The Christmas Muse... Our Words

I want to thank all of you who thought about us and held us up in prayer for Piper’s Neurology appointment yesterday.  I felt like we had a good session with the doctor.  He was encouraged by the way she looked and commented that Piper was much more alert than the last time we had been in during the summer.  She looked at him during his examination and I believe even smiled a bit when he addressed her.  I think the most important part of yesterday’s appointment was the quality and depth of discussion that ensued…

You know… faith is an interesting thing.  I believe, have been taught and have taught that the one(s) standing in faith should not disregard or deny the reality of any physical symptoms but instead do all that they can to understand what they are facing, take advantage of the physical helps (things like: medicines, exercises and medical equipment and/or mobility aids) and understand what to expect in the natural as things progress.  This is what the majority of our meeting yesterday consisted of.  I asked a lot of questions and received a lot of information to consider.

But more importantly, I now have a more precise knowledge of what we need to be standing against at this point with the attack on my precious wife’s health.  With all this information under my belt, I am able to more accurately focus my faith where needed the most!  So with that in mind, I was not discouraged by yesterday’s appointment but caught up in a second wind of enthusiasm and rejuvenated faith for what Papa God is doing in Piper!  That is why it has been SO important for us to continually keep our eyes, our mouths and our hearts locked on God’s opinion of the final results of this disease as it effects my wife.  We take the latest update on what is going on in the natural and then place it in the hands of God’s supernatural where the natural cannot stand long before the powerful and all-loving power of the living God!

I got the same idea this morning as I continued to study the Christmas story as related in the early Biblical chapters of Matthew and Luke.  What I noticed today was the importance that Papa God placed on the particular WORD that He spoke through the angel to the various characters in the story.  Throughout each and every part of the process, He kept pointing those involved to the WORD of His plan.  I thought that it was especially interesting when I caught Luke 1:65 where the people in the hill country where Elizabeth and Zechariah lived “noised abroad” all the sayings or WORD that the old priest prophesied after the miraculous birth of his son John.

The beginning of that verse makes it clear that their talk among themselves was not back country gossip but awe-filled words of faith that they continued to share.  The same thing happened when the shepherds returned to the care of their flocks after witnessing the scene that the angel had previously talked to them about concerning the baby Jesus lying in the lowly manger.  

We see that throughout the events of that first Christmas that the message and/or WORD of the Lord was continually being spoken in awe by everyone who witnessed and or heard of the events.  I believe that this was part of the plan of God for He knows the importance of the spoken WORD.  I think that He did this so that He would continually have a means to work in and through the people’s WORDS of faith, so as to birth and grow His message of salvation to a dying world.  

This truth confirms the message of the prophet Jeremiah when he declared that God watches over His Word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12) as well as in the last words written in Mark’s gospel that state how God works with and confirms His Word with miraculous signs following. (Mark 16:20)

So move ahead a few thousand years to 2016 and tell me what WORDS you are speaking as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child.  Are they WORDS of faith that point to miraculous workings of God or to the hopeless worries of society or the finite findings of medical science.  I KNOW what I am speaking, especially after the information we received yesterday (and every time we go to the doctor!), for:

♪  My hope is built on nothing less

   than Jesus' blood and righteousness;

   I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

  but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

  On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

  all other ground is sinking sand,

  all other ground is sinking sand.

  When darkness veils his lovely face,

  I rest on his unchanging grace;

  in every high and stormy gale,

  my anchor holds within the veil.

  On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

  all other ground is sinking sand,

  all other ground is sinking sand. ♫*

I realize that this may not be a traditional Christmas carol… but maybe it should be!

Think about what is coming out of your mouth this Christmas and make sure it is WORDS that are building faith and not fear, anxiety, hopelessness or unbelief!  

And remember… only ten more days ‘til Christmas!

*My Hope is Built by Edward Mote - 1834