And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,”  Luke 1:46-47

Dear Faithful Seed Sowers and Christmas Centered Christ followers,
JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON! Don’t ever forget that. No pandemic can shut down the real reason for the Christmas season. All over the world the faithful are preparing their hearts, homes and holidays for the arrival of the KING OF KINGS. I pray you are almost ready!

It is my prayer that during this 2020 “covid” Advent season, you are able to see, feel, taste, sense, and hear the Advent hope, love, joy and peace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Before we begin our journey this week, let me first ask you a question. 

What is your attitude about joy?

This may sound like a silly question — I think all of us would rather be happy than sad.   I believe that we would rather be up than down.  I would go a step further and say most of us prefer to be around others who are joyful, happy, and positive.

Happiness and joy are not the same thing.  Happiness depends on a happening, something from the outside while joy comes from within ourselves.

I love the Old Testament book of Nehemiah.  Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls after 70 years of desolation and destruction. Wow!  We have only had 10 months of isolation and lockdown. Nehemiah wants to encourage the people to continue to keep rebuilding.  They are surrounded by their enemies Sanballat, Tobias, Gresham.  Their walls are broken down.  Their spirits are down and Nehemiah shouts out these wonderful, powerful, life-changing words found in Nehemiah 8:10:

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

DO NOT GRIEVE … FOR THE JOY OF THE LORD IS YOUR STRENGTH.

These are words that we can take to heart as we continue to walk through this world-wide pandemic.

The so what comes early this today — So What is your attitude about joy?
Do you take the time to cultivate joy in your life? 
Do you see joy as an important foundation for your life, and if so, where does this joy come from?
Who or what is the source of your JOY?

Joy!  You may be saying, “How can there be joy in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. How can there be joy when I am locked down in my house?  How can there be joy when all I do is spend my time on my computer screen for class or work. Joy, are you kidding me?  You haven’t seen my TO DO list, have you?
I still have a week of school left—bah humbug!”  I bet you know people like old Ebenezer  Scrooge, who lived most of his life with a “bah humbug” attitude.

The trouble with waiting for JOY to happen is that we will always have more work to do.

The good news is that we CAN increase the joy in our lives, regardless of our circumstances, by taking and making the time to celebrate.

Let me repeat that statement!

We can increase our joy by taking and making the time to celebrate!

This is my 22^nd Christmas in ordained pastoral ministry and 40^th Christmas in ministry total (18 years as youth pastor).  It never ceases to amaze me how stressful and depressing the holidays can be for so many people—especially Christians—and all the while we have the answer right in front of us, lying in a manger. The Christ Child:  Immanuel, GOD WITH US. 

Sometimes at Christmas we can find ourselves nursing wounds from the past or wallowing in self-pity over what we do not have and over the bad choices we have made.  We find ourselves remembering harsh words, sad disappointments, and difficult interactions from our past.    We think we will never be free and, like Scrooge, we want to “extinguish” the truth.  “Extinguish the pain” is often our first response to wounds and regrets, but there is a better way.

Jesus was born in a stable — a small, cramped, congested, messy place! A newborn baby was out-of-place among the dusty animals, the musty straw and all the usual smells, sights and sounds found in a stable.  But this mess is our holy message of Christmas!  There is no stable, no place in our world or in our lives or hearts that is too broken, too poor, too remote, too rejected, too outcast or too messy that God cannot be found and formed in us—Immanuel, God with us.

I encourage you to take and read the Gospel stories in Matthew 1 & 2 and Luke 1 & 2.

The Gospel — Good News story in Luke 1:39-56 gives us the right focus for us today.  Here we have Elizabeth, beyond childbearing age but now six-months pregnant with her first child, a son, John. {He will become John the Baptist.}  Elizabeth is visited by her relative, Mary.  Mary was young, poor, female…unmarried, and pregnant.  I love the stories in the Bible.  Not because the people are the cream of the crop, the WHO’S WHO of WHOVILLE; no!  I love the stories because they are people just like you and me.  Both of these woman had pain in their lives:  Elizabeth had suffered for many years—probably 50 years—because she could not bear a child.  Her childlessness was viewed by others as a curse from God.  Elizabeth felt humiliated and hopeless for years—and  what happens? She is old AND pregnant!  Mary decides to go visit Elizabeth after Gabriel has appeared to her and shared the good news that she will bear a son named Jesus.  Mary is the opposite of Elizabeth.  She is not old and pregnant.  Mary is young, unmarried, and pregnant; yet Mary knows that this baby is God’s own son.

