Whatever you spiritual persuasion I hope that we can agree that Christmas is traditionally a time of loving and giving. Traditionally it is understood that the Father loved people so much that He gave us Jesus and this gift is celebrated during Christmas. It is the story of how He gave His beloved child into the hands of a young and poor godly couple as a helpless and poor infant, and the Loving began.
Please let me share with you how He gave another one of His beloved, young and poor children to another godly couple, and the Loving began.
It was 1969 and Felicia was a hippie run away from an unloving Arizona foster home. Her parents didn't want her. She ran away to LA and she landed up at the Christian Communal Home that three Christian "Hippies" got after they were born again in Jesus. They wanted a place where they and their hippie friends who were coming to Jesus could come, stay, be
comfortable, meet and grow in Jesus. It was a big house with about 8 bedrooms full of people.
I spent a lot of time there because I needed the fellowship and the ministry as I recovered from the tragic failure of my first marriage. I had let fear, anxiety and a lie destroy what had begun with so much love, and break the heart of a wonderful woman who had given me her precious heart.
The police knew about this Christian hippie half-way house and approved of underage runaways like Felicia staying there. After a while, Felicia got mad about one of the rules of the house, had a temper tantrum and stormed out of the House during a Bible lesson with
about 25 people present. She said she was leaving and not coming back!
It was dark and it was an integrated and run down neighborhood with
a lot of prostitution, drugs and violence. She was a small white hippie girl
walking out into the darkness and all of that Darkness. I tried to decide what I should do since she wouldn't listen to reason. I figured either I could stick with her and keep on trying to reason with her, but I was concerned that we'd both land up in a situation where we would both be in danger and very cold. So I decided the best place for her was the Christian Hippie House. So I ran after her, tried one more time to persuade her to stay, but when she refused I just picked her up and put her across my shoulder like a big bag of potatoes, with her screaming, hitting my back and trying to kick loose of my arms all the way back to the House, through the evening Bible Lesson and into the prayer room where the House elders were having a meeting. I still don't know why the neighbors didn't call the cops about the guy carrying a screaming girl down the block and how they were able to continue that Bible lesson after I walked through it with Felicia over my shoulder shouting, hitting and kicking. I sat her down in the midst of the house elders and told them what had happened. We talked and we prayed until Felicia was passed her crisis and decided to stay.
Months later, a much more calm, sweet, godly and spirit-filled
Felicia announced to us that she felt led to go back to Arizona, end her
run away status, turn herself in to her social worker and trust God for
the consequences. The few elders who were present said they agreed
with her and had peace about it. Later, on a Saturday evening,
she said she felt she HAD to go that night and asked if I could drive her
over to Hollywood to catch the last Greyhound bound for Arizona that
night. I said sure, gathered some of the brothers and sisters to see her
off that night. We got to the bus stop shortly before the bus arrived.
She tried to buy the ticket but found she didn't have enough money.
We all chipped in everything we had but we still didn't have enough
money to get her to her social worker. She felt she HAD to go on that
bus at that time, so we prayed and decided that she would buy a ticket
to get her into Arizona Sunday morning and then she would have just
enough change to call her social worker and have her pick her up
sometime later that day. We all prayed for and over her and our sweet
16 year old little bare-foot hippie girl in a granny dress with flowers
in her hair got on the bus and left in a cloud of prayers and tears.
Later we got her letter and "the rest of the story". She arrived
in a small Arizona town around 9 am Sunday morning. She had never
been there before and knew nothing of the town. She had only
enough money for the phone call and her social worker didn't answer
her phone. So she decided to walk around town that bright sunny
Sunday morning, bare foot in a granny dress with flowers in her hair. A
little into her walk she heard people singing and she thought she knew
the song. She came up to a small-town steepled church and realized it
was church time and church was just beginning. So little Felicia, fresh
from Hollywood, walked her little barefoot self into the back of that
church and joined in the service in that little red-neck Arizona town.
After the service was over, the pastor asked her what she was
doing in town and where she was staying. Felicia told him the whole
story of parents not wanting her, running away from her foster home,
living on the streets of L.A. and being born again in a Christian Hippie
House. The pastor and his wife asked her if she would like to come
home with them for lunch and until her social worker could come. By
the time lunch was over, the pastor and his wife told Felicia they
would love to have her spend the rest of the day as their guest. By the
end of the day they told her they would love to have her as their
daughter and would she please let them be her parents. She could
hardly believe it, and the loving began. To make a long story short
her social worker approved. They formally adopted her and sent her
through Bible college and she went in to full time Christian service.
The little runaway had found a loving home. She who had been unwanted
became dearly beloved and greatly cherished. She who had no parents
or family had gained loving parents and a cherishing family. She who
had believed in flower power became a powerful and sweetly fragrant
flower, a preciously rare and cherished young lady. She who had nothing
received everything her sweet and gentle heart had longed for.
