Most years I send out Christmas cards that include a letter. (I should note that I am notoriously late at getting them out; my worst year being the one where I sent them out in March.) This is a tradition that is quickly dying, but I persist because I find personal benefit from it.
 
I don't know about you but I'm not into the whole New Year's thing. I used to make New Year’s resolutions but I never seemed to keep them and I finally gave up altogether. But I do believe that there is benefit in looking back over the past year. There certainly is benefit from thanking God for all the things that He's given us. My way of doing that is to write a Christmas letter, where I recall the highlights from the past year to share with family and friends. And I like that it gets me to connect with everyone at least one time a year. I honestly consider it more of a privilege than an obligation.
 
There's another thing that I do at this time of year. I watch and listen for a verse that is to apply to my life for the coming year. I actually just started receiving them within the last few years and I don't get them every year but I really appreciate them the years that I do. This year’s verse is John 6:63. This is a red letter verse (Jesus talking) and the New International Version reads, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” I like this verse because it reminds me that looking to how I’m feeling isn’t what matters. If I really want to be happy, to have life, I need to look to the Spirit of God.
 
Have you thanked God for taking you through the past year? Do you see particular ways God has helped you throughout the year? Is God talking to you about something for the coming year? I pray that He is.
 
God bless you in the coming year.

Talking to me about sin feels like the tractor salesman who was able to list off all of the specs on the new tractor but couldn't answer the farmer when the farmer wanted to know if the tractor had enough torque to handle a steep grade that was covered with sand or could get him out of two feet of mud.

Sin is a feature. Sin is what it is, it's what it's called, but sin kind of feels like saying the word infinity. I know what infinity is but do I really understand the concept of infinity, going on for ever and ever and ever? So it doesn't surprise me that when God wants to deal with me about sin He does things like tell me that when I'm drinking Diet Coke I'm drinking demons. When He made that statement in my heart I stopped drinking Diet Coke that very day. I had two more swallows and I only did that because I was worried about the massive headache I might get the next day if I quit cold turkey. But honestly, the thought of drinking demons was repulsive enough that it didn't matter about the headache; I didn't want to do it anymore, at all, ever. Honestly I have not had a drink of Diet Coke since that day, and that was my go to drink for decades.

Another example is when I heard John Bevere in his Holy Spirit series say that walking in on a scene in a movie that he had already watched, where one of the characters is killed, offended the Holy Spirit and he hadn't realized it the first time he watched it because he was not paying as much attention to the Holy Spirit. But the second time he realized what an offense it was because he had developed a very close relationship with the Holy Spirit. Well, that story got me to thinking how many things I have in my life that offend the Holy Spirit. There are things that are just considered a part of life. Like I prefer violence over sex in my movies. I feel a certain detachment from the violence and I appreciate athletic ability. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't offend the Holy Spirit. Since I've heard that statement I have been more careful about the action shows I watch. But now even the TV shows where they're allowed to swear every week just hurt. I must say my entertainment options have been greatly reduced but it's worth it if it means I can have a closer walk with God.

Recently my sister was counseling some young people who were in a situation that seemed unfair to
them. And there's a certain amount of justifiable anger at being put in situations like theirs. Right before we discussed the situation, and I mean two days before, God and I were talking about some situations of hurt in my past.

There was a time where I had a solo in the choir but had to go away on vacation for a week, so someone else stepped in while I was gone. During the first performance when I came back, right
in the middle of my solo, she started singing a counterpoint harmony. Needless to say I was
miffed, and showed it, but I waited to see what the director would do. At our next meeting he comp
limented her on her great singing and I was mad. I knew that if she had done that to him he would
not have been complementing her. But when I asked God how I was supposed to feel about that, God said that if I really cared about His glory more than my own glory, and wasn't the song I was singing supposed to be glorifying Him, then I wouldn't have been offended by her singing with me. I would have asked that God use it to His glory. Ouch!

