Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Participate in Life: GIVE

“For God so loved the world he gave . . .”  John 3:16


We all know the rest of the verse. The miracle of the Christ story is all about the gift of Jesus. But before we get to Jesus, contained in the verse is a key to the nature of God. He GAVE. God breathed on man and he became a living soul. Jesus came that we might find life. God is all about life. Where ever we find God, life flourishes.

Giving is participating in life.

God is not a bystander. 

God is not an observer.

God gives.

God joins in the stories of men. He calls those of us who have found him, who have experienced his life changing gift, to participate in the life he gives.

John 1:4 tells us that Jesus’ life is the light of men.  Once we see that light we get to walk in it, and perhaps help others to see it as well.  He compels us to shine his light into the dark spaces near us.  We begin to share what we have freely received from him with . . . “the world.”

Life ensues.

The Gathering is our part of “the world.” We have become something of a cross cultural mission. God has gathered us into a beautiful, eclectic, diverse assortment of Christ-followers. We now have over 40 Congolese refugees that share life with us in our community of faith. We are helping them learn how to make it in the US and they are teaching us about faith, hope and love.

This year, it looks like our gatherers will be expanding into the rest of our current meeting space, and we will begin to implement our Community Center strategy. It is an exciting time for our part of God’s work in our county.

If you would like to participate by giving to what God is doing with The Gathering in Carmel this year, you can donate by following this link :


 or by writing a check and mailing it to:

The Gathering in Carmel
434 E. Carmel Dr., Ste 285
Carmel, IN  46033



Thursday, December 11, 2014

Christmas, Jochabed and Hope

I was asked to participate in an Advent devotional Facebook page.  Here is the devotional I submitted.  Merry Christmas.




Hope is frequently the first candle lit in the Advent season. It is the red dot on the spiritual map to which we are drawn by faith.  Hope is the joyful expectation that the promises of God are not only true, but that they will be fulfilled. It is a light glimmering in the darkness, calming our fears, warming out hearts, and strengthening us to face the long odds menacingly stacked against us. Mothers are famous for holding on to hope.

Moses’ mother’s name was Jochebed. We don’t know much about her other than the outside-of-the-box plan she came up with to save her son—a plan that wound up working so well it changed the course of human history. The Pharaoh at the time of Moses’ birth was concerned about the number and increasing power of the Jewish immigrants in his land. Since he was the head of a strong central government, he chose to solve his problem of immigrant proliferation by having all the Jewish baby boys killed at birth. The mothers were told to throw their infant sons into the river. This is not the sort of solution that would have worked well in a modern democracy, but it was definitely in the wheelhouse of ancient Pharaohs.

Jochebed decided to comply with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, and “cast” her son “into the Nile” – only her cast included a floatation device, a basket transformed into a tiny boat. She put her son into the part of the Nile where the Pharaoh’s daughter liked to bathe, hoping that Pharaoh’s daughter would see the boy, like him, and keep him as her own. She positioned Miriam, his sister, to watch the whole drama transpire. Jochebed hoped and prayed that nothing bad would happen—and her hope was rewarded when the princess took Moses in.  Miriam then ran up and asked if the princess needed a wet nurse for the boy, and so Jochebed was brought to the palace to be his caregiver. Everything turned out fine, and what could have been disastrous, had the boat somehow been less than sea worthy, became a miracle story. It all worked wonderfully.

We don’t know whether Jochebed was moved by faith, or desperation, or inspiration, or some combination of the above. We do know that God’s hand was on Moses and that he was being protected and lifted up. God is the source of our hope. He sometimes moves in our lives in such a way as to make desperate measures seem like reasonable alternatives. One of the largest ironies of the story is that Moses became the son of the Pharaoh who had ordered him killed.

Joseph, the man who started the whole Jews-in-Egypt adventure, when he finally confronted his brothers who had sold him there in the first place, says in Gen 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” This is the dualistic dance that God has with evil in the world.  Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The enemy often cooks up a nasty circumstance, then God moves in the lives of his people to rescue and transform it into a “good.”

This is why our hope is in the Lord. He embraces us in our times of trouble and invites us to join him in overcoming the world (John 16:33). He is the one who catches us in the midst of our dark circumstance, our slavery, and winds up turning us into Palace dwellers; into King’s kids. Romans 15:4 says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”

Moses was rescued and wound up talking to God in a burning bush, delivering the Children of Israel from Egypt’s oppression. He called down plagues, walked on dry land across the Red Sea, received the Ten Commandments, and saw God in the “cleft of the rock”. When it was all over, God buried him.

All Bible stories teach us that: 1) God is there. 2) He is active. 3) He will rescue us. Look at the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, David, and many others. All faced desperate circumstances.  All were rescued, lifted, helped, saved, elevated and improbably secured. God saves us. He gives us hope. The significant and difficult piece to the puzzle, though, is that our hope is in Him, and not in ourselves. We are called to wait and trust while He works things together for good.

A few thousand years after the baby Moses story, another baby appears and is called into a desperate and improbable circumstance and against long odds and overwhelming adversity eventually becomes the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As Jesus was approaching the end of his journey he tells his friends, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” In other words, “HAVE HOPE!”

Rich Mullins once wrote, “stories like that make a boy grow bold, stories like that make a man walk straight.”


Psalm 43:5 says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”