A story of providence, not luck. She had to leave that night, not any other night. We just barely got to the bus station in time. We all had to be short of enough cash for the ticket to desired destination. She had to have the faith to step out, the faith she had lacked earlier. In a strange-to-her Arizona town she had to arrive in time for church. In spite of being a hungry teenager she set out walking in that town in the peace and serenity of the Lord. Instead of walking another direction, she turned down the street where the church was. As a teenager conscious of how she might not fit in, she had the openness and the faith to walk on in to that little church. Using the math-science of statistics and probability, feed each of these variables into the equation and the odds of all this happening for Felicia become one in millions. It was neither an accident nor luck. The little broken girl, unwanted by her parents and foster parents, who ran away to find love and life, found Love, Life and a
home with parents who loved and cherished her dearly. If she hadn't landed up in the Home ---- if I hadn't brought her back that night ----- if she hadn't obeyed that leading to
leave that Saturday night ---- if I hadn't been able to drive her that
night ------ if we had had more or less money and she had landed up in
a different town ----- if her social worker had answered her first phone
call ------- but the miracle happened and the homeless, unloved,
grieved and lonely little girl found a home, Love, Joy and family --- and the
Loving began.
What a wonderful miracle!
I hope this true story gave you a glimpse of the unselfish, unconditional
and compassionate Cherishing I believe is the key to the Christmas story.
If you would like to know the miracle that enabled me to be there and a part
of Felicia's story, then please read on. If not, thanks for reading Felicia's
story and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
In His Cherishing Peace,
Tyler
And there was my miracle--------------
When I was young, I believed Jesus was real, but I sure didn't think that He Loved
me personally, and I was actively considering a suicidal life style or suicide itself
because, at age 12, I didn't care to live in a world that only had selfish and
conditional"love". I didn't believe that any human really unconditionally LOVED any other human.
I was a straight "D-" student, suspended or expelled each semester. I had been
instructed not to attend the church youth group because I was just too disruptive,
clowning around and goofing off. Sex had me totally confused about love.
The proof that persuaded me that God not only could but might actually
Love me personally was that Christ died. I could argue with most
other points, but I couldn't deny that Jesus died. Even unbelievers
believed Jesus lived and died. To me that was a historical fact that few
disputed. So when I saw that I had solid historical evidence that Jesus
died, I was ready to seriously consider that just maybe He Loved me
enough to really die for me personally. I just needed someone to show me.
Forced to go to my church's weekend church camp by my desperate mother,
desperate to help her suicidal first born find a reason to live, that Friday night I saw
people there really loving and cherishing each other and it was like water to a
man lost in the desert without water. I wanted what they had so bad I decided to
study them, copy them and become one of them. On the Saturday noon hike I did something real
stupid that I felt blew my cover before them, that I felt let them see I wasn't really one of them,
and I went bananas on a manzania bush because I was so mad and disgusted with myself.
A sweet young lady that I had never seen before came over to me, the wild boy stomping a
bush in a rage, and asked me if I wanted to know why I kept on messing up. I told her I sure did,
and I was sick and tired of messing up. We walked to some big rocks overlooking the valley
and talked for three hours.
I respected and believed the Bible, so when she showed me book after
book, chapter after chapter, verse after verse that plainly stated that the
reason Jesus died (that solid historical fact), was because God so Loved me personally
and the world and because He wanted to Love me as Father, as Shepherd, as King, as Deliverer in a
very intimate and personal relationship, - - - - my eyes began to see,
my mind to understand, my heart to want that Love. When she
showed me why He let them kill Him, that it was His choice, that He
died to take my place in the court of Divine Justice------- well she had
me. I couldn't deny that my life was a mess and I had no hope before Divine Justice
on my own. I couldn't deny that he died, and she persuaded that God so Loved
me that He sent His only begotten Son to die in my place, to take my place in
the court of Divine Justice, so that I could be His child ------- Eureka! Yahoo!
I had discovered the unselfish, unconditional and compassionate Love I was looking for,
a Love that I could live for, a Love to give my life to and
for. I already had believed that He rose from the dead and was coming
back, but now I could have a Father-son relationship with the GOD who
was Love.
I believed her, accepted Him at His Word and got all excited. I told her that I
had to check all of this out with the youth sponsor, Chuck Hill, to
make sure that all that she told me was right on. I never saw her
again and never got her name. I immediately went to Chuch and after he confirmed
everything that the woman had told me, I thanked him and went up the other
hill side to pray my prayer of thanks, believing, receiving and trusting
Jesus as my God, my King and Saviour. I was such a babe I didn't realize
that I had been born again as soon as I talked to Chuck, because I had believed
Jesus and had faith in Jesus alone to bring me into right relationship with
God, as soon a Chuck confirmed it all. I believed, received Him and was
born again even before I made my big formal acceptance prayer.
Talk about a radical life change in a few weeks! All thoughts of suicide were gone.
Within a month that 8th grade year (Oct. or Nov.) my grades rose from "D+" to an
average of "B". Instead of being the expelled disrupter of my youth group, I became a
leader in my church youth group and my school's Bible club (the girls
had a hard time believing I had changed). Instead of letting my twisted and
dysfunctional family pull me down with them, I determined to do what I
could do for my messed up family, especially my mom and dad, and became the defender
of my little sister.
If you want to know more about how the God Who is Compassionate Cherishing,
Truth, Light and Life can change your life and let the Loving begin, please read
on. If not, thanks for reading this much and have a Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year.
