by Aarron Pina | Dec 23, 2013 | Monday Morning Momentum
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” (Gal. 4:4-6)
Got Plans?
Pregnancy and adoption – these are not emotionally neutral topics in our culture. Most of the time, it’s not attached to the word “unplanned”. But, even planned pregnancy is a game changer for the family involved. There’s preparation, baby gear, decisions to be made, sleepless nights, doctor visits, ultrasounds, and then, the baby actually arrives!
Adoption – this never falls in the “unplanned” category, does it? But, it’s a big deal to all parties involved. Someone “loses”, others “gain”. The stories are typically tearjerkers, but the life of the donor mom, the child, and the adoptive family is never the same. Having met my own biological sister for the first time when I was 30 years old, I know what it’s like to “lose” a family member to adoption, to have family secrets, shame, wonder, and a life changing reunion.
Your Past and Future
God says that because of Adam, we’re stuck under the law. Law says “do this/don’t do that” and you’re on good terms with God. But, these laws were impossible to keep. The written code said “don’t commit adultery”, but Christ would explain that even thinking lustfully breaks that law. How could anyone keep up? Worse, how could a good God expect anyone and everyone to jump over a bar that high?
In Genesis, Adam discovered permanent separation from God was possible with merely one sin against a God who is both holy and eternal. To fix that problem, he’d need an eternal sacrifice – an eternity of second chances. Ever feel like him? If he (consequently we) were ever to be acquitted, he’d need a perfect, eternal, blood sacrifice – because without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. (See Heb. 9:22)
A baby changes everything.
Leaving Paradise… For What?
Can you imagine you’re on some island beach sipping a fruity drink and you get a call from me that says “I need you to come to Alaska so I can bash your thumbs to smithereens with a hammer. Can you help me out?” Would you hope on the next plane? Me, either. Yet, Jesus left more than a tropical shore and came to earth to be brutally beaten and murdered on a cross. Why? Because, His birth, death, and resurrection make our “adoption to sonship” possible.
I’m from New England. There are two kinds of music I can’t stand: “Country and Western”. But, as a father of four, with a sister who was given up for adoption before I was even born, and as a man adopted into the family of God by the shed blood covenant of Christ, Faith Hill got me on this one. So, here’s my number 2 favorite Christmas song: “A Baby Changes Everything”.
May the Christ child, his life, death, and resurrection change everything for you. For good.
in Christ,
AP
by Aarron Pina | Dec 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
What’d You Expect?
I promised a post about my top 4 Christmas songs. We should be on #3 right now… What gives? I’m getting there. You were expecting one thing and you got another.
So, how’s that going for you?
How we react to unmet expectations tells everything about our theology.
“To man belong the plans of the heart,
but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue. (Prov. 16:1)”
The Gap
The gap between what we expect and what we get is either counted blessing (when we get what or more than we wanted) or bother (when we don’t). Our response to this gap exposes what we believe about God and what He, the world, or life owes us. Shift gears with me for some background.
A Mark, Two Joes, and Questions for Mary
Mark Lowry was 20 years old when a car accident left him with 11 broken bones. I don’t think he was expecting that when he got in the car. You? Six years later, in his mid 20s, he wrote the lyrics to my number 3 favorite Christmas song.
In Genesis, God called Joseph to become Prime Minister of Egypt, but not without decades of trial, testing, and waaaaaiting… In the Gospels, He called another “Joe” to marry the only pregnant virgin in history. Mary was visited by an angel who told her she’d become pregnant outside wedlock, but remain a virgin… and the angel didn’t even have the decency to walk her home and explain the “miracle” to her dad. REALLY?!
Months of physical therapy to recover from an accident…
Years in prison over a false accusation waiting for God knows what…
Years raising a family in Egypt waiting for Herod to die…
The eyes of everyone on her knowing she was pregnant outside of marriage waiting for prophecy fulfilled…
They all experienced the gap.
What do you do in the gap between the miraculous and the mundane?
Hitting the Mark?
Mark Lowry was asked to write a song. He started with a list of questions he’d like to ask Mary, the mother of Jesus. We all tend to judge the gap. I don’t know if Mark did after his car wreck. I don’t know what Joseph was thinking in prison. Scripture doesn’t tell us what Joseph was thinking in Egypt. Mary broke out in an song of amazing faith. Holidays tend to magnify the impact of unmet expectations… that either make us bite our tongues or unleash on people who ultimately might not deserve it. What if we could take a lesson from Mark?
