Soul Sister Time

May Christ Reign Over My New Year               What will this New Year bring?   Are you one of those who could not have imagined how your heart would experience the sadness of living in a fallen world in the year just past?   If so, that was one of those years in which you were given the opportunity to learn great lessons that you never want to experience again.   Even though you may have experienced pain, Christ has reigned over your year.   He reigns from heaven.   Others may be devastated by your pain, but if you were able to rise above your personal torment—getting up to face the world in spite of all that has happened, it is because Christ.   It was not accomplished without the ears of caring friends and family and most importantly; the comfort of the God of all comfort. If you are still trusting God in spite of all 2018 brought you, then you have applied His truth as balm to your wounds.               Personally, I don’t want a year of feeling so sad, but I can say that th

              Did you do it?   Did you get to the last week of Advent with Christmas right around the corner and deepen your love and appreciation for Christ while growing more eager by the day for His return?   I really have.   It’s so much easier for me now that my kids are grown and I don’t have much shopping.   I’m married to a man who loves to live contrarian to the Christmas trappings, and have decided to bless my friends by not baking for them (Now that my kids are grown it is more than obvious that I am the one who decorates the Christmas cookies like a kindergartner.)   Yet, even when my Christmas was more jammed packed, I found that focusing on Advent soothed my soul and led me to a joy that lasts far beyond December 25.               When I ask if Christ reigned over your advent, I’m not asking if you didn’t decorate your home in a way that it could be the set of a Hallmark Christmas movie.   I’m not suggested that the demands of parties, programs and performances didn

              The Christian life is not about religion.   Religion is about following a specific set of behaviors.   It is more about what we do.   It is about why we do what we do.   When Christ is ruling over our wills, our mind-emotion-actions fall into order.               When Christ is ruling over our wills, we act from the center of His presence in our souls.   It seems to me that all the work of the Old Testament was given to reveal that although our minds and emotions wanted God’s rescue from our sins, we needed something greater than ourselves to set us free.   The New Testament exposed the mystery that was known to God from the beginning, that we humans had been depleted of the will-power to follow God without His help.   Ezekiel 36:26 explained it this way: “ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh .”   That heart of flesh is Jesus.   When we believe that His life, death and re

              On the second week of Advent our virtue is love.   It is the greatest of everything: affection, virtue, connection to God.   Imagine what it was like to live in the world that God created from His heart of love with the purpose of nurturing every need and delight a human could experience.   Adam and Eve, alone, experienced what this world was like when love was incorporated in every tiny cell of creation.   Because of sin, God’s love has been obstructed.   Our emotions have become corrupted along with everything else about us.   In Advent we celebrate the love of God poured over the earth by the incredible lengths God went to in order to restore us to His love.   He took on human flesh in the form of an embryo in the womb of Mary, His chosen mother.                 Imagine Mary’s corrupted human emotions when she was visited by an angel from heaven.   Who knows what she had been taught about the Messiah?   She probably lived in Nazareth based on the Prophets words t

              Christmas Eve 2018 marks the 100 th anniversary of the first Nine Lessons and Carols service held at King’s College in Cambridge, England.   Many churches include this meaningful service as part of their Advent lineup.   It is a service celebrating the birth of Jesus by following the story of the fall of man and the promise of the Messiah in the scriptures.   The nine lessons are Bible readings from Genesis, Isaiah and Gospels are presented in between hymns and Christmas carols.   These lessons remind us how our minds became corrupted and why we need the mind of God.               I love this service because it teaches how Jesus’ birth will restore my mind.   The basic lessons are: 1.        God announces in the Garden of Eden that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. Genesis 3:8—15. 2.          God promises to faithful Abraham that in his seed shall the nations of the earth be blessed. Genesis 22:15–18. 3.        Christ’s birth and kingdom