12.21-The way to live in joy forever.

12.21-

We must look in trust to where God directs.  In wind storms on the water Peter was okay as look as he looked at Jesus, but when he started looking at the wind he began to sink.

This looking to God is not easy if you have had the experience of growing up in an abusive home or even at divided home.  This is the experience of over half of our children in elementary school today.  All of our homes are imperfect.  But it shatters the trust of children who grow up in a home where one of their parents is hated by the other parent.

Jesus did not have a long term relationship with Joseph as far as the Bible tells us.  Did he die when Jesus was fairly young?  Not sure.  I’m confident that God placed Jesus in a home with a mother and a father.  This father protected Jesus in times of danger.  This father showed Jesus how to work in a career, a carpenter shop.

Many of my friends did not have a good relationship with their father in their life.  God is called a father to the fatherless in Scripture.

What kind of God is your God?  Jesus revealed a God who loves the whole world and wants the whole world to be saved.   He was not born in Bethlehem to condemn the world, but to save the world.  God is love.  When you see love happening, you as seeing God at work.

Jesus life as lived on the earth is the picture of what God looks like at work. 

“Jesus is God’s selfie.” Rick Atchley

Jesus is a teacher who by His actions and His words gave light, insight into what the best life is all about.

We can look at Jesus and know the difference between good and evil.  What Jesus did was good.  He condemned what was evil.

We must come to the same conclusion that John the Baptist did regarding God’s Son Jesus if we want to experience the greatest possible life.  “He must increase.  I must decrease.”

As we grow we understand that our spouses and children and grandchildren are not ours.  They are really God’s and we are allowed to be with them to bless and encourage them.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he actually came to earth from heaven.

All children, according to the Bible, are gifts from God.  It doesn’t matter what nation we came from our what language we speak or the color of our skin or whether we are rich or poor or male or female the reality is that little babies and children and teenagers and college students and all adults are gifts from God and are wonderfully made.

Psalm 139.

139 O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
² You know ^[a]when I sit down and ^[b]when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
³ You ^[c]scrutinize my ^[d]path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
^4 [e]Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O Lord, You know it all.
⁵ You have enclosed me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

⁷ Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in ^[f]Sheol, behold, You are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
¹⁰ Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will ^[g]overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
¹² Even the darkness is not dark ^[h]to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.

¹³ For You formed my ^[i]inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I will give thanks to You, for ^[j]I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵ My ^[k]frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
¹⁶ Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.

¹⁷ How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with You.

¹⁹ O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
²⁰ For they speak ^[l]against You wickedly,
And Your enemies ^[m]take Your name in vain.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
²² I hate them with the utmost hatred;
They have become my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
²⁴ And see if there be any ^[n]hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.

Jesus is born from the Father in heaven as His one and only Son, but all children are gifts from God.

If we believe God and believe in God our lives are guided by Him toward a different kind of life that others who are guided by themselves or money or power or such.

John 3.

Larry Wishard