He asked a ton of questions that put the downside of the situation out of the spotlight (for the most part). What if we could do the same? What if this Christmas we could all suspend judgment of the gap – I didn’t get what I wanted, they didn’t act the way I wanted, they didn’t say what I’ve hoped they’d say, they still haven’t trusted in Jesus… etc… What if we could, as Mary did, trust in the God who is sovereign over the gap and simply say – “May it be as you have said”?
Take a look at the questions Mark Lowry penned when he wrote “Mary Did You Know?” and do your own homework… “Aarron, did you know, that that thing you wanted to happen this year at Christmas is really just a blip on the map and will serve to bring someone you love to Christ in a way you never imagined or hoped?” Can you trust that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His plans always work out better than our fallen, imperfect expectations? Will you trust Him in the gap, the uncomfortable gap, the pregnant lady riding a donkey forty miles over the mountains gap, the cousin-in-law-twice-removed who always makes awkward and insulting remarks at your dinner table gap?
Can you forgive? Can you articulate your expectations of what you’d like in the future rather than dwelling on the gap of what “should have” happened this time? Can you trust that even though you don’t see a miracle in the middle of the mundane that God is still at work?
Enjoy one of my favorite renditions of “Mary Did You Know”? And, make a list… and check it… twice…
by Aarron Pina | Dec 9, 2013 | Christ, Christmas, Little Drummer Boy, Monday Morning Momentum, mundane
My “Final Four” – #4 The Little Drummer Boy
Trivia Fun
Nothing you can’t find in a quick Wikipedia search, but noteworthy enough for holiday chit-chat around the egg nog bowl. Written in 1941, first recorded in 1955 by who? The Trapp Family Singers. Yep, that quaint little family who brought you “Doe, a Deer, a Female Deer”, made Julie Andrews a household name, and currently has Carrie Underwood looking… out of place. Based on a Czech tune and originally published as “Carol of the Drum”.
Theological Significance:
Though Jesus isn’t the main character, I’m still okay with playing and singing it because Christmas is the season when Holy God became incarnate: the earthly merger of the magnificent with the mundane. The story juxtaposes wise men from far off with the Wisest of all, who would now come nearer than any earthly man would have ever known. Great men, great gifts, cow dung, and a precious and Holy King in an animal’s feed trough – magnificent, meet mundane. Perfect, meet profane. Yet, God ordained it all.
Enter, Scandalous Child
The religious people of Jesus’ time had become so emphatic about the law, they were drifting from true relationship with the Law Giver. They’d begun to call worthless many of the things that God truly valued. Women and children in this time were “to be seen and not heard”.
Yet, the scandalous Christ would later scold (in three different gospel accounts… OUCH!) His own disciples: “Let the little children come to me!” Mt. 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16 So, what an insulting scandal that a little boy, bearing no tangible gift would be given audience with the King of Kings? Isn’t it already scandal enough that His birth to a virgin mother was proclaimed first to lowly shepherds (not exactly the top of the socio-economic ladder of the day) and his birthplace a barn?
Hallelujah, yes! Bring on the scandal.
And, so the scandal of the gospel is proclaimed in this song – that a little child, in the face of the wise who offered great, majestic gifts, would bring but a humble song, yet would garner the smile (favor) of the child born to live, suffer insult, and die to erase the scandalous sin of the rich, the poor, the wise, the foolish and all in between! Wow. Majesty amidst the mundane.
Scripture Snack:
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor. 1:20-21)
Here’s My Favorite Version – What’s Yours?
I’ve been through a few favorites on this song – first time I heard Candi Shelton (then, Candi Pearson, on North Point Community Church’s first Christmas CD) do her acoustic version, my jaw dropped. “Who does that to that song?!” If you look around the iTunes store, Grooveshark, or even Pandora, you might get yourself a listen.
When I heard these next two versions, I thought the exact same thing. “Who’d have thunk THAT?!” The following videos are my #2 and #1 favorite versions of this song for obvious reasons. Alicia Keys at Rockafeller Center in ’09 and my new favorite – Pentatonix.
