Christmas is over. The floor is covered in wrapping paper. Everyone is stuffed to their eyeballs with cookies and treats. Perhaps you are standing in line, the day after Christmas, at the store to return many of the gifts you had looked forward to receiving. Family and house guests have left and now…Christmas is finished….and you are left with a Christmas Hangover!
What is a Christmas Hangover? It is the feeling that comes as a result of unmet expectations. You think that Christmas is going to deliver all that it promises, but at the end of the day, you are feeling as empty as the opened and discarded boxes being carted off to the trash. There is so much build up to Christmas that it never meets up to all the expectations.
One day in 365 can never meet them all. Like the rest of life, nothing can satisfy all our expectations. In life, things will occasionally go wrong. Your kids will get dirty, make messes and make noise. On Christmas day, you will forget to buy batteries, thaw the turkey, or the oven may choose to break as you are preparing for your evening meal. Planes will be delayed, relatives will get tied up with other responsibilities, and dogs will jump on your favorite suit or Christmas dress with their muddy paws.
Not only will circumstances disappoint but also people can as well. Family will never meet all your expectations. Your family is a real family, not a TV family. There will be arguments and rivalries among siblings. Perhaps that perfect Kodak moment got ruined because the children squabbled and fought over their toys. People will smile and thank you for their gift, while you can detect their disappointment in their eyes. If your mom or mother-in-law has always criticized you, she still will.
Also, tis the season for stress. We run ourselves ragged with all the preparations and planning then after Christmas we deflate. We decompress.
What are we chasing after? What do we think and hope Christmas will bring? And as all the stress, that brought us up until Christmas lingers, we now have to pay off, throughout the year, all the purchases we made for this ONE day.
We get drunk with our spending. The average American spends around $800 on 
Christmas gifts. The credit card debt generated around the holidays is not paid off until the following July, and 25% of American consumers report that it takes them until October to finally pay off the Christmas debt. Christmas has become one giant consuming orgy and once it is done, we get a hangover.
I grabbed this excerpt from the book, Unplug the Christmas Machine by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli. This book urges readers to escape the commercialism of the holiday season, to make it a “joyful, stress-free” time for the family. In a chapter entitled “The Four Things Children Really Want for Christmas”, the authors write:
One concern voiced by most parents is that of shielding their children from the excesses of holiday commercialism. While adults can mute the TV when the ads get annoying, children are defenseless against the onslaught of ads. As early as the age of four or five, they can lose the ability to be delighted by the sights and sounds of Christmas, only to gain a two-month-long obsession with brand-name toys. Suddenly, all they seem to care about is how many presents they will be getting and how many days are left until they unwrap them.
The authors go on to recommend four things that children “really” want for Christmas:
1. A relaxed and loving time with the family.
2. Realistic expectations about gifts.
3. An evenly paced holiday season.
4. Reliable family traditions.
And although these principles discuss what children really want, I believe ultimately it is what even adults really want.
Christmas should be a time of joy and reflection. We should take more advantage of the advent season and give ourselves over to reflect on the arrival and implications of Christ’s birth. Advent has been a tradition in our home since our children were young and it allows us create and cultivate conversation with our children about the significance and importance of Christmas. Christmas is special because it ultimately points us elsewhere. It points us to the cross. It is often said that “Jesus is the reason for the season”. I believe that sentiment is misplaced.
“You” are the reason for the season. Jesus came because he was on a mission. A mission to seek and save the lost. Guard yourself from the Christmas Hangover next year by allowing yourself and your family to slow down, be simple, reflect and enjoy the celebration of our savior’s birth.