Peace and Compassionate Cherishing be with you,
Tyler
Dear Reader, do you know exactly where you stand with the
God and Creator of the universe? Have you asked Him to be your
Father in the Heavens? Have you believed/trusted/relied/depended
on the Lord/King Jesus Christ ---the God anointed Saviour King of
Israel ----to save you from your faults, failures and mistakes?
Salvation from personal faults/failures/mistakes belongs to the
poor in spirit. Matt. 5:3 says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven." If you recognize that you are spiritually
destitute---totally incapable of deserving or earning salvation from
your errors in any way, you are poor in spirit-- you are humble. The
poor in spirit, the humble, understand that they are sinners, totally
impotent to please or to serve God.
To acknowledge that you are a sinner unable to save yourself is
humility. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim.
1:15). Isaiah said, "When You make His soul an offering for sin, He
shall see [His] seed. He shall prolong [His] days and the pleasure of the
Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the distressing travail of
His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant
shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities."
Poverty of spirit (humility) is interwoven in the act of
repentance, the life-altering change of mind about you, your sin and
God. When you repent (change your mind), you see yourself as you
really are and you change your mind in respect to your relationship to
God the Father and to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The act of
repentance brings you to see your sin as ugly as it is, as God sees it, and
you come to a point where you want to be free from it.
Of course, freedom from sin comes only by believing/trusting/
relying on the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who is regularly committing
sin is the slave of sin. However, if the Son shall set you free from
regularly committing sin, you shall be free indeed (John 8:334,36)
The poor in spirit see their impotence to free themselves from
sin/failures/faults/errors. They see that freedom is possible only
through Christ's death for us as our substitute. They recognize that
salvation/deliverance comes by God's act of undeserved and
unmeritted kindness and mercy alone. They choose to believe God
and His Word about themselves and their relationship with Him.
One cannot speak of the Crucifixion apart from the Resurrection.
It is the resurrection that gives us newness of life. Christ's resurrection
testifies to two vital truths. One, it shows that God was propitiated, or
satisfied, with the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. Jesus became
the bearer of our sins. Isaiah's word is "But he was wounded/pierced
for our transgressions, bruised/crushed for our iniquities; The
chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes (from the
cutting whips) we are healed." In Romans 4:25 we read, "[He] who was
delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised [from the
dead] because of our justification." "Raised because of our justifica-
tion" means that because Jesus' payment (the death of His body) for our
sins was adequate to satisfy the demands of justice and a Holy God,
God could then declare us righteous, justified and made acceptable in
His sight. Jesus was raised from death because His death for us satisfied
the righteousness of our Holy God.
His resurrection shows us that Jesus Christ conquered death.
Death had a holdover man because of his sin/error/failures/faults.
However, once the death penalty of sin was paid for by the death of
Christ's body, death no longer had any holding power. "The sting of
death is sin, and the power of sin is the law" (1 Corinth. 15:56). Jesus
paid the price of redemption, redeeming us from the curse of the Law,
having become a curse for us ---for cursed was everyone who was hung
on a tree/stake (Deut. 21:23; Gala. 3:13).
His death took away the power of sin. Jesus also took the stinger
out of death by paying for our sin so that we need have no fear of what
awaits us in and after death. Because our sin debt is paid for in full by
Christ, death has no power over us.
Dear reader, have you come to the end of yourself? Have you
seen your total impotence, your total unworthiness? Have you seen
your nothingness apart from God? And have you seen Jesus, God the
Son who took upon Himself flesh and blood that He might die for you
and for all people? Have you decided that you want His Way and Will
in and for your life instead of your own will and way?
Do you believe that? Do you believe He died in your place? Do
you believe that He was made sin for you, so that you, a helpless and
hopeless enemy of God, might have His righteousness and His life?
Have you repented---turned away from self-will to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ----the God anointed Saviour King of Israel? Out loud with
your mouth agree with God about the God anointed Saviour King of
Israel, and you will be saved, "for with the heart man believes [Jesus],
resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses [acknowledging
and agreeing with Jesus], resulting in salvation." Romans 10:10-13.
Joel 2: 32 And it shall be, whoever shall call on the name of the LORD
shall be saved; for salvation shall be in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,
as the LORD has said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.
Ps 119:6 Then I shall not be ashamed, when I have respect to all Your
commandments.
Ps 119:80 Let my heart be sound in Your statutes, so that I may not be
ashamed.
Ps 119:116 Uphold me according to Your word, that I may live; and let
me not be ashamed of my hope.
The preceeding Good News presentation is a paraphrase of K. Arthur's "Lord Heal My Hurts" K. Arthur may neither subscribe to, nor endorse my files described below, but the Lord uses her teaching mightily in the mending, healing and restoring of broken lives, and in the nurturing of believers. For more helpful information to help you with your decision and walk in Christ, write K. Arthur at
Precept Ministries
P.O. Box 182218
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37422
(423) 892-6814
Other resources for your walk in Christ:
http://www.emmaus.edu/
http://www.insight.org
http://www.freedominchrist.com