The other situation was a concert I attended with my boyfriend at the time. We got there early and got great seats. The announcer said that people weren't allowed to just lay their things on their seats and leave so anyone who was there needed to fill in the front seats first. Sure enough an usher came along and insisted that we move forward. Now we were probably one of the few people that actually obeyed the usher but it was what we were supposed to do, even though I really didn't
want to as I really liked the seats we had. And of course when the people came back to their inappropriately saved seats, they were mad that we were in them. Of course by this time the auditorium had filled up quite a bit and we were stuck going back to a very high, not so nice, pair of seats. They weren't horrible but not near as nice as either of the seats we had to start with. I was mad the entire concert . You might even say I was toxic emotionally. Did I have a right to be offended? Yeah, I got the raw end of the deal because I did what I was supposed to do. But when I asked God, He said that it was a test and had I passed the test I would have released the Spirit and allowed him to do a mighty work. Because I held onto my anger, I blocked the Holy Spirit. Again, ouch! God had me crying in repentance.

When my sister heard these stories, she applied them to the situation the young people were in, then she added one additional piece. She told them that if we really want to be used by God, then God will hold us to a higher standard. Kind of like the difference between joining the army and joining the marines. In the army you get trained; in the marines you get intensively trained. There’s a much higher performance standard in the marines than in the army, even though every one is expected to do their best whereever they are. As Christians whatever situation we're in, we need to think about what reflects best on God, and that is how we allow God to use us, and that is how we avoid sin.

So when you go to talk to someone about sin, remember that telling someone that they are sinning isn't the same as telling someone that they are blocking a move of the Holy Spirit. That they are preventing God from doing what God wants to do and preventing God from being glorified. And it doesn't tell them that they are setting themselves up for continued frustration and hurt as they continue to block God in similar situations. So for me, and I suspect many others, if you are going to talk to me about sin, remember that sin is like trying to sell a feature when what I want to know is whether or not it will affect my life. And, let me tell you, it really does!

“In the beginning…the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep…and God said, Let there be light.”

Why would God make the start of the day at night? We usually equate night with the ending, evil and death. Yet the Bible begins with darkness. Our lives begin in the darkness of the womb. Inspiration often comes during the night. And Christianity comes to the sinner, lost in darkness.

Maybe life is like the womb that offers nourishment; where the foundation of what we will become is being laid. We depend on our mothers to provide us with nourishment and the life we need to survive; though, we may not realize or appreciate it. We often struggle against the confines of the womb, kicking and punching. We suffer some of the pains we will experience in life. Then we experience the pain of being born, when our skull is crushed and we are pushed through that small opening of the cervix. Yet the greater work, the greater pain, is always done and felt by the mother, just as God does the greater work and felt the greater pain for us.

Maybe night is when God is doing a greater work in us. Often it is in the dark of night that God fills our minds and hearts with creative inspiration. How many problems find their resolution on waking in the morning? We find our lives to be full of problems. We feel lost in darkness with no way out. Then God, who has hovered over our lives since our conception, brings light into our lives and moves us from the night of sin to the day of His salvation.

The natural is a perfect reflection of the supernatural, and death seems to just move us from the womb of this earth to our new life in heaven. What a reward the darkness of death brings. Yes, the new day starts with the beginning of night, just as God ordained.

Sometimes the epistles of Paul are really prayers and Ephesians 1:17-19 is part of one of those prayers. In it is the request that God “…give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. . . . that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…” and so on. This prayer is about us knowing God and knowing our standing in God.
 
Today the emphasis has moved off of God’s laws and onto praise ans worship – a lot like the life of King David (who God called a man after His own heart). David loved God, he loved praise and worship, he left the Bible study and the rules to the priests. Not understanding all of God’s law and not properly applying the laws he did understand caused him a lot of grief.
 
Take the story of David and the census in 2 Samuel 24 and again in 1 Chronicles 21, David is provoked (incited) to take a census of the fighting men in Israel. When the census was completed, God judged Israel and David had to choose the punishment that they would suffer. But what was so wrong about taking a census. The Book of Numbers is all about the census of Israelites at the time, so just taking a census can’t be the issue.
 
Exodus 30: 11-12 (NIV) says, Then the Lord said to Moses, “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the Lord a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them." (See Exodus 30:11-16 for the full regulation.)
 
If you put the two sections of scripture together, it looks like David hadn’t collected the atonement money from the fighting men. However, online research shows Jewish thought is very different.
 
The Chabad website1 says,
 
Some say that King David certainly did not forget the prohibition, and he, . . . counted the Jews indirectly; the problem was that he performed the count simply to satisfy his own curiosity, and not for a specific purpose. Counting Jews without a purpose is forbidden even if done indirectly.2
 
In explanation of why counting is forbidden, the Chabad website says,
 
. . . when the Jews are in a state of unity, they are connected to their Source and do not need added protection. When they are counted as individuals, they become "separated" and are subject to individual scrutiny.
 
