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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How to Not Miss the Visitation of Christ

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part II of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

God visits us; through, with, and in the form of his servants. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our last post.

That’s the truth conveyed in the book of Exodus:

1Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

3And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

9And now, behold,the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:1–10)

In Jesus, God visits his beloved children physically, personally:

9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:9-14)

In Christ, God looks at us through actual human eyes, touches us with actual human hands. It is the event to which all previous visitations point. Unfortunately, we humans usually miss his visitation. Note how Jesus describes this as he visits Jerusalem:

And when he drew near and saw [Jerusalem], he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41–44, ESV, emphasis mine)

This is reminiscent what we talked about earlier this month: Stay awake! Be ready! The Lord shows up in the way you least expect him to…and yet he’s told you exactly in what form he’s going to visit: the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned. There is no reason for us to not know the time of his visitation as long as we remember and treasure his word.

How do you balance helping the Lord when he shows up as the stranger, naked or imprisoned while not enabling others in their sin?

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