Grace in Daily Life

We Cannot Encourage Ourselves

This morning, I specifically asked Fred to make statements of TRUTH to me to help remind me of what I really DO believe (even when my emotions are to the contrary).

Encouragement? Faith’s Fight Against Sin? Battling Unbelief? All things that are not meant to be experienced alone. (We really cannot encourage ourselves.)

In that vein, here is something to encourage you, my dear blog friends … yet another wonderful RZIM Slice by Jill Carattini:

Christmas Is Coming

Consider just an excerpt:

“According to Shern, we are instead stressed at the approach of Christmas because of finances, because of family, because of the absence of family, because of over indulgence, because we have too much to do, or because we have too little to do and feel the pointed edges of loneliness. For so many of us, the thought that Christmas is coming is indeed one that invokes fear, trembling, and attention, though perhaps for all the wrong reasons …

Ironically, the season of Advent has been compared to living in a prison, though far from the prison-scenario many of us envision this time of year. Advent envisions enslavement, but not in the lists of things that need to be done or the emotional waves of the season. It is a far more real type of confinement; the enslavement of self, the imprisonment of sin. Advent envisions us waiting for the one who breaks in and sets us free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew well the cold walls of a prison cell, writes this of our confinement:

 

“Christ is breaking open his way to you. He wants to again soften your heart, which has become hard. In these weeks of Advent while we are waiting for Christmas, he calls to us that he is coming and that he will rescue us from the prison of our existence, from fear, guilt, and loneliness. Do you want to be redeemed? This is the one great question Advent puts before us…. But let us make no mistake about it. Redemption is drawing near.”

Amen and amen.
Maranatha, Lord Jesus.
Soften our hearts and come into them we pray.
Amen.