01-18-15 Gesundheit

Scripture    Jeremiah 29:10-14

ge·sund·heit  /  exclamation: gesundheit.  Used to wish good health to a person who has just sneezed.  from gesund = healthy + -heit = hood

OR Bless you – or God bless you – I had heard as a child that when you sneezed you were sneezing the devil out of you so you would say gesundheit – or God bless you to make sure God filled that now empty space where the devil used to be. 

3 syllables – Ge sund heit = God bless you! 

We believe that the blessing is in the presents God gives us. Is that what it means for God to bless us? Do we measure God’s blessings by the presents he gives us – like transferring our belief about Santa Clause to our belief about God?

God Bless you.

In a speech made in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said, "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us." 

In his book The Pressure’s Off, psychologist Larry Crabb tells this story from his childhood.

One Saturday afternoon, I decided I was a big boy and could use the bathroom without anyone’s help. So I climbed the stairs, closed and locked the door behind me, and for the next few minutes felt very self-sufficient.

Then it was time to leave. I couldn’t unlock the door. I tried with every ounce of my three-year-old strength, but I couldn’t do it. I panicked. I felt again like a very little boy as the thought went through my head, "I might spend the rest of my life in this bathroom."
My parents—and likely the neighbors—heard my desperate scream. / My mother shouted through the door she couldn’t open from the outside. "Are you okay? Did you fall? Have you hit your head?" "I can’t unlock the door!" I yelled. "Get me out of here!"

I wasn’t aware of it right then, but Dad raced down the stairs, ran to the garage to find the ladder, hauled it off the hooks, and leaned it against the side of the house just beneath the bathroom window. With adult strength, he pried it open, then climbed into my prison, walked past me, and with that same strength, turned the lock and opened the door.

"Thanks, Dad," I said—and ran out to play.

That’s how I thought the Christian life was supposed to work… God shows up. He hears my cry—"Get me out of here! I want to play!"—and unlocks the door to the blessings I desire.
Sometimes he does. But now I’m realizing the Christian life doesn’t work that way. And I wonder, are any of us content with God? Do we even like him when he doesn’t open the door we most want opened—when a marriage doesn’t heal, when rebellious kids still rebel, when friends betray, our business fails, when financial reverses threaten our comfortable way of life, when the prospect of terrorism looms, when health worsens despite much prayer, when loneliness intensifies and depression deepens, when ministries die?

God has climbed through the small window into my dark room. But he doesn’t walk by me to turn the lock that I couldn’t budge. Instead, he sits down on the floor and says, "Come sit with me!" He seems to think that climbing into the room to be with me matters more than letting me out to play. I don’t always see it that way. "Get me out of here!" I scream. "If you love me, unlock the door!"

Gen 1:26-31

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

          28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

          29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day. 

Jeremiah 29:10-14

This is what the Lord says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be  found  by  you,"  declares the Lord,  "and  will  bring  you  back  from  captivity.  I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."

John 15:5-7

I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

Luke 24:50-51

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 

God has climbed through the small window into my dark room. But he doesn’t walk by me to turn the lock that I couldn’t budge. Instead, he sits down on the floor and says, "Come sit with me!" He seems to think that climbing into the room to be with me matters more than letting me out to play. Do I scream “Get me out of here! Bless me Bless me Bless me with stuff.” Or do I sit with Jesus and recognize what a blessing it is that God wants to spend real time with me. Do you sing “Come Thou Fount with every blessing – OR, Come Thou Fount of every blessing?”  Is it a greater blessing to have His presents OR His presence?  Gesundheit!