Frustration with God arises when we expect God to be bigger than our problems, but treat Him like He’s smaller. Our faith in God is measured by our actions and attitude in response to negative stimuli, and how we expect God to act on our behalf in a situation. If we have little faith, little problems will seem bigger than we can handle; but if we have big faith, little problems won’t destroy us – and every problem is truly little in light of eternity.

The Scriptures are filled with awesome stories of God’s greatness – from the creation of the universe and the world on which we live, to setting apart a people for Himself and caring for them from generation to generation, to the resurrection of Christ from the dead – proving that there is nothing that God is unable to deliver us from. So, as Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Let God be big.

‘Tis the season to buy lots and lots of stuff. It all starts on Thanksgiving Day, when we stop and give thanks for everything we have. Then, beginning at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, we go out and buy everything else we don’t have.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the holiday spending frenzy or giving gifts, but I realized this year that we don’t really know how to give gifts. After all, we love our family members enough to go buy them gifts, but we don’t love them enough to pay full price. We seek out the best deals – 40% off sales, 2 for 1 deals, Price-buster coupons – and give our loved ones the bare minimum by spending as little as we possibly can.

This is contrary to how God gives gifts. The first Christmas gift – Jesus Christ – cost the Father everything. He held nothing back by sharing His only Son with us, and letting Jesus die on the cross for our sins. A costly gift. Priceless.

So, in light of the Father’s gift-giving, how fully do we bring our gifts of worship to Him? Do we worship Him sacrificially, giving up everything to Him? Or do we worship God with a coupon mentality, bringing Him the bare minimum percentage of our hearts?

This season let the birth of Jesus Christ remind us what it truly means to give sacrificially, and in the same way, share every part of ourselves with the Father in worship.

My wife has read the all of the books in the Twilight series – you know the ones about the emo girl who’s in love with a vampire – and she insists that I NEED to read them. Mostly she wants me to read them because she’s sick of explaining the story, the characters, and the intricacies of the plotline to me.

The other night she actually said, “You just need to read the books. It’s hard to try to explain all of this to you if you don’t read them for yourself.” To which I replied, “Well, now you know what it’s like to be a Pastor.” She laughed because she knew exactly what I meant.

When I was in college I used to tell people I was majoring in a really old book that no one reads: the Bible. And it’s sad how true that statement is.

How many of us are content to skip reading God’s Word, and just wait for the Pastor to give us the bullet points during a half-hour Sunday sermon? How many of us avoid spending time reading Scripture in context, but seek the Cliffsnotes version of quotable one-verse passages? Not that this is inadequate, but it is incomplete without reading the Bible for ourselves. It’s vital that we become confident in reading the Bible to truly grasp the vastness of God’s story of interaction with us.

This might sound intimidating, so here’s a great book to read along with the Bible to help build confidence: How To Read the Bible For All It’s Worth by Fee & Stuart.

Now, dust off that ol’ coffee table ornament, and start reading you Bible.

I am happily married. My wife and I share a good marriage full of love, trust, laughter, and friendship. Sure we have our squabbles and disagreements, but I am fully devoted and faithful to her, and her to me.

Our God, on some level, is in a bad marriage. As the Bride of Christ, the Church is made up of each of us. And each of us has been the unfaithful one. At some time or another we’ve let our attentions waive, and our devotion falter.

But our God is tenacious. He doesn’t give up. He won’t let one petty disagreement ruin our relationship. He won’t let our unfaithfulness tarnish His love for us, and view of us. He won’t allow lies, lethargy, infidelity, procrastination, deception, and all of the other selfish acts we commit to break His vow to us.

Our God is willing to stick with us for the long haul. He’s there to take us back and hold us as we cry out and bury our tears deep into His chest. And He’s there to continually demonstrate to us an example of what true love is.

My God is in a bad marriage to me, but I am in a good marriage to Him. And because of this I express my gratitude to Him in worship.

My Prayer: Thank you, loving God, for being patient with me, and sharing a loving relationship with me in unequal measure.

I have to admit, for me recycling is a chore. I know I need to do it. It’s good for the environment. It’s really not that hard, but I have a really difficult time following through.

Being a Christian can be the same way. We know we need follow Christ. We know we need to make the extra effort to do the right thing, but it’s difficult to follow through.

I need to turn my righteous indignation into status quo.

At the end of February my wife and I had the extraordinary opportunity to vacation in China. We climbed the Great Wall, saw the Tara Cotta Warriors in Xian, saw the Beijing Opera in Beijing, ate Peking Duck in Peking, cruised the canals of Suzhou, and saw the sights of Shanghai.

