The Place Where God Visited

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part V of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

In our last post, we discovered that God visits those in need around us…through us!  This is key for us to understand Visiting and Remembering. It is not that God visited us, so we should visit others.  It is that God visits others, through us. Peter’s visit to Cornelius is instructive for us, here.

But note something else that’s really significant about the way the Bible looks at our visitation. When Jesus’ brother James later describes Peter’s visit to Cornelius, he doesn’t describe it as Peter’s visit to Cornelius but as God’s visit to the Gentiles:

And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. (Acts 15:12–14, ESV) 

God continues to visit orphans and widows in their distress, often sending as his ambassadors those he has also redeemed from their distress. James says this is one of the two marks of authentic faith:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)

Biblically, the word “orphan” is broadly defined. The Greek orphanas can mean not only those without a parent but also those without a teacher. 

Jesus uses the word that way when on the night before his death, he promises ongoing visitation to his disciples, saying, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).

And when prisoners are beyond our reach as his ambassadors, he calls upon us to change the way we think and live so that we will never forget what they are experiencing:

Remember the prisoners as if chained with them—those who are mistreated—since you yourselves are in the body also. (Hebrews 13:3, NKJV) 

Scripture portrays God as always making good on his pledge to visit those who invite his presence either by their word or their distress.

He visits through his messengers at present, but the Bible affirms that he will once again return in person. 

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:12)

Daily we are mindful that he will return. He will not leave us. He will visit us again—here, on what C.S. Lewis called The Visited Planet. That is our distinction in the galaxy: not just that we have air and water and carbon-based life forms. But that this is the place where God visited—and where he will visit again.

That’s what we affirm every when we join together to in saying this great mystery of our faith:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

Who did God send to you in your time of distress?

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God Visits…Through You!

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part IV of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

God visits!

That was the message woven into our blog posts last week. Today, the message is not “therefore you should visit, too.”

The message is “God visits through you.”

In 2 Corinthians 5:20, Paul says:

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:20)

As ambassadors, we brings God’s care—God’s eyes, God’s hands, God’s touch, God’s ways—not our own.

It’s not that we are his hands. It’s that he intends that our hands become his! In other words, just because we visit someone doesn’t mean that it’s automatically a visit from God and that anything we do or say is inspired by God.

Moses learned this the hard way! Remember last week we learned the story of God sending Moses out as God’s ambassador to deliver the Israelites. But when Moses was a lot younger, you may remember that he visited the Israelites and tried to deliver them himself:

When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, “Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?”

But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. (Acts 7:23–29)

So when we go, we go as his ambassador, sharing his message, not our own. And because we are continually making good on God’s pledge to visit those God seeks and deeply loves, our ambassadorship regularly carries us to people we don’t know or like!

The prophet Jonah may be the classic example (getting sent by God to the Ninevites), but the Bible is full of these kinds of visits, so get used to it! Think, for example, about the apostle Peter’s visit to the Roman Cornelius, where God first took the gospel to the Gentiles:

Talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?” (Acts 10:27–29)

It’s interesting that Cornelius (the one being visited) knows more about why Peter is there than Peter does. God has heard Cornelius’ prayer.

So the person you visit may know more about why God sent you than you do. It’s probably good to ask if you’re unsure.

Has God ever called you to be his ambassador to someone you didn’t know or like? Has he ever called you to someone and you didn’t know why?  Share in the comments!

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How to Pray…and Sing…For God’s Visitation

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part III of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

There’s something important about this Work of Mercy of Visiting and Remembering and it relates specifically to salvation. When we became Christians, it wasn’t a choice we made to accept a general or standing offer. According to Scripture, we received a personal visitation from God:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Rev 3:20)

He came, and—by his grace—you hosted him. And in his visit he raised you up from the dead:

1And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:1-7)

Sum it up and say: God visited you. And now that you are incorporated into his body, he dwells in you and you dwell in him…and he continues his visit—his personal inspection, his seeing you with his own eyes—today.

Note his humility in the following scripture in terms of his description of his own role of being among us:

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them (Matt 18:20).

So when we pray, we don’t just pray for endurance or help or the power to forgive. We pray for him to visit us—to be among us—to abide with us. And that prayer is the basis of Abide With Me, the song that .W church members recently learned and which I commend to you as well.  Rather than read it only, go here and start the video. Then, come back here and follow along!

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
 
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
 
Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word;
But as Thou dwell’st with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.
 
Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea—
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me.
 
Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;
And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee,
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.
 
I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.
 
I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.
 
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

What other hymns or worship songs come to mind that relate to God Visiting and Remembering us?

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