Filed under: Christianity, Commentary, General, Real Life, Relevant Life | Tags: christmas, jesus, revolution
“Two thousand years later, no one is singing songs about Herod or giving themselves to the kingdom of Caesar. Herod’s kingdom is dust, Rome is ensconced in museums, yet billions gather in the name of Jesus each week. No matter how many Caesars and Herods fill this world, they will never have the last word. The revolution of Jesus will see to that.” -Mike Erre, “Jesus of Suburbia”
Do you have a manager set up in your home or on your front lawn? Often we look into those manger scenes and observe what appears to be a tranquil and placid event. We look at the cherubic looking Christ child in the feeding trough and and we sing, “sleep in heavenly peace”. We call it a “Silent Night”. But it was anything but silent. The arrival of Jesus was anything but peaceful, quiet and subdued. It was a REVOLUTION!
The entrance of God into our world, wrapped in flesh, shook up the status quo. His arrival that fateful Bethlehem night shook the kingdoms of the earth off their fragile foundations. The arrival of Jesus ushered in a kingdom that declared war and stood in direct opposition toward the kingdoms of the day.
Too often we forget that Jesus incited revolution. We forget that his birth was in fact an insurrection against the establishment and “business as usual”. The Christmas Revolution started at the cradle but now that Revolution makes a call upon you and me.
When you are sitting behind another car in Atlanta traffic, you’ve probably seen this sticker on their bumper, “Jesus is the reason for the season” That’s incorrect...YOU are! YOU are the reason for the season.
Jesus came not because it would be cool for God to come in the flesh, but because it was absolutely necessary for Him to come in order for us to have peace with God. Jesus lived a perfect life – a life that you and I couldn’t live. And He paid the penalty of death that you and I should have paid by dying on the cross. What Jesus did on the cross was revolutionary. It allowed us, as sinners, to be reconciled again to a holy God who loves us so dearly.
We must remember though that coming to saving faith in Jesus isn’t so you can just get your ticket punched for heaven but then He doesn’t make any indelible mark on your life this side of heaven. Not at all! When the God of the universe comes into your life, He wants to bring revolution. Your life will get shifted around.
There will be shifts in your priorities. Shifts in your values. Shifts in your desires. Shifts in your heart. Shifts in your motivations.
But lets even get more concrete and practical: Shifts in the way you love your spouse. Shifts in your checkbook. Shifts in how you see and treat other people at work. Shifts in your thought life.
Jesus is a revolutionary. Let Jesus bring revolution to our life. Let that revolution overtake your life this Advent and Christmas season, and Beyond!
Filed under: Christianity, Commentary, General, Real Life, Relevant Life, Thought for the Day
I heard a recent statistic that I have found to be true in my life… it said that, “… you are a 1,000% more likely to accomplish your goals if you write them down with an action plan to achieve them…”.
This last Sunday I just took the entire congregation through the exercise I personal use for myself… and many said they found it helpful. I hope you do as well!
MEMORY VERSE: John 10:10 “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give you a rich and satisfying life.” – NLT
TEXT: Matthew 22: 36-39 “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law?” Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
· How in 2008 can you love the lord more with your heart?
· How in 2008 can you love the lord more with your soul?
· How in 2008 can you love the lord more with your mind & strength?
· How in 2008 can you love your neighbor more?
“Let’s say your walking along the beach in the Bahamas and you stub your toe on a bottle… there’s an interesting label on the bottle covered in sand, so you rub & rub and out pops a genie… this genie offers you 3 wishes…
What would your 3 wishes be?
1.
2.
3.
What are 5 things you will do in 2008 to insure Gods plan for you will happen?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What are 3 things you’d like to change about yourself?
1.
2.
3.
What are 5 things you are going to do to help you change those things?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
(previously posted at TimmyGibson.com)
Filed under: Christianity
You would have to be living under a rock not to notice all the television and internet buzz this past month about the recently released movie, the “Golden Compass”. The fears about this movie are wrapped up in the authors’ atheism (Phillip Pullman) and his desire to attack, undermine and destroy the Christian faith. Of course attempting to do all of that under the guise of using a children’s story.
Because of this, there are many well-meaning people of faith who are urging us all to boycott the film. (I belong to a Facebook group that challenges that notion – click here to view many helpful resources to properly engage the film). There may be other reasons not to see the film (the reviews of the movie have been less than stellar), but the movie’s “ideas” should not be one of those reasons. For every Golden Compass movie, that reveals it’s naked ambition to insult and attack our faith, there are THOUSANDS of movies, t.v. shows and songs that assault our faith everyday. The problem is that they go unnoticed. They are too clever to reveal their agenda. They fly right under our radar screen.
