Christmas Holiday

My schedule is determined by the weather.  Warm temperatures mean peace and quiet with plenty of room for family and friends;  the ideal setting for a Christmas holiday.  Cold temperatures mean long hours, unsynchronized lives, and interrupted plans.  

When I agreed to manage the Cold Night Shelter I understood it came with the possibility of working Christmas weekend.  Understanding the possibility and facing reality are very different.  As Christmas day approached I found myself constantly surveying three different weather forecasts; praying one would provide a warm prediction.  Ten days out, it appeared the cold would arrive Christmas Eve.  Five days out, the trend pushed the cold off until Christmas Day.  One day out, the temperatures appeared marginal for the entire weekend.  Christmas was back on schedule!

I arrived at my office Thursday morning at 9:00.  The conference call to determine the the status of the CNS was scheduled for 10:00.  Based on previous decisions by the committee I fully expected them to choose to remain closed.  I had plans to meet an old friend for lunch, then head home for some serious gift wrapping.  I was an hour away from beginning a well deserved five day Christmas break.  Minutes after the call ended, I was told the committee had decided to open the CNS from December 23 through December December 29. Ugh! 

There are two very distinct parts of me, spirit and flesh.  Through my relationship with God these parts remain in balance on most days.  However, occasionally (like last Thursday for example) God illustrates how different these parts are and requires me to make a choice.  At 10:25am Thursday morning I was given a choice to erupt in a tantrum and cry out, "IT'S NOT FAIR!" or humbly submit to the committee's decision.  This choice caused chaos within me.  I questioned my motives, my heart, and my commitment.  My spirit and my flesh were knotted together in a huge jumbled mess.

Early Christmas Eve morning God asked me to examine myself more deeply; to intentionally sort flesh from spirit.  I began by tracing my feelings of anger, resentment, and frustration back to the source, where I found selfishness and rebellion.  I was shocked to see them again and they tried to make me feel guilty for giving them room, but once identified they were easily separated from my spirit.  I placed my selfishness and rebellion at God's feet and he quickly dispatched them.

I then turned my attention to my spirit.  My spirit lives in the light.  It is one with God; the gift Jesus gave to me with His birth, death, and resurrection.  It rejoices with the heavens and is anxious to serve.  It reminds me of the privilege to serve those God loves, to be part of His mission.  Where better to spend Christmas Holiday than in service of the King?

I am saddened to see how quickly my flesh corrupts my spirit.  I want to live completely in the spirit, one with God.  I am grateful for tough decisions which cause me to examine my heart.  What is your current heart condition?  Has selfishness, pride, lust, rebellion, greed, or sloth taken up residence?  Christians are not immune to these influences.  Do not be afraid to ask God to remove the shackles from your spirit.  The world lies, it's promises are empty.  Nothing remotely compares to what God offers.

God blessed us with a memorable Christmas Holiday.  This years best present came without wrapping paper or bow.  Deniz and the Children joined me Christmas Eve and stayed through until Christmas morning.  I watched as God worked through them, bringing smiles and encouragement to those I serve.  My mission became our mission, my peeps became our peeps.  In the end I was not slighted in the least, God still provided family time around the tree, Christmas dinner, and laughter.  

 ^5-8Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
 ^9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
 ^12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
 ^15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! (Romans 8:5-16, The Message)

 ¹ There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. ² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. ³ For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ⁷ Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. ⁸ So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
⁹ But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. ¹⁰ And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.  
¹² Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴ For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. ¹⁵ For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (Romans 8:1-16, New King James Version)