Drop us a comment below with your favorite version, will ya? Merry Christmas, and may Christ be at the center for you this season and all year long.
by Aarron Pina | Nov 26, 2013 | Christ, gospel, Oswald Chambers
Yesterday, we started off the week with a look at the error we often make in preaching, proclaiming, sharing the gospel: reliance on personal skill and/or clever methodology. Today, I imagine it’s no coincidence that my inbox would contain this post from Oswald Chambers:
(direct link: http://utmost.org/classic/the-concentration-of-spiritual-energy-classic/)
“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal. 6:14)”
If you want to know the power of God (that is, the resurrection life of Jesus) in your human flesh, you must dwell on the tragedy of God. Break away from your personal concern over your own spiritual condition, and with a completely open spirit consider the tragedy of God. Instantly the power of God will be in you. “Look to Me. . .” (Isaiah 45:22). Pay attention to the external Source and the internal power will be there. We lose power because we don’t focus on the right thing. The effect of the Cross is salvation, sanctification, healing, etc., but we are not to preach any of these. We are to preach “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). The proclaiming of Jesus will do its own work. Concentrate on God’s focal point in your preaching, and even if your listeners seem to pay it no attention, they will never be the same again. If I share my own words, they are of no more importance than your words are to me. But if we share the truth of God with one another, we will encounter it again and again. We have to focus on the great point of spiritual power— the Cross. If we stay in contact with that center of power, its energy is released in our lives. In holiness movements and spiritual experience meetings, the focus tends to be put not on the Cross of Christ but on the effects of the Cross.
The feebleness of the church is being criticized today, and the criticism is justified. One reason for the feebleness is that there has not been this focus on the true center of spiritual power. We have not dwelt enough on the tragedy of Calvary or on the meaning of redemption.
by Aarron Pina | Nov 25, 2013 | God, grace, Jesus, Paul, performance
Watch Your Own Film Lately?
There are some great communicators out there in the world. Last month, I had opportunity to communicate truth through a 90 minute one man show. While I don’t think it put me in a class among those men, it did renew my appreciation for such men.
The amount of time poured into the craft of communication cannot be understated, if one is to do it with excellence. Today, I’m watching video of my performance with a critical eye and a yellow pad of paper. World class communicators make it a habit to “watch the film” like elite athletes who seek to achieve peak performance.
Two Extremes and an Extremely Dangerous Center
There is great value in learning from mistakes and honing one’s craft. But, there is a tension in our culture between sharpening one’s communication skills on one end, foolishly “winging it” on the other end, and yet an even more dangerous spot in the middle where we become worshipers of our gift of communication instead of relying on the Giver of all gifts (often referred to as “the liability of ability”). This happens when we cross the line of developing our skills and believing our own press…
But, there is a reason why Paul makes it a point to explain that he didn’t use flowery language, etc., isn’t there? There is a reason why so many were astonished at Peter and John, though they weren’t “educated men” (Acts 3 & Acts 4), isn’t there? Was it because they dumbed down the gospel? Was it because they had graduated from the Tony Robbins school of Communication on the Cutting Edge of Relevant Leadership?
Who Does the Attracting?
In His letter to Titus, Paul gets to the bullet points of preaching and teaching and makes it clear how to make the gospel as appealing as possible. Paul never advocates for being intentionally foolish and simply blurting out nonsense. But, Jesus hints that it’s not our words that draw people to God, rather the God of the word who does so. (See John 6:43) Further, here are a few points Paul also does not make:
- Make the music in your worship service as appealing as all other contemporary artists so that converts to Christianity will not be repelled by it.
- Manipulate crowds of people by emotional altar calls designed to answer temporal needs (freedom from addiction, restored marriages, financial prosperity) rather than clearly addressing their greatest need: a Savior and Lord, who delivers them from depravity and eternal damnation.
- Stay away from words like “sin” and “judgment” that are unappealing or even offensive to a culture steeped in the gospel of self esteem.
The gospel is about grace, not performance. But, the overflow of a life surrendered to Gospel is… wait for it… godliness… God initiated, God directed, God glorifying and God pleasing performance. (Not to be confused with man made behavior modification or putting on airs of “fake it till you make it”.)
The common thread here is this: don’t rely on your slick communication, some grandiose new, “relevant” presentation of the truth, or softening, denial, or watering down of the truth to make the teaching of the gospel more appealing to the lost. Instead, abide in Christ and God’s agape love so tightly that the natural overflow of your life is godliness – this is the outward manifestation of a changed, exchanged life which God Himself uses to attract others to the Savior. Performance is the result of grace, not the other way around. And, it is this performance that God uses to attract the lost and dying.
Meditate today on these:
“Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive. (Titus 2:9-10)”
“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1:21-25)”
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them… (John 6:43a)”
in Christ,
AP
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” (Gal. 4:4-6)