Why Believe: Home for the Holidays

CURRENT RADIO SERIES Why Believe: Home for the Holidays   CURRENT TV SERIES God is With Us

And going into the house [the wise men] saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 I love reading. And some of my favorite books are stories in which everything is going along normally when all of a sudden, a twist happens. If you’d been living at the time of Jesus and heard the story of the gifts that were brought by the magi, you would’ve heard a shocking twist. You see, the gold symbolized His royalty; the frankincense, His deity. But the myrrh was an incredibly unusual gift for a baby since myrrh was a substance that was used to embalm the dead. Why would you bring that for a baby?! Well, looking back 2000 years later, we know why. When Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, His body was anointed with spices and myrrh before it was buried. Now I’m certain the magi couldn’t have understood this. But just as God led them into the presence of the King, I believe He superintended in the giving of these gifts – the myrrh foreshadowing His death. Many people love the image of the baby Jesus, but don’t like to focus on His death on a cross. But if we want to find truth, we have to accept the whole truth, even when we don’t like to hear it. And for these wise men, the whole truth was lying in that manger – this God-King would die so that we might be born again. The whole truth isn’t always convenient, but we have to accept it when we find it.  Ask God to open your heart to the whole truth of Christ today.

CURRENT TEACHING SERIES Building My Life on Values That Last

God’s Plan for Your Pain By Rick Warren — Dec 17, 2015 “If you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.” (1 Peter 4:19 NLT, second edition) Remember what photography was like before everything went digital? When you took a picture, the first thing you’d get was a negative. Then you had to develop the negative into a positive by going into a darkroom and shining a light through it onto photographic paper. This turned the negative into a positive full-color photograph. That’s what God wants to do with the injustices in our lives. We all have them. People have mistreated us. They’ve passed over us. They’ve taken advantage of us. God wants to take all the negatives, shine the light of Jesus through them, and turn them into positives — a full-color picture of the life we were made to live. The Bible says, “If you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you” (1 Peter 4:19 NLT, second edition). The most important thing you can remember when you’ve been treated unfairly is that Jesus is on your side. There is no sin that God judges harsher, except maybe pride, than that of injustice. All throughout Scripture, God shows special care for people who are treated unfairly. He is a God of justice. He hears your cry, sees your pain, and he knows you were hurt. You didn’t get what you thought you deserved. But God has a plan for your pain. When you shine the light of God’s love through your circumstances, he can turn your pain into a beautiful picture. He develops your character through it. He makes you stronger. Most importantly, he uses your pain. You’ll never get an explanation for much of the pain you endure in this life. When you get to Heaven, you may understand more about why bad things happened to you. But God does not owe you an explanation for it. But here’s the good news: You don’t need an explanation. You just need to know that God loves you. He has a plan for you. God will settle the score with whoever hurt you. God never wastes a hurt. Welcome the light of the gospel into it and God will use your hurt — the very real injustice that has happened to you — to create a beautiful picture through your life. PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >> Talk It Over How can you use the pain from your past to help other people? In what ways have you seen God grow your character through an injustice you experienced? Instead of retaliating, how do you think God wants you to treat the person who treated you unfairly? What effect does it have on you when you respond in love?