Movies and other media that are more subtle than the Golden Compass do more damage. Since they fly under our radar, our guard is down and therefore we don’t critically engage what we see and listen to.
If you are my age, you most likely remember the movie “Footloose”. Footloose was a movie released in 1984 and it was an instant hit. Here is an excerpt from the New York Magazine piece about Footloose and it’s inclusion on the the ten most anti-Christian Movies of all time. -
“Despite its canonical status as an eighties classic, we’re willing to bet that if an original 
script like Footloose — in which fun-loving teen Kevin Bacon arrives in a small town where preacher John Lithgow has banned rock music and dancing — landed on a Hollywood exec’s desk today, they’d be too afraid to produce it, lest it offend some key demographic. It’s Lithgow’s villain who really makes the movie: Soft-spoken and patronizing when he’s not spitting out the fire and brimstone (“He’s testing us!!”), his performance is a bone-chilling portrait of smug self-righteousness and could easily blend in among any number of Sunday-morning-TV preachers. The only thing missing is a bad hairpiece.”
Movies such as Footloose and the other’s mentioned on the list slip right past us. No one is organizing a boycott. No one is warning others against those films. We just go and get entertained. We tap our foot with the music and we sing along. And yet, a movie like Footloose propagates the idea that our faith in Christ is bound up and enslaved by rules (legalism). Footloose also reinforces all the worst in negative stereotypes and it strips clean any notion of grace, love or virtue from our faith. Therefore I believe (uncritically) inviting a movie like Footloose into our affections does potentially more harm than a hundred Golden Compass movies combined.
Boycotts against the Golden Compass, and the next Golden Compass that comes along, allow us to miss the point. Cherry picking movies to boycott allows us to believe that we can be protected from the world and it’s schemes by just ignoring a couple of blatantly offensive movies. No. We are constantly inundated with media and pop-culture. And unless you live in a cave, it is important that we critically engage the culture with a well informed Biblical worldview rather than merely close ourselves up from it.
Actually if we, as Christians, are true to our Kingdom mandate, we would not merely respond to culture, but rather we would SHAPE it….but I leave that idea for another blog post.
Filed under: Christian, Christianity, Commentary, General, I Wonder, Real Life, Relevant Life
Hi everyone. This is my first post here at Relevant Christian, and I hope my posts will be of some use to you and that I’ll fit in nicely into this little family.
First, a little bit about myself for some background on the topic of this post.
Growing up in a Christian home with a father who struggled with his faith as a teen, who got the calling to become a pastor, and was denounced by his entire family, I had a lot to live up to. I learned a lot from my amazing father, who is now the head of A Kernal of Wheat Ministries (akow.org), a Chinese publication ministry translating good English books and reference books for Chinese Christians.
With this very solid theological knowledge background from my family and from growing up sitting in with my parents at their in-house Bible study ministries, I moved with my parents when they came to the United States when I was ten.
This is a completely new world.
As a college student in Los Angeles, stereotypically land of the sinners and promiscuous crazies, I face many different choices. Growing up close to my father, I have seen that even within the same denomination of God’s church, politics occur. There are belief differences. Subtleties in theology that cannot be reconciled between members and leaders.
How can I bring this experience to be relevant to my life on the college campus, at my rather liberal Evangelical church (I was raised with a Lutheran and Baptist background, depending on whichever church my parents were attending or pastoring at)? At my fellowship? To my non-Christian roommates and in class? In response to the things happening in our culture and in our world? How do I respond to this country’s media? Or even to the more controversial media of my home country, Taiwan?
I’ll attempt to go into a little bit of this strange cross-culture life I live, here in this post.
