. They both have such a heart for God and both to me are conduits of God’s love and grace. They have such a heart for the least and the lost, the small and marginalized, the people that are so easily ignored. I am constantly reminded by that through my time with Lauren and now my time with Amy.

Consider how powerful it is for Amy to embrace these people from my family. Two of the people that helped me in my journey to now.

This was a very powerful and God moment in the midst of a whirlwind, and a good reminder that no matter what is going on in our lives that the whirlwinds, or storms do not cast out God’s love and grace, but that God’s love and grace cast out everything that gets in the way. Nothing can limit this. Nothing can stop this. In fact as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that God’s love never ends.

So as you live your life and experience the storms and whirlwinds of life remember that God’s love and grace is always with you.

Thank you God for your love.

Amen.

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Having the Latest and Greatest

For those of you that didn’t know Amazon came out with an entire new line of kindles today. For more information on what they are go to the amazon website. Out of curiosity I went to the website to see what the “family” had to offer. Of course they were bigger and better than before, better resolution, HD, you know the works.

Then something disturbing happened.

“I need one of these.”

I love my Kindle Touch and I have had it maybe a year, maybe. So I was a bit disturbed by this new desire to buy a new kindle. I logically thought like many of us did that I could sell the one I had and use it to buy the new one and so I wouldn’t really lose much money in the process.

Then I thought this is why technology changes every year because we keep buying and buying and buying the latest and the greatest because it never stops. There is always going to be the next ‘thing.’

But that is just what they are.

Things.

They give nothing to our soul. We as human beings have this practice of putting things in our lives hoping they will fulfill the hole in our heart, but they won’t. They can’t because they have no power except for the power that we give them.

Everything that we need is in Christ’s love and grace and his willingness to die for us even though we didn’t deserve it. It’s like the following:

If you could have a million dollars or friends which would you desire first? Which should you desire first?

Money and things can’t give you happiness or eternal life because they aren’t anything but paper and resources that are used to make them. The only power they have is the power we give them.

So, what power are you giving the latest and greatest in your life?

Christ gave you the ultimate gift, himself. He extended His Love and Grace.

What will you do with it?

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Who God Made Us To Be

God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. (Genesis 1:27)

“Who was I made to be?”

“Exactly who you are.”

Ever had this conversation with someone? Have you ever asked the question of who we are made to be and then been given this response? It seems to be a very truthful albeit unhelpful response. It’s start to the point, simple, and yet extremely complex.

How can something be simple and complex at the same time?

That seems unreasonable, but we see it all the time in the scriptures. Love your neighbor as yourself doesn’t sound complex but it really is.

To add even more complex to this conversation let’s hone in the question of this post.

Who has God made me to be?
God created all beings in His image.

We are made to be like God, but we are not God. Which means we have qualities like God, like Love, Grace, Peace, Kindness, Caring and may others.

It’s that simple.

The problem is that we complicate the equation. We make it seem that we are not created to be in God’s image because if we were made in His image we wouldn’t make the mistakes that we do, but that is not true because at the same time we are human, and the nature state of being a human is making mistakes.

So you see the point now.

It’s simple, yet complicated.

Which is why the Israelites struggled with this thought and their worth and identity for years. Which is why Jesus came to begin with, to show us who we were made to be. His disciples. Jesus comes to the earth to help us realize our worth and identity, that it is not in our sins that we are defined but in the faithfulness of Christ. Christ defines us for who we are by saying, “I will die to prove that you are worth my image.”

It’s a powerful and influential force that comes when Christ dies for our sins. In that one simple act we are rebranded in the body and blood of Jesus. Because it is truth what it says in Galatians 2:20:

I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in my body, I live by faith, indeed, by the faithfulness of God’s Son, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

You and I are not what we were before.

Christ is the active and abundant force that is within us, giving us the direction and words to say when we need them. However, we must embrace this force that is within us because when we do that we truly embrace who God made us to be all along, His image.

We no longer live but the body and blood of Jesus Christ live within us and we live by faith and are defined by the faithfulness of God’s Son, Jesus. Who died to prove that we are worth His image.

May God encourage, equip, empower, and energize us to embrace His image.

Amen.

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Letting God In

“Therefore, my dear ones . . . work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). [Not inyour own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight” (Philippians 2:12,13)

“Hear this: I don’t think God wants you at war with yourself. He sent the prince of peace to soothe those tumultuous waters already. Self-depreciation is a cruel response to Jesus, who died and made us righteous. Guilt is not Jesus’ medium. He is battling for global redemption right now; his objective hardly includes huddling in the corner with us, rehashing our shame again. He finished that discussion on the cross. Plus there is no time for that. We’re so conditioned to being a problem that we’re actually the answer.” -Jen Hatmaker

Over the last couple of years I have noticed something about people and in particular followers of Jesus. It is easier to extend grace to everyone else, but when it comes to extending grace to ourselves that is something that is almost impossible. I work with teenagers, as many of you well know and the thing that really gets to me about teenagers is sometimes they surround themselves around people that may not have the best influence on them. 

Why?

Well I think I have come to realize that not just teenagers, but people in general invite people into their lives that they think they deserve. Which could be possibly why some girls have the worst boyfriends.

Why are we always so self-destructive?

Why is it so easy to invite destructive people into our lives but so hard to invite our Creator?

In some people situations they are haunted by what has happened in their past and a part of them feels that they are defined by what happened 10 years ago, but it was 10 years ago!

See this is the exact reason why God sent His son.

So that we wouldn’t defeat ourselves but that we would be redeemed and would live a life abundantly and not shackled. Christ died for all our lives so that we could have a fresh start, so that we can try again. In the same way He extended grace to us we are to extend it to the world and also ourselves because sometimes the worst critics of ourselves is in the mirror.

Here is the point. We let people that destroy us in but not God, but in order to truly experience the abundant life that is full of redemption we have to let God in. God is the perfect gentleman He won’t force Himself upon anyone. He wants us to choose to let Him in because when we make that choice then our very heart desires it as opposed to being forced. True disciples are developed through our own desire for God to come in and help.

May you let God in and may God truly show you the abundant life that He has for you.

Amen.