Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-5-25

Is there anything more embarrassing than running into somebody, or being introduced, and… it is someone who knows you already? Who picks up a previous conversation? But you don’t recognize the person? Before you know it, it’s too late to ask, “Excuse me, but who are you???” And nobody comes to your rescue…!

We have all been there.

One of my own solutions is quickly to ask if the person ever returned the hundred dollars I loaned. Of course I am informed that I have him or her confused with someone else; and I am told, emphatically, who this person is, after all. A good idea, and some day it even might earn me a C-note.

Seriously, we do go through life occasionally forgetting names, faces, mutual friends, and so forth. We are all busy, and, after all, there are more than 7-billion people in this world. Among the nuances in memory-functions, there is the “photographic memory,” a long-term phenomenon where facts and visual details are recalled to a great degree. It can be a blessing or curse; my father’s cousin had this ability, and was able, despite herself, to recite pages of books she had not seen, nor cared about, since years earlier. An “eidetic memory” is similar but involves the ability to recall penumbrances – not only a face and a person’s name, but when and where the parties met; what aromas were in the air; what music was played in the distance; what someone wore; and so forth to other irrelevancies. Theodore Roosevelt was graced with both gifts, enabling him to read and successfully be quizzed on a book he rapidly scanned; and to recall minute details about folks he met in a crowd decades previous.

So who can expect us to recall everybody, every name, every event, every detail…? Is there anyone who can remember, and know, everything about you, down to the last detail? Things you don’t even know about yourself?

Well, God can.

Don’t dismiss that with a “Oh, sure. God can do anything.” There are implications we ought to… remember. The Bible provides prompts and memory-jogs, in case you forgot:

He knows us so well that He counts the hairs on our heads. Is that even useful? God thinks so; but anyway it is something that God does because He can.

He knows our innermost thoughts. No, you don’t have to talk in your sleep. It is something that God does because He can.

He knew us from the moment we were conceived; He knew us in our mothers’ wombs; He loved us, loves us, and will love us all the days He has called us to, going forward. It is something that God does because He can. (And something to remember when abortions are discussed…)

I invite you to reverse the course of such things in your mind. No, we are not God so we cannot exercise such miraculous powers of recollection. But how often do you remember God… how well do you know Him?… how close is He to you?

“A constant Friend is He” – is that the God you know? Continuously at your side?

Is He an ever-present help in times of trouble… or do you tend to turn to Him only when you have troubles?

Do you have communication with God throughout the day? Do you remember that He yearns to know not only the burdens of our hearts, but He delights in our joys too? You can have earnest, formal prayers… but you also can just-plain chat with Him!

When you see someone who is hurting or alone or suffering or needs spiritual sympathy, aid, and nurture… do you remember that you should see God in that person – or a “God hole” that needs to be filled?

Is God someone you only occasionally remember? Do you recall that Jesus wants to be your Savior… but also your Friend? Have you remembered that the job description of the Holy Spirit is not only to empower you, but to… comfort you, as only a true Friend can do?

This God we are discussing loves you so much He sacrificed His Son to cover the debt of your sins. Yet… we are told that if we treat Him like a stranger, He will say, “Away! I never knew you!”

What a Friend we have in Jesus. “He stands at the door and knocks” – we don’t even have to beg at His door to enter into communion. Let Him in… and don’t let Him out!

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Click: What a Friend We Have in Jesus

2-12-19

That phrase, “My elder brother Jesus,” was used uncountable times by the evangelist R W Schambach, whose ministry played a big part in my spiritual revelations and growth. Our relationship with the Savior is multi-faceted, but this is a component that is real, and important, and not sufficiently appreciated by believers. Or acted upon.

The three members of the Godhead have multiple personalities, if I might use a contemporary clinical term in the most respectful way. To people who are skeptical about the existence and nature of God – “What about One True God?” and “Why not thousands of gods like the Eastern religions?” – usually are asked to be bratty, not truth-seeking. There is something to be savored, however, in what I called above the multiple personalities of the Deity.

The essence of the “Old Testament God” (stereotyped as stern and vengeful) did not change when He became incarnate as the Christ: new aspects, new expressions of love and forgiveness (often exemplified in the Gospel of John), were revealed. But God has always spoken, and inspired, His people in myriad ways. When Jesus ascended to the Throne, He said to His followers that it was good that He leave: “In fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment” (John 16:7,8). The Holy Spirit was present, and active from the beginning of the world, but specifically has been the source of wisdom, discernment, and power in Jesus’s place.

So the One True God has revealed Himself in three manifestations; and acts in uncountable ways, as we noted. More than an everlasting help in time of trouble, He is indeed the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end – literally the Great I Am. “I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began” (Proverbs 8:23).

When we consider the lineage and patrimony of Jesus, we are, or should be, in awe. He was the agent by whom all things were made… and was made flesh to be the agent of our salvation. He performed miracles; stilled the storms; healed the diseased; read peoples’ minds; brought the dead back to life; walked through walls and walked on water.

The simple acknowledgment of Who He is and confessing your belief, He told us, is sufficient to attain eternal life. What a mighty God we serve.

Yet do we sometimes forget the aspect, the truth, of Brother Schambach’s characterization – that Jesus is our Brother, too? There is power in that realization. The shed blood of the cross, after all, is enough to have God overlook and forgive our sins – just as the Passover lamb’s sacrifice was sealed on the lintels of believers’ doors. That is, when we accept Jesus, when we invite Him to live in our hearts, God no longer sees us, but sees His Son. We are “covered in the Blood.”

That does make us kinfolk of the Savior. Children, finally, and fully, of God. Brothers and sisters of Jesus.

I feel the persuasion to carry this beyond clichés. Many of us grew up with Sunday-school bulletins with paintings of Jesus and the little children, sort of a Holy Babysitter. Many of the older movies portrayed Jesus as a moon-faced mystic, serene and floating through crowds. We know that He was angry with the money-changers, and that He wept over the apostasy of Jerusalem; but those are rare glimpses.

As fully God and fully man, however, Jesus did everything we do. He ate and drank, more than when He consecrated meals. The water-into-wine? Surely He drank, as all the guests did. Feeding the 5000? He too would have eaten the loaves and fishes Himself also. There is no record in Scripture, but He would have defecated and urinated as other men and women did. I do not mean to blaspheme – I am not – but we need to remember that Jesus had many mortal aspects.

That is how He could identify with all of us, in all our ways.

For all the portrayals of Jesus preaching and performing miracles; for all the paintings of Him with a halo and an aura; for all the movies where we see Jesus persecuted and in agony on the cross… it would do us good to remember that He is our Brother.

I reckon that as many times Jesus preached and healed, He more often laughed, put His arm around friends and strangers, and was a brother in the best sense. That’s what brothers do.

And that’s what our elder brother Jesus still does.

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Click: What a Friend We Have in Jesus