Dear Family

I can only begin to feel and absorb the atmosphere of joy and total awe of God in which the Apostle Paul penned the follow-ing words in Romans 11:33-36: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

It’s like “WOW!” stuff. Who is this God, this incredible all-powerful, all-wise, all-knowing One, who has chosen to give any regard to humankind at all? Who are we that He, the Creator and Lord of the uni-verse, should even waste a moment of His perfection to deal with this bunch of hat-ing, hurting, hopeless trash of humanity? And before the foundations of the earth were laid, Jesus was His plan for us to be able to be a part of His family! God’s mercy – indescribable!

Which is why the Apostle Paul goes on to urge us in Romans 12:1 to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleas-ing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

I’ve been in church long enough now to know that we face a really silly season, where everything which happens through-out the year (apathy, bad church attendance, placing family and work above God and then using Him as an excuse, with-holding of tithes for worldly pleasures, etc.) is exacerbated. We throw caution to the wind and money at everything except the things of God. And it’s so easy to do. “Jingle Bells” had me singing along the other day whilst following my wife around the grocery store obediently (and eventual-ly grumpily) pushing the trolley. The spirit of this world loves this time of year, when it can fool believers into thinking this is a “godly” time. The bible refers to the ene-my as coming as an “angel of light” for good reason. We will waste money on the silliest of things, believing it all to be God-sanctioned. Ho! Ho! Ho! And yet, the poor, the hungry, the destitute are some-how just not on our radars. Instead, we’ll spoil the kids a little more away from God towards Satan’s Claus. And poof! The view we have of God’s mercy becomes a distant memory until the new year when we feel guilty and church fills up again for a few months.

So here is a challenge for our family at Ebenezer: Let’s aim at keeping God’s mercy in view this year, and stay in awe of our incredible privilege of sonship. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything, though we can give Him nothing except ourselves. All He asks is that we die to ourselves daily and follow Him. Will you?