Quit Hijacking Christmas

Last week I read the status update of a friend of mine. It said, "Jesus was born in a smelly stable, which could be a picture of when Jesus comes into our hearts - it's like that stable, smelly and dirty."

It got me thinking. Isn't it amazing that the God of the universe, perfect in every way, spotless and pure beyond imagination, would choose to be born, to indwell in each of our hearts - us, being dirty, sinful and undeserving in every way - Jesus, choosing to offer his unmerited love and grace and mercy unconditionally to absolutely any man, woman or child who asks...

I think we too often forget that. It's like we've separated ourselves from everyone else. We wear labels like chosen, saved, Christian, righteous...and we label the world as unsaved, unChristian, unrighteous, unholy...It's as if we've hijacked the Christmas story - hijacked Jesus' intention for ever coming to this dirty, sinful, messed up world.

Luke 19:10 says that "the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost."
Rather than focus on our pithy Christian labels, perhaps if we, as undeserving, unrighteous, smelly and dirty and shameful focus on this great God, this amazing Christ who loves us nonetheless, who has offered to us his unmerited love and forgiveness - perhaps then, we will begin to view the world, not through the lense of self righteousness, but through the lense of grace and mercy. And we'll be compelled to go and seek and save that which is lost.

 After all, God so demonstrated his love for us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8 NIV).

It's a Beautiful Thing

These last 6 weeks have been full to say the least. If you've been following Rock City at all, you'll know that we ended THIRTYinTHIRTY with a win. We met our financial goal. Grew our launch team. Received a ton of traffic on Vimeo and the Rock City Blog. It'd be worth it to take a look back at some of our posts, as every day we added something new, including 12 new videos. After THIRTYinTHIRTY, we hosted our biggest launch team night yet, Katie and I spent Thanksgiving in Sandusky with our families, then she and I spent the last week in Washington D.C. with my grandparents. They had the time of their lives.

After blogging every day for 30 days, I guess I needed the last couple of weeks to just unwind and let loose a bit. God is good and Rock City Church is on its way. It's a beautiful thing.