Traveling with Family

“Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”    —Mark 3:35

Growing up in St. Charles, Pennsylvania in Armstrong County, my family drove a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief station wagon. In those days, there were four children in our family. I do not remember the actual traveling part of family road trips, but I do remember celebrating my birthday each year on Lake Erie in July.

One thing I do vividly remember when traveling as a family was my dad threatening to stop the car if we did not calm down and behave in the back seat. My dad would whip his right arm onto the top of the front seat and yell back at us, “Don’t make me stop this car!” We never found out what would happen if he had to stop the car because we obeyed immediately.

My memory has been kind to me. I look back with nostalgia and good thoughts over my childhood. The saying goes, “You can pick your friends, but you’re stuck with your family.” I felt blessed (most of the time) with the family I had. It was a good childhood.

God entrusted Jesus into an earthly family. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be the Creator of the universe and to have to listen to a step-father threatening to stop the ox cart.  It’s hard to think how Jesus’ family reacted to living with the perfect Son of God. Mark chapter 3 gives us a glimpse into one moment in Jesus’ family history.

After Jesus had healed a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath and then appointed His twelve Disciples, they entered a house but were so overwhelmed with followers that they could not even eat. Jesus’ family came to rescue Him. “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mark 3:21). The leaders of the day were also calling Jesus crazy. They accused Him of being possessed by Beelzebul, the prince of demons. They attributed Jesus’ miraculous powers to heal and cast out demons to Satan.

Jesus’ mother and brothers could not reach Him due to the crowd. Word was sent to Jesus, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you” (3:32). Jesus replied with a question, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus then looked around and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (3:34-35).

Jesus may have had His struggles with His earthly family, but He loved them to the very end. His family eventually believed in Him. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was at the Cross and with the believers gathered in the Upper Room on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out. James, the Brother of Jesus, became one of the key leaders of the Jerusalem Church and was the human author of the book of James. Acts 16:31 became true for Jesus’ family, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”

As Christians, we have a large extended family of every Christian believer in the entire world who does God’s will. As human beings, God has entrusted us with a biological family to care for and love. If you had a great childhood, praise God and love your family with all your being. If childhood was painful and your family members do not believe, continue to love them and trust God for their salvation. God loves them even more than you and I ever could. God loves them and us so much that He said (well, not exactly in these words), “Don’t make me come down there.” But praise the Lord, God did come down to Earth in Jesus to save us from our sins.

We All Have Baggage

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”    —Matthew 3:17

In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom tells the story of riding with her father on a train. Because of something she heard in school, Corrie asked her father what “sexsin” was. Her father did not answer immediately but then asked little Corrie to carry his bag off the train. When she admitted that she could not do so, he said he would not be much of a father to expect her to carry such a heavy load. He told her, “Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you” (26-27).

 

We all have baggage in life. God never intended for us to carry our baggage alone. Much of it is too heavy. Some of our baggage comes from past sins and mistakes, our families’ and our own. Other baggage comes from the abuses that others put upon us. Many spend a lifetime trying to run away from or rid themselves of the effects from the baggage of the past, but it has shaped us into the person we are today. According to God, “We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

Jesus had more baggage than we might realize. Reading the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, we find that Jesus had more skeletons in His closet than most of us. His family history includes prostitution, incest, sibling rivalry, adultery, and murder. If you read carefully, you will find that on His human side, Jesus was not 100% Jewish. Rahab was a harlot from Jericho, probably a Canaanite. Ruth, another of Jesus’ ancestors, was a Moabite (1:1-17). Yet at Jesus’ baptism, God spoke from heaven saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Another part of our baggage comes from our future. Many of us have had expectations and standards thrust upon us that seem too high to attain. We struggle to achieve what our parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and spouses demand of us. Here again, Jesus had more expectations than we could ever imagine. The Thompson Chain Reference Bible lists nearly 300 Old Testament prophecies that Jesus would fulfill in His life. According to scientist Peter Stoner, the chances that a man could fulfill just 16 of these Messianic prophecies would be 1 in 10⁴⁵. That would be a 1 with 45 zeroes following it. Mathematically and statistically impossible. (Science Speaks)

Jesus lived victoriously in spite of His baggage by focusing on the present. Jesus kept His eyes on what His Heavenly Father was doing, and then did exactly what He saw. We are told to fix “our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2). By keeping our eyes on Christ, God will accomplish in our lives what He intended for us to do. The Old Testament scriptures were not so much predictive of what Jesus must accomplish but descriptive of what Jesus would accomplish. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that God is making us into a masterpiece so we will accomplish the good works he planned for us to do. Philippians 1:6 teaches that God “who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

God is doing a work in and through you. Let Him carry the baggage in your life that is too heavy for you to bear. Come to Jesus and find rest. Hear the words of God to Jesus; they apply to you as well. You are His beloved child, and He is well pleased with you. God doesn’t look at your faults and hang-ups but sees you as He created you to be. God loves you. Look to Jesus.