Tuck this thought away: Are we Christian in America protected by a 'state of unity'?
 
Another example of acting without understanding God’s regulations regarding how things needed to be done is found in 2 Samuel 6:1-15, which is the story of David’s first attempt to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. But an even better example of acting in error and suffering concequenses is found in 2 Chronicles, when King Hezekiah called all of Israel and Judah to come to Jerusalem to celebrate passover. 2 Chron. 30:18-20 says:
 
18 Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone 19 who sets their heart on seeking God—the Lord, the God of their ancestors—even if they are not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary.” 20 And the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.
 
Today we understand that there are universal principles in place. We understand that universal principles exist whether we understand them or not. We are subject to them and when we go against them, we suffer consequences. It’s the same with God’s law as given in the Bible. There are laws that God set in place for our understanding and protection. When we follow them, we’re blessed. When we go against them, even when we are doing what we think will please God, we suffer.
 
But this is especially relevant to us today, even if we consider ourselves to love God and if we love God’s word and if we are studying to understand God's laws.
 
In the book, The End of America3, John Price points out:
 
The final stage of the Church, described as the Church of Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-19) is not a very winsome description of a rich, self-indulgent church, neither hot nor cold for the Lord, which thinks it has no need of anything, but is in reality, “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.”
 
…one of the key problems with the end times Church of Laodicea is that the Church is “blind.” If the American church is part of the church of Laodicea, and there are multiple reasons to conclude that we are, and we are therefore “blind,” it is clear that we won’t even see, let alone understand, our true spiritual condition. How can we see what we have become if we [a]re “blind”?
 
Do you see the blindness God is talking about? I see it in myself. And I know I’m not alone. Following are a few examples from my own life:
 
I was raised that the full Old Testament laws don’t apply to us today, and that we have liberty within our obedience of those laws. As I have come to understand the error of this thinking, I changed a few of my habits. My first change was to stop eating pork. I hadn’t even changed my diet, because I almost never eat pork (just on pizza, mainly), yet God broke my addiction to ice cream. The regular craving I had for it just dissappeared.  So I have wondered if my recent ability to stop eating sweets might be a ‘reward’ for yeilding another area of my life to God’s laws. I don’t know. I don’t expect things like this when I simply agree to live the way God commands me to live, but in life responsibility usually brings privileges, so why wouldn’t it be that way spiritually too?
 
Do you remember the old TV show, Scarecrow and Mrs. King? Do you remember how wicked  Francine Desmond was when it first came out? Watching it now, I didn’t see the big deal; she seemed okay to me. Wow! A character that was considered a selfish, egotist seems normal by today's standards.
 
In John Bevere’s latest study on the Holy Spirit, he mentions how offended the Holy Spirit was when he watched a murder scene in a movie, a movie he had already watched and had previously not felt any offense to the Spirit, How many things do we allow in our lives as normal that are really blinding us because they are putting a wedge between us and the Holy Spirit?
 
Note that these are personal examples that don't touch on God's love for the poor, desire to see the lost saved, or any of the "bigger" concerns of God, that at least I tend to forget in my efforts to get through this life.
 
So, what can we do? A very familiar verse holds the key: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways . . .” This verse isn’t to the unsaved; it isn’t to whatever church group we like to point at and say they aren’t saved; it isn’t to someone who swears when I don’t. This verse is to God’s people who are called by God’s name, so this verse is to me, and to you.
 
In Nehemiah 1:5-7, Nehemiah prays:
 
Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.
 
This godly man identified himself as one of the sinners who disobeyed God’s laws. I have since figured out that there is no level of spirituality where you can’t say this, but that he would humble himself to say it to God and document it for posterity says a lot to me and hopefully to you too.
 
Please take a moment to consider the following questions, then prayerfully do something about it:
 
Do you know what God wants?
Have you ever been convicted about something one time, and then not later, or vice versa?
Have you ever honored a conviction in one area and been blessed in another?
 
 
1 http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/896203/jewish/Laws-of-Counting-Jews.htm
2 Nachmanides ibid.
3 The End of America – The Role of Islam In The End Times And Biblical Warnings To Flee America by John Price