What Jesus’ Body Means for Us: Relearning How to Enjoy and Glorify God with Our Bodies

by | Mar 16, 2022 | body, Gospel living

What Jesus’ Body Means for Us: Relearning How to Enjoy and Glorify God with Our Bodies

Did Jesus wear diapers? Did Jesus learn to say “Abba”? Did Jesus need to take naps? To all three, if we have a biblical theology of Jesus and the body, we must answer “yes.” Often, we focus on Jesus’ spiritual nature, but we need to reclaim an understanding of Jesus’ body as well. When we pay attention to how Jesus lived in his human body, we better understand how to live in our bodies to enjoy and glorify the Lord.

Our Savior Learned and Grew

The Bible teaches that Jesus learned and grew. Yes, Jesus was sinless, no doubt, but in his humanity, he had to learn; he had to grow. Luke 2:52 tells us, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (NIV). Jesus didn’t emerge from Mary’s womb potty-trained. Jesus grew from a small baby into an average-sized Hebrew male before he began his earthly ministry. Jesus had to learn how to speak Aramaic and Hebrew, how to read Isaiah, and how to write his alphabet.

Just as God designed Jesus to learn and grow, he designed us to learn and grow as well. We can learn new things, like how to play the piano or how to study Scripture. We grow physically, and even when our bodies are fully grown, we can and should continue to increase in “wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man,” by living in our bodies wisely, eating and drinking and exercising and touching and playing to the glory of God.

Continue reading and discover how you can live in the body God has given you. 

 

To Fast or Not to Fast: How to Prepare for Easter

by | Mar 16, 2022 | Gospel living, Lent

To Fast or Not to Fast: How to Prepare for Easter

It’s the first of March, and here on the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is being celebrated from Pensacola to Mobile (home of America’s first Mardi Gras) to New Orleans. What do lavish beads tossed from a float and little king babies hidden inside a cream cheese frosted pastry have to do with Easter, anyway? Here’s my little history lesson (as discovered from forty-five minutes of internet searching).

Mardi Gras originated in the early centuries AD, when pagan Romans celebrated a fertility god with debauchery and drunkenness. Early Christians decided to transform the raucous celebration and make it a day for feasting to mark the end of “ordinary time” after Christmas and the beginning of Lent, the season of fasting and repentance before the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. The French first coined the term “Mardi Gras” (Fat Tuesday) as they ate up all of the eggs and milk they would be fasting from during Lent.

What is Lent, and should we observe it?

Lent, short for Lenten, comes to us from the Old English word for “Spring”: lenten, which meant “lengthen.” As the daylight lengthens, life springs into view, buds blooming and bright stalks shoving their way through the earth.

Read the rest of the article and discover good reasons and not-so-good reasons to fast. Click here.

Sharing the Stories of Our Lives

by | Mar 16, 2022 | Learning Story

Sharing the Stories of Our Lives

The Power of Story

Something was not right in my grandson’s five-day-old world, and he was letting us all know about it. Dancing up and down the hallway, I gently jostled him in my arms. Then I began to tell him a story. Speaking in a soft, lilting voice, I began: “Once upon a time, there was a little boy born to two wonderful parents. His mommy and daddy loved him so much. And they loved Jesus so much. And they knew that Jesus loved them so much. They told their little boy over and over how much Jesus loved him. And this little boy grew up to love Jesus too.” For a few sweet and silent moments, his cries of distress halted, and my grandson opened his dark blue eyes and gazed into mine. Such is the power of story. 

Photo by Mindy Olson P on Unsplash

If we are people of God, we are people of a great Story. And as we age, it is our privilege and our duty to share our stories with future generations. Through our stories, the next generation grows in faith and hope and love. Just as Asaph called the Israelites to remember the wonders God had done in the wilderness so they wouldn’t be like the faithless folk who turned and ran on the day of battle (see Psalm 78), I will one day tell my grandson how God came to a fifteen-year-old unchurched girl who desperately needed the hope of God but didn’t even know it. I will tell him stories of playing tag football in the park as a ten-year-old, of meeting my husband in a college biology lab during one of the loneliest seasons of my life, of giving birth to a precious daughter who grew up to become his beloved mother. As I share all of the stories, he will see a thread, the bright scarlet thread of redemption that God has sewn through the tapestry of my life. As I share the stories, he will see that thread running through his stories too, binding them together, to God, to his family, to a world desperate to know good news.

Telling our stories is a way to leave a spiritual legacy, which Daniel Taylor defines as “the offering of wisdom from one life to another.” Telling our stories not only gives us pleasure in remembering, it also blesses the ones who receives the story. We must tell our stories, and we must do it before we are no longer around. 

Learn how to share your story…continue reading on Substack.

A Prayer about Giving Thanks to Our God

by | Mar 15, 2022 | 40-Day Prayer, Daily Prayer, Lent

A Prayer about Giving Thanks to Our God

Loving Lord,

May we address you as this psalmist does:

Firmly, emphatically, declaring:

“You are my God,” 

not my children, my work, 

my dating life, my sports, my home, 

or any other thing on this earth 

that we sometimes serve and worship.

And oh, how thankful we are, 

with the psalmist, 

that you are our God, 

because you have rescued us 

“out of [our] distress and set [us] free” (Psalm 118:5). 

[Name some of the distress he rescued you out of.]

Because you sent your Son to us, we “extol” you—

we praise you, 

we talk about how great you are and how much we love you.

[Name some things you love about God.]

And then, like the psalmist, 

we turn to others and invite them into our praise:

“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good…” 

because we know your praise 

was always intended to be sung in a chorus, not as a solo.

In Jesus’ steadfast name. Amen.

Read Psalm 118:1-29.

A Prayer about the Year of the Lord’s Favor

by | Mar 12, 2022 | 40-Day Prayer, Daily Prayer, Lent

A Prayer about the Year of the Lord’s Favor

Lord Jesus,

Yesterday we prayed about your merciful mission: 

to bind up hearts broken by sin and sorrow,

to free us from hearts imprisoned by sin and evil. 

Today, we continue to meditate on the jaw-dropping truth 

that you came to bring God’s “favor,” 

his immeasurable grace, 

his astounding mercy, 

his unfailing love. 

And while we don’t like to think 

about a “day of vengeance,” 

it is good to know that the day is coming 

when everything that is wrong will be made right, 

when all we mourn on this earth—

the injustices of racism and oppression and poverty, 

the cruel ravages of sickness and slavery 

and war and death, 

will come to an abrupt end. 

In that day, your year of favor will last forever. 

May we live and love in the light of that day.

In your merciful name. Amen. 

Read Isaiah 61:1-4; Luke 4:18-19; Romans 12:19-21.