Blue Skies Are Coming

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”    —1 Corinthians 2:9

On Groundhog Day I was traveling from Somerset to Johnstown early in the morning. The skies were blue, and the sun shone brightly. Miraculously, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow meaning spring is just around the corner. I wondered how anyone could not see their shadow on such a beautiful, blue sky, sun shiny day. I soon discovered how.

As I descended toward the city of Johnstown with the Conemaugh River gap before me, I saw the most awesome, terrible, and incredible cloud of fog before me. The entire city of Johnstown was completely socked in with a dark dense fog. As I slowed to turn across traffic onto my street, it was nearly impossible to see oncoming traffic even with their headlights on. No shadow here; nothing but darkness.

At staff meeting, I related my incredible experience of beautiful sun and blue skies for my hour long trip and then the dark fog for the last two minutes. Asking around the table, no one else saw blue skies. No one was aware that just above the darkness was a bright sun already burning away the dreary fog.

Difficult days of our lives often act like the dense fog trying to block the bright future God has prepared for those who love Him. We lose a loved one, get a bad report from the doctor, have a confrontation at work, or watch someone close to us make one bad choice after another. It seems like there is not only no bright future ahead but no future at all. It is nearly impossible to convince someone plagued with bad news after bad news that God is still on the throne and the blue skies will soon be coming their way.

Most of us subscribe to the adage, “Seeing is believing.” When I talked with our staff this past Tuesday, most of them would not have believed the sun was shining and the skies were bright blue. Why? Because all they could see with their human eyes was darkness and fog. They might have agreed with me that somewhere else the sun was shining but not on them. I had just driven down the hill and had seen the sun for myself. It was really shining and would soon overpower the fog.

Think about the promises of God and His answers to your prayers. God knows what He has in store for each of us. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). I know a man who asked God to deliver him from the drug culture he felt trapped in. Within minutes as he walked home, a policeman arrested him for a drug violation. At that moment his future looked bleak, but he was transferred to drug rehab, got clean, and the sun (and God’s Son) began to shine in his life.

What challenges are you facing? What darkness are you living in? What prayers are you waiting for God to answer? I may not know your particular kind of fog and despair, but I am certain that God has a break in the clouds and a future of hope for you. The answer may already be on the way. The darkness around you may soon be dispersed by the grace of God in Jesus Christ

Grace Empowers

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.    —2 Corinthians 3:18

Tiffany Dawn, the author of the Insatiable Quest for Beauty, spoke last week at the Johnstown Christian School. She helped us to see who we are as children of God and urged us to stop trying to be someone else to please others. She related a story along these lines. A father was sitting in his study, and his two-year old daughter came in and climbed up onto his lap. As he read her a story, she fell asleep in his arms. His wife walked past the door, and dad motioned her in. With heartfelt, tearful eyes, the father said, “Look at her toes. I just love her toes.”

Our Father in heaven loves us that much and more. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). God not only loves us, but He actually likes us and delights in us. You and I may no longer have cute, baby toes, but God thinks we are something special.

I have read that up to around three months of age, a baby’s eyes do not focus on objects more than 8 to 10 inches away. If you think about it, that is about the distance from a nursing mother’s breast to her face. Before three months of age, what more does a baby need to see but the face of a loving, caring mother. As children of God, we see the Lord in a way that the world cannot see Him. As we look to God, we see and reflect the glory of the Lord and are transformed into God’s image. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Gospel repeatedly emphasizes that we are saved by God’s grace. Salvation is a gift that cannot be earned or deserved. God loves us so much that He gives us eternal life (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 6:23, John 3:16). Often we look on grace as the soft cuddly side of God, but grace is much more than a blanket covering our sins as we snuggle onto God’s lap. Grace is the power of God to transform us and enable us to become more like Christ, live a godly life, and witness effectively.

Plagued by a physical weakness, “a thorn in the flesh,” Paul asked the Lord three times to remove it. Instead of physically healing Paul, God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The grace of God was the power of God made perfect and active in Paul weakness.

It matters not what challenges, addictions, weaknesses, and habitual sins we face, God’s grace is sufficient. God’s grace is powerful enough for our every circumstance. We, children of God beholding the glory of the Lord, can do all things through His grace and power.

Jesus loves you. Trust Him as Savior and Lord, and He will come into your life and fill you with His Spirit. Picture God wrapping you in His loving arms, covering you with His blanket of grace and mercy. You are safe, protected, and loved. Look into the face of your heavenly Father, and allow the power of His grace, the Holy Spirit, to transform you into the likeness of Jesus. God’s grace is more than sufficient. God’s grace is the power of God made perfect in your life.