One of Satan’s strategies is the illusion that scripture is only ink on paper like any other book in the library.  It is not uncommon for us all to forget that the Word is living and active…that it contains life and power when it is received and spoken by faith.  The moment we forget that scripture is the Word of God revealing himself to us, the Word begins to lose its transformative function in our lives.

I am currently reading a little commentary on the Book of Revelation by Eugene Peterson.  As he lays foundations for understanding the book, he reminds us that scripture is designed to awaken our senses and engage our imagination.  We should not read the gospels without imagining what the scenes of Jesus healing, raising the dead, walking on the waves of Galilee, and turning over the tables in the temple courtyard would look like, sound like, and smell like. If we simply read the passage as sterile facts like dates in a history book, we miss what God intends.  

I still remember American history classes in college. Two semesters were required.  I had one professor who showed up at the last minute and opened his loose-leaf notebook and read facts and dates to us for an hour and then left.  It was boring, mind-numbing, utterly forgettable.  It was so meaningless that I dropped the course thinking I would take it in a short summer semester where I might endure the class.  So, the following summer, I signed up under another professor.  This teacher made history come to life.  He told the back stories, the intrigues, and described the scenes so that we could place ourselves in the moment.  It wasn’t dates and facts.  It was people and life and uncertainty.  I was riveted.  I never missed a class and I remembered the lessons from history, not just the facts.

God intends for us to read scripture that way.   He wants us not just to engage our minds but all of our senses.  In the Book of Revelation, we are told of dragons and angels, trumpets, and thrones.  We are told of battles in the heavenlies and a golden city 1500 miles wide and high.  We are told of burning incense and prayers and scrolls flying through the air with writing.  As we read these things, we have the opportunity to imagine and to engage all of our senses.  In Revelation 1:3, John tells us, ”Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it…”  John invites us to take it off the page, read it aloud, hear it as we read it, and read it with meaning so that those who hear it are riveted.

This engagement of the senses is not just to make the Word more interesting, but when the mind and the senses are involved, it writes it on our heart in much deeper ways.  Think about it. The events and the moments you remember most in your life are anchored to the things you witnessed with your eyes, the smells associated with the event, the sounds you heard, the people that were there, you and the things you touched or that touched you.  Any similar sounds, smells, or feelings you experience in the present will take you back to the past in powerful ways like a song from your childhood.   The memory may be traumatic or full of goodness.  It may be in a hospital room, on a battlefield,  or in your grandmother’s kitchen at Christmas.  When the senses are involved, you don’t just remember it, you re-experience it. Intense experiences establish themselves in neural pathways in your brain that stay with you forever. 

Let me encourage you to take the time to make the Word come alive.  Read it aloud.  Engage your imagination asking the Spirit to direct your thoughts and reveal the pictures he wants you to see.  Let him sanctify your imagination. Imagine the scene, the smells, the sounds, the people. Place yourself there.  Read the Christmas story to your children or grandchildren and think about the long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  What was the road like; what were the dangers; what would it be like to be in your ninth month making that pilgrimage? Imagine sleepy shepherds outside of Bethlehem, the smell of sheep, the sting of cold air, the tangible fear when angels appeared in the sky, the sound of their voices, or the frustration when a room was not available for a woman about to give birth?  What were the sounds and smells in the manger…a child being born, a young woman experiencing her first birth without family surrounding her, the smell and feel of straw, animals, and dampness? These were real people and real circumstances that God wants us to experience…not just facts to recount.  

Perhaps, this Christmas will be a great time to remember that the Word is living and active, the very word of God, and it written to stir our imaginations so that we never forget what God has revealed to us. 

I was browsing Facebook last night and was once again reminded of how enamored we are with our celebrities.  Singer, actors, athletes, politicians, billionaire businessmen, television personalities, etc. are everywhere.  They look bigger than life and project an image of significance, happiness, and competence.  People fawn after them, want to be seen with them, and want to be like them.  Even preachers and worship leaders can carry celebrity status in our culture and some hunger after that. 

The ideal of celebrity status is a real trap. Sometimes I wonder if our friends who show selfy after selfy and personal video after video online are somehow trying to mirror celebrities and find their own sense of significance. When we constantly seek our significance through the eyes of others, it usually suggests that we carry very little of that within us.  As a reformed people pleaser, I know that we can become a slave to the evaluation that others place on us.  We only feel valuable, loved, or competent when others tell us that we are those things or act as if we are. 

So, we seek success and accomplishments at any cost. We look for our fifteen minutes of fame wherever we can find it, and we hurry off to interact with people who help us feel good about ourselves.  We thrive on the affirmation but it drains out every night and we start the new day in search of the approval of others again.  It is an exhausting hamster wheel. For Christians who suffer from this lack, there is a real danger of seeking the approval of men rather than God.  When we are in that place, we have yet to receive a revelation from the Spirit of God’s love and his fatherly approval and delight in who we are.  In that condition, we are easily tempted to compromise with the world in order to gain some level of acceptance and approval from the world. I often cringe when well-known celebrities come to Christ and Jesus becomes their new banner.  Even Christians then begin to fawn over them and invite them to speak in large pulpits.  But they have the notoriety before they have the Christian character to stand in public places for Jesus.  How many quickly fall or get caught up in some sin…discrediting the discipleship of sincere followers.

The cult of celebrity is seductive and deceptive.  Very few who live in that world are actually happy and content except for the moment when awards are given or recognition and adulation is poured out over them.   But again, that feeling of significance, worthiness, and contentment bleeds out overnight. I remember a segment in Philip Yancey’s classic book, The Jesus I Never Knew, in which he talked about hundreds of celebrities he had researched and interviewed as a journalist. 