As Mary enters Elizabeth’s home, Elizabeth’s baby LEAPS within her and Elizabeth gives a glad cry She exclaims that Mary is blessed above all women!  You know, these two could have had quite a pity party…but they did not.  In verse 46 Mary responds to Elizabeth by saying, “My soul GLORIFIES the Lord.”  Do you know that another word for GLORIFY is MAGNIFY?  Magnify:  to make something greater/to cause to be held in greater esteem or respect/to enlarge in fact or appearance.  What Mary is saying is, “You know, this is not the greatest timing for me, either.  We can focus on the negative or…we can focus on the good.   You know what? We may not understand this but my soul is going to magnify the Lord.”

Elizabeth and Mary chose to cultivate joy.  Instead of magnifying their worries and woes, they chose to magnify the Lord.

Eugene Peterson’s THE MESSAGE states it this way: “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.” Luke 1:46-47 

Mary knew God as a God of power and as a God who was concerned for her.  Mary knew God as the ONE who cares for the humble and hungry.   Mary knew her Old Testament Scriptures.  There are at least fifteen Old Testament quotes or allusions in her song of praise.  Because Mary and Elizabeth had believed the Word of God, they each experienced the power of God.  The result of their magnifying the Lord is an outpouring of JOY.  What a lesson for each of us!

Each one of us has a choice to make.  We can focus on what we do not have, or we can focus on what we do have.  

SO WHAT?
We are turning the corner to Christmas!  What a story of JOY we have been given in Elizabeth and Mary!  Christ is the holder of our past, present and future.

The message of Christmas is this:  mess or no mess…IMMANUEL—GOD WITH US—is arriving in few days!  Yes, there’s tons yet to do.  Yes, we may not get it all done.  Yes, our painful pasts may be crying out but we have a choice to make:  will we magnify the pain or we will magnify the Lord?

Here’s our series so far:

Week 1:  HOPE:  Hope in harrowing times! We need to remember to no be afraid.  God hears your prayers.
Week 2:  LOVE:  God’s enduring love had a plan from the very beginning of time. God’s enduring love had a plan for Joseph. God’s enduring love has a plan for you. Remember Immanuel — God is with us!
Week 3:  JOY:  We all have a choice to make!  Choose joy and allow the joy of the Lord to be your strength.

Oh, let us MAGNIFY the LORD this week as we PREPARE for CHRISTMAS DAY!  I want us to burst with GOD NEWS and to DANCE the SONG of our SAVIOR GOD!

Let us pray:  God, only You know the depth and width of our yesterdays.  Only you can help us to heal.  These last ten days of Advent help us to prepare our hearts and our homes for the celebration of Your one and only Son’s arrival.  Unchain our hearts and help us to BUILD relationships with love.  This week we ask for JOY!  Help us to magnify the good and to sing, “Joy to the world!  The Lord is come:  let earth receive her King.  Let every heart prepare Him room—and heaven and nature SING!”  We want to be full of the GOD NEWS…so that we dance all week long with JOY!  Amen. 

I have a great story to share with you. After last Sunday’s message, my wife said, “I want God to bring JOY to me this week in a way that makes me dance and sing.” I will make this short. Our daughter is a Special Education teacher and she just recently took on a home teach student with medical issues that keep her homebound. I can’t give you much information but I can tell you this young student is on dialysis and this young student heads up a CHRISTMAS TOY DRIVE for the children on dialysis at Loma Linda hospital. There’s actually ten different SEEDS OF FAITH in this one story but let me just say this: my wife posted a need on her facebook page, 7 people responded. Today that young student delivered a TRUCK LOAD of toys to 3 dialysis clinics!

My wife’s words, “THIS. THIS IS CHRISTMAS!”

We are singing and dancing here on GALA Avenue. That’s my prayer for you: THAT YOU FIND CHRIST IN THIS COVID CHRISTMAS because when we choose to magnify GOD…no one can steal our JOY!