This came up in the last Bible study in my church’s college fellowship, and I thought I would share with everyone here. The passage in question was 1 Corinthinans 10, and a heated discussion resulted in my small group resulted because of it. (By the way, from here on in, I’m going to be quoting NIV).
Because we’re an Asian-American church, with the majority of us from the Taiwanese heritage, there was definitely an issue with idol feasts for us.
One guy, we’ll call him J, brought up the fact that he’s the eldest son of the eldest son… which means that when his paternal grandfather dies, it is his duty to perform some of the ritual ceremonies of the funeral. This includes sacrificial food, burning of paper money for the afterlife, ancestor worship… praying to the gods that his grandfather will pass peacefully.
You can see the problem that came up. J was torn between two things… he personally didn’t think that doing the ceremony was a problem (but I did.. more on that later), and he thought that he wouldn’t stumble anyone by eating that food and by going through the motions (he cited verse 32, “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—”
I not only thought that it was wrong to even participate—”18 Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?”
You see, I am lucky because, though I am the eldest child (even a woman still has some duties when she’s the eldest) of the eldest son, I am lucky in that my father has already made a choice. When his grandfather died (and he was… the eldest son of the eldest son), he chose to decline his duties and say his goodbyes respectfully his own way. Should I ever have to make this choice, I am lucky that my immediate family will never denounce me the way my father’s denounced him.
So that’s my position on whether we should be doing it at all.
Since J disagrees with me though, there are other issues at hand. What he really wanted to know was… does it stumble his family or help his family, for him to refuse to do his duties? Would he have a better chance evangelizing to them if he offended them so deeply that he refused to follow tradition? Or would he be displaying the kind of unbending faith that may lead them to wonder what is this God he believes in? For me, the key in the second half of 1 Corinthians 10 is in verse 23-24 “‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.”
This is repeated in verses 31-33: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.”
These are the verses that were heavily under debate in our small group. Would it stumble his parents or bless his parents for him to refuse? Or for him to go through the motions of traditional ceremony?
To me, verses 27-30 said it all.
27 If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. 28 But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake[d]— 29 the other man’s conscience, I mean, not yours. For why should my freedom be judged by another’s conscience? 30 If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?
J still disagreed, but I encouraged him to talk to our pastors about it. He responded that oh, he already had! And that the pastors had responded that it wasn’t bad to go through the motions, and that it was really up to J whether he wants to do it or not. To us as a Chinese people, these rites are so important and have been done for thousands of years… is it wrong to pay our respects? I think so.
We are called to a faith that’s not easy. It is not easy to live a life of Christ. It is not easy to be a Christ-follower though it is easy to be what the world sees as a Christian.
Am I just overly conservative and nutty or is my pastor a little bit mislead? What do you think?
Well, there’s my two cents. I Want to hear yours.
PS: I apologize for inflicting this horrifically long post on you all, and I promise they won’t be this long again.
Filed under: Christian, Christianity, Commentary, General, Real Life, Relevant Life
Every year at this time, millions of people make their New Years Resolutions. Unfortunately, almost no one will keep those resolutions.
I was thinking back on this past year, remembering all of the things that have happened, both good and bad. After the reminiscing was over, I forced myself to look forward to the new year and wonder what practical things I could do to ensure a Happier New Year this year.
These are my resolutions for the new year;
1. Keep my relationship with God the primary focus in my life.
So often, I get wrapped up in the day to day and neglect the most important relationship in my life.
If my relationship with God suffers from neglect, how can I expect to keep my earthly relationships from suffering.
2. Be a better father and husband.
I can be very guarded and at times a little too volatile. Especially when I hold things in and allow them to fester till they build to the point of explosion.
I want to be more understanding to my families wants and needs.
3. Follow Thru
If I say I am going to do something….then do it…follow thru. I don’t want to leave anything unfinished….there may not be a tomorrow!
Father help me to accomplish the things I need to. Help me to be the man, husband and father that you want me to be. Help me to put away the hurt and dissapointment of this past year and look forward to the new year with great expectation of what You want to do. Please help me to remember that if I put you first in my life, everything else can be much easier.
Amen