Getting to China was not easy. Being a Communist country, they have stringent visa application process. On the application form I was presented with four occupation options: Business Man, Teacher / Student, Clergy, and Other. Clergy?!!

I knew that if I marked Clergy as my occupation, I would be asking for trouble. The easiest thing to do is to mark “Other,” pencil in “Musician,” and coast my way into China. But, Christ has not called us to do the easiest thing. This was an opportunity to test my faith.

As a matter of fact, a week earlier I had written a song with the lyric, “Now I stand before the nations / and I’m not ashamed to say / Hallelujah, Jesus is alive!” I was now literally standing before a nation with the opportunity to declare my faith in Jesus. Was I too ashamed, lazy, or afraid to profess my faith, or would I boldly declare my role as Clergy?

I marked Clergy. I was not allowed to get a three-month visa like Alison; I was only allowed a one-month visa (which meant 3 more trips to the embassy). I had to sign a form saying, “I will not engage in any unlawful missionary activity while in the country.” Our luggage was searched at the airport. And after all of that, I was able to enter China.

How often is it easier to downplay our relationship with Jesus Christ for convenience sake? How easy is it to omit that we are Christians “if it doesn’t come up” with our friends and family? Are we called to more than that? I challenge you to stand before the nations and not be ashamed to say, “Hallelujah, Jesus is alive!”

If you’re married or live with roommates, you no doubt have played the “I’m going to wait and see how long the dishes sit in the sink before someone washes them” game. You deliberately leave the dishes sitting there, getting crusty and rank, in the hopes that your roommate or cohabiter will recognize the need and fulfill their civic duty and wash them.

Eventually though, the one who cares most ends up doing the dishes.

At Northgate we’re at one of those pivotal moments. Next Saturday, December 20th at 12 noon a group of us are going door to door to invite our communities to Christmas Eve services.

We’ve all been waiting for someone else to do it. Now it’s time for those of us who really care about the souls of our neighbors to rally and invite them into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Northgate. December 20th. 12 noon. Be there if you care.

I had a good relationship with my parents growing up. They were both loving and kind people. I can’t say that I lived in fear of my parents; but I did, however, fear my dad when I did something wrong. If I misbehaved as a kid, I knew that my mom would wait until my dad got home from work, tell my dad what I did, and then I would be in for a spanking. I would sputter out the words “I’m sorry” through tears and sniffles, and every once in a while my dad would forgive me without punishment. I would run to my room feeling like I had just gotten really lucky.

Psalm 130 says, “If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness; therefore You are feared.”

Often times I think about forgiveness as a relief from fear. But the Psalmist is pointing out an interesting undertone in our relationship with God. We fear Him because He forgives, not because He punishes.

This is an amazing perspective that reminds us to never take God’s forgiveness lightly. Punishment is what we deserved, but God chose to forgive us through the sacrifice of Jesus. And for that, we fear and respect Him.

Jesus was sinless, but became a sin offering for us. Not that He sinned, but He took on sin for us while remaining intrinsically sinless. How is it that Jesus could take on sin, yet remain sinless?

Think about it like this: Dirty Soap. Soap is intrinsically clean. If a bar of soap gets dirty, you simply run it under water until it is clean. You don’t need to use another bar of soap to clean the dirty bar of soap. The dirty bar of soap is just outwardly dirty, and the dirt does not stick.

It is the same way with Jesus. He took on our sin, but the sin could not stick.

Here’s the cool part – when you put your faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sin, you too become soap. Sin no longer sticks to you because Jesus has replaced your sinful nature with His Spirit (Romans ch 8), and washed you with his pure water (Hebrews 10:22).

But here’s the catch, soap does not truly fulfill its purpose if it is not cleaning things. We are called to be earth cleaners. Just as Jesus came to earth to cleanse us, we must help cleanse those around us by living a Christ-like life and pointing to Him as the only hope for salvation (Matt. 28:19-20).

Last week we observed that the world is full of the “Walking Dead,” people who don’t yet know Jesus, and are living a Spiritually dead life.

This week I can’t help but wonder how many of us believers are “Walking Dead” too. We are saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ, but we too are Spiritually dead. James 2:26 says, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

How many of us have faith in Christ, but our works and deeds do not reflect it? How many of us claim Christ as our Savior, but do nothing to make a difference in the world in His Name?

We must let our deeds reflect the vitality of our worship. If we claim Christ as our Savior, we need to act on His behalf, just as He acted on ours.

Our deeds are our heart monitor. We can measure the beating of our heart for Christ by our actions.