Jesus. Others. You.

Merry Christmas!

See you Sunday!

God loves you and so do i,
Pastor Dave
www.theseedchristianfellowship.com

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Dear Faithful Seed Sowers,

It is only a few weeks before we celebrate the birth of Christ.  Christmas!  Are you ready?  Are you ready for Christ to be born anew in your heart and home and in your holidays?

Last week, we started our Advent series. Advent means “coming” and, for sure, whether or not we are ready, Christmas is coming! There are four Sundays in Advent. Today is our second Advent message. We have two Sundays left in order for us to focus on preparing our hearts, our homes, our holidays for the celebration of Christmas! Our first Advent Sunday we heard about “Hope in Harrowing Times”. We talked about Zechariah and Elizabeth who had waited many years to have a child.  They were old, their hopes had been dashed and delayed. We learned that the Christmas story occurs after a 400-year silence from God; from Malachi to Matthew–silence! The people of Israel had been hoping and waiting for their Messiah for 400 years.  Their hope had been long delayed.  They are now being ruled in their own homeland by a Roman Emperor. Can we imagine that scenario?

Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the people of Israel, all understood having hope in harrowing times. Their story reminds me of our story today. I always ask you to put yourself into the story of the Bible. With COVID-19, I think we can all understand trying to keep our hope alive.

What about you?  Have you ever had your hope delayed? Have you ever had a day or two where you have lost hope in these harrowing times of Covid-19?  I know I have; my hope has been stretched to the limits this year with the death of mother-in-law, my brother, and my dad.  And besides all of this grief, there is just the plain grief of 2020/COVID-19. Church isn’t what it used to be. Everything had changed.  I think we are all aware of the sorrow we feel from of the loss of what we called “normal”.  I am sure we can all relate to having our hope delayed. I pray every day that we can find hope in these harrowing times. Thank God for Advent!

Thank God! We have lit the candle of HOPE—Heaven’s One Promise: Emmanuel.

Today we are going to study Joseph. We are going to see how God’s love endured for Joseph. Do you know that the definition of “endured” means “to suffer something painful or difficult patiently”?

Do you believe that God’s love will endure for you in this time of Covid-19 shutdown, lockdowns, quarantines, loss, illness and even death? Will your love endure as you suffer through this painful and difficult time?

Advent hope brings God’s enduring love; a love that will help us to suffer through this painful season, this difficult time, patiently. There is no other way. We have all been placed into this Covid-19 season and, with God’s love, we will endure. We may suffer but we will endure.

Think about Joseph for a minute!  What was going on in his mind?  He was at his father’s house preparing a place for his lovely bride.  He had been working, planning, and dreaming about his future and the life he and Mary would have together. What were his hopes and dreams? Was he thinking about how many children they would have?  Would they be boys, or would he have girls? Was he hoping to build up his father’s business so that they could have camels and lots of sheep?  Was Joseph dreaming of taking his family on yearly vacations to the Sea of Galilee?  Was he hoping and dreaming of bringing the family down to Jerusalem for the yearly festival of Passover?

Joseph was a happy man at this point in his life.  He was going to be married and his life was looking good. And then one day, it all came crashing down.  Mary was pregnant!  How could this be?  What would people think?  What would people say?  His beautiful bride-to-be was pregnant?  Mary told him about her encounter with the angel Gabriel and what the angel said: “Mary, you are highly favored.  The Lord is with you, Mary.  Do not be afraid—you are going to be with child!  Name him Jesus.  He will be called the Son of the Most High!  Nothing is impossible with God, Mary!” (Luke 1:30-32)

Does Joseph believe Mary?  No! His dreams were LOST!  His dreams are shattered!  His hopes are dashed! What happens next in this story?  Have you entered this story? Are you Joseph? Mary? The angel? Are you the parent of Joseph? Or the nosy next-door-neighbor?

The word states that Joseph was a “righteous man”; instead of making Mary’s pregnancy public and shaming her, Joseph decides “to dismiss her”.  The Greek word Matthew uses is ἀπολύω [apoluo /ap·ol·oo·o/] — “to set aside, to put away.” Joseph sets Mary aside.