His observation was that, as a whole, he had never met such an empty, self-absorbed, addicted, tormented group of people who were nearly always in therapy, always moving on to the next relationship or next marriage, always having to be in the spotlight to feel any sense of importance, and always afraid that the next day they would be forgotten by their admiring but fickle fans.  From the outside, this group looks like everything we think we would want in life to be happy, but on the inside they are desolate and desperate.

He contrasted them to a group of missionaries he had also interviewed who were preparing to go to desolate places in the earth to translate the Bible into the native languages of isolated people groups they would attempt to befriend.  They were preparing in a hot, dry location in the southwestern U.S., living in tents with little to no creature comforts available.  Most people would never know their names or know what they did with their lives. Many would live and die without the world taking any notice.   

Yancy said he was prepared to admire these young missionaries, but was not prepared to envy them.  But, he said he found in this group a selflessness, a joy, and a sense of purpose and heavenly significance he had never seen among the world’s elite. This group had found the approval of a heavenly father and the joy of living a life focused on the significance of others instead of themselves.  In caring more about others than themselves, they actually found their value and the contentment Hollywood and Nashville will always long for. That is why Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

If you are in search of a residing sense of value and significance, let me invite you to look at the cross rather than American Idol and to seek the presence of God rather than the presence of celebrities.  God is not opposed to fame, but he invites us to be famous in heaven for our humility and service to others rather than seeking to be famous in the world.  Let me invite you to pray consistently for the Holy Spirit to reveal to your heart the immense value that God sees in you and the immense approval he feels for you.  In seeking the approval of God there is real freedom.  In seeking the approval of men, there is only bondage. We need to be clear about whom we are trying to please. 

Blessings in the one who has written your name in the palm of his hand. 

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.” Jeremiah 29:10-14

The text above is familiar to most of us…at least part of it. The “plans to proser you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” part is often quoted. Strictly speaking, in context, this is a promise to Israel and not to the rest of us. However, the important part is that it reveals the heart of God and the nature of his love towards his people…and that does come to all of us.

The “God of the Old Testament” is often characterized as angry and vengeful because he visited judgments on the nations that would not repent and turn to him or that were dedicated to the destruction of Israel. And yet, if you read carefully, God took no pleasure in dispatching those judgments. In Ezekiel, God declares, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. ‘Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live'” (Ezekiel 18:23)?

God did send judgments because he is a righteous God, but they came after decades and even centuries of wickedness and after prophets had warned them, time and again, of the coming judgments. In the Jeremiah passage above, we see that God had sent Israel into exile because of her constant, unrepented rebellion and idolatry. And yet, his heart kept calling them back with a plan to restore their relationship with him so that he might bless them again. God takes pleasure in blessing his children. That is the nature of love. Even his judgments or discipline is an expression of redemptive love, as he tries to call his people back so that he might bless them again. The apostle John simply declares that “God is love” (1 Jn.4:16).

What many of us miss is the incredible extent to which God loves each of us. We often think that he may love others that way, but not us. For those of us who grew up in homes where love was not expressed well or where love was not expressed at all, it is hard to comprehend God’s love. For those who grew up In homes where love was highly conditional – based on perfect compliance with a parent’s demand, or where love was highly erratic – never knowing when it would be given or withdrawn, accepting and trusting God’s love is difficult. We too often expect God to love us or not love us as our parents did. And yet, discovering the depths of God’s love for us is the most transformative thing that can happen.

The cross, of course, is the ultimate expression of his love. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom.5:8). The heart of God has always been to draw us into a close and loving relationship with him…even at great cost to himself. His heart is not to harm us, but to bless us. He does have a hope and a future of each of us. The people I know that have been able to receive that reality have been transformed by it. But, my experience tells me that most of us have not yet fully been able to embrace that revelation.

Oh, we know that is what the Bible says. I know that we believe the Bible and the Bible says that God loves us. But I also know that to believe in our head is not the same as believing in our hearts. This truth of God’s love must penetrate our hearts if we are to be transformed by it. That “heart knowledge” is the challenge. How do we stop seeing God through the template of our experience with imperfect, broken parents and see him as he is?

This must be a work of the Holy Spirit. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul wrote, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Eph.1:17-19.).

We need a revelation of God’s love in our hearts…in the deepest part of who we are. If you had amazing parents who loved you unconditionally and consistently, this may be an easier revelation to receive. But, for many of us, only a true revelation of this love by the Spirit can overwrite our debilitating experiences with love in a broken world. Paul said that we need the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to truly know God and his heart for us. We also need the eyes of our heart to receive the revelation so that we may know the hope to which he has called us. In other words, we need revelation so that we can know God’s love for us and so that we can perceive, by faith, the hope and blessings he has prepared for us. I wonder how often we have missed a blessing because we had no faith for it and we had no faith because we still don’t understand how much God loves us?

If you struggle to comprehend God’s love for you, then I encourage you to pray for yourself, the prayer that Paul prayed for the Ephesians. Pray it every day. Ask him to give you eyes to perceive his love and grace that flows into your life on a daily basis. Start looking for what he is doing rather than focusing on what he hasn’t done yet. Ask the Spirit to open your spiritual eyes so that you may recognize his goodness and his hand in your life each day. Develop a lifestyle of noticing and thanking God for the “little things” as well as the “big things.” Comprehending his heart for us and his love is the real key to joy, security, and optimism in a world that tries to rob us of each of those blessings every day. Pray fervently for this revelation and trust that God will give it to you because it is his will for you to know his love. Blessings in Him.