Dismissing is the common word used in their culture for divorce.  Joseph did not want to disgrace Mary.  She could be stoned for being pregnant and not married.  Joseph loved Mary deeply, but he did not believe Mary’s story. He decided to set her aside, put her away, and dismiss her. And by now, he’s exhausted and goes to sleep!

Lost Dreams!  Dreams shattered.  Have you ever been there?  Are you there now?

So What?
How many of us feel like Joseph? Enter 2020. We started out our year believing that 2020 was going to be a year of perfect vision, you know—20/20! And…maybe, just maybe, 2020 is actually, in all reality, truly becoming a year of perfect vision to each one of us. I do not know about you, but I know that my focus is on my faith, my focus on God is the only thing that is helping me to patiently endure this season. Money cannot buy me out of this situation. The law cannot help me. Position or power—they cannot get me out of this, either. I have one thing that has come into perfect vision for me: my relationship with God.

Wonder if this is where Joseph found himself?

Have your dreams been lost?  Have your dreams been shattered? Maybe you have lost your dream home.  Maybe you cannot get ahead and stay ahead.  Maybe your health is an area of concern, especially right now with this pandemic. Maybe you have been dealing with depression or anxiety.  Maybe there is a relationship in your life that has been broken and you wonder if it will ever be repaired. Maybe your dream job has been eliminated and you are the one out looking for employment in a covid world.  We are living in a time when dreams are being shattered right and left—and if it is not your turn on the dream smasher/chopping block—then I bet that you know someone whose dreams are being smashed against the rocky cliffs of the storms of life as we share this devotional.

Joe does what any man would do. He decides a nap is in order.

Can you imagine what happened when Joseph woke up from his nap? Joseph had a dream. He heard from the Lord through an angel in a dream.  Did you notice what Joseph did in verse 24 of Matthew 1?

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  He had no union with her until she gave birth to a son…and Joseph named the baby– JESUS.

When Joseph woke up from his “pull the covers over my head and sleep the world away” dream…he got up and did EXACTLY what the angel told him to do.  He did not talk it over with his Dad, he did not ask his best friend for advice, he did not go to work and take a poll on what everyone thought he should do. He obeyed.  He went and took Mary as his wife.  Remember the home he built?  He went and got Mary and brought her new home to live with him. He did not care what others would say when they found out she was pregnant.  Joseph had been visited by an angel in a dream. “Mary, I love you. Come home with me.  Be my wife. I get it. An angel visited me, too. We’re naming our son Jesus!”   And…just like that Joseph was given a new dream and a new promise—”the baby is from the Holy Spirit and you shall name him Jesus and they shall call him EMMANUEL—God with us!”

The “so what” for us today is the exact same “so what” as it was for Joseph:

(Put your name here), it is going to be okay.  I know this is not what you had planned.  I know you do not have a clue why this is happening…but the baby’s name is Jesus — He will save you from your sins.  You shall call him EMMANUEL—GOD IS WITH YOU.  

If your dreams have been shattered or drastically altered, I want you to hear what the angel said, “EMMANUEL, GOD IS WITH YOU.  Do not be afraid—GOD IS WITH YOU.  God will reshape your shattered dreams.  Wake up and do what you know to do—because GOD IS WITH YOU.” 

GOD IS WITH US.

Say it out loud right now, “GOD IS WITH ME.  I MAY NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND WHY THIS IS HAPPENING ON THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN BUT I TRUST THAT GOD IS WITH ME.”

This coming week, as you go about your life, look with Joseph eyes.  Wear the Joseph style sandals. Joseph did not get to live his well-planned-out-dreamlife, his dreams fell silently shattered on the dirt floor of his life…but because of a baby named JESUS–God reshaped Joseph’s dreams into more than Joseph could have asked or imagined. “How can the son of man be father to the son of God?” Look up that song, “JOSEPH’S SONG”. Give a listen. Put Joseph’s sandals on. Yes, dreams have been shattered. BUT GOD…EMMANUEL…is with us.

God’s enduring love had a plan from the very beginning of time. God’s enduring love had a plan for Joseph. God’s enduring love has a plan for you.

See You Sunday!

God loves you and so do I,
Pastor Dave
www.theseedchristianfellowship.com