Emmanuel Unleashed!

By Rick Blumenberg / @RickBlumenberg

When God created heaven and earth he created a place and a people that were new and different than anything previously in existence. The primary difference was that we were his beloved creation but we would not live in his immediate Presence. God wanted to create a race of people (humans) who serve him out of love, rather than requirement. He began by creating humanity to spend time with him in what we know as the Garden of Eden. This was the first experience of Emanuel (God with Us) for our human species. It must have been amazing; to live with God so intimately—like heaven on earth.

As most of you know, this “God with Us” experience was temporary because sin entered the picture and separated us from God. This did not catch God off-guard. He knew it would happen and had planned for it, but it took several steps and much time before “Emmanuel” became restored reality in the best sense of the word. God had to move at a pace with which his human creation could cope. They were not immediately ready and Self-Ish-Ness pulled them this way and that in the years that followed.

God used many methods to bring his people back to the “Emmanuel” lost to sin. He used charismatic leaders like Abraham and Sarai, and Hagar, the persecuted concubine of Abraham who was driven from her home by Sarai in a fit of jealousy. Hagar showed great insight in the search for Emmanuel when she called God “the God who sees me”. By this time humanity’s relationship with God had been largely obliterated and it was only in her despair that Hagar realized God was not only alive, but was aware of her and her unborn child. This was a move toward an Emmanuel or “God with Us” relationship.

The early books of the Old Testament abound with charismatic leaders such as Joseph, the mother of Moses and Moses himself. Eventually he established judges to bring people back to himself but when the people asked for a king things went backward for centuries while the Jewish people tried to exist without God.

“But when the time had fully come…”^{(Galatians 4:4)}, after sending us the law and the prophets, God sent his Son. He even called Jesus “Emmanuel” because he would save us from our sin and thus restore the “God with us” relationship. So when Jesus came to earth, born of a virgin and announced by the angels, mankind experienced a whole new level of Emmanuel. God was literally “with us” in the life of his Son Jesus. Fully God and at the same time fully man, Jesus brought God and his creation together in a way never seen before. Through his incarnational (God in the flesh) coming, Jesus lived among us and showed us God’s true nature instead of the warped nature given to him by godless men and women through centuries of godless human living. But instead of merely gloating about the fact he was one with the Father, Jesus helped us see that oneness with God (Emmanuel) was God’s ideal for all mankind and that through faith in him we, mere creations of the most high God were created not for drudgery and death, but for a glorious relationship with the God of all creation. And Jesus had come to make that possible!

When Jesus finished his work and went back to the Father he had already told the disciples of the next, final, and most perfect level of Emmanuel.

That’s right, Jesus on earth, in the flesh, was not God’s best. It was a step toward the best earthly level of Emmanuel. Jesus made this clear when he promised to send the Holy Spirit, saying “It is for your good that I am going away.” ^{(John 16:7)} Jesus had no intention to stay forever in the flesh. He came to make it possible for the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of the Father and the Son—to come and live in us so that everywhere every Spirit-filled person goes, God goes, because he lives in us and works in us and through us, thus restoring the world to the highest and best level of Emmanuel or “God with Us”.

This Christmas and for all time, if we accept this gracious gift of God himself through his Spirit, the “God with Us” phenomenon reaches its highest earthly level, where God Himself—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lives in us for His glory and for the good of all mankind.

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.

   

Nice and Not-so-Nice…

By Rick Blumenberg / @RickBlumenberg

There are two kinds of people in the world (sure you’ve heard that before)—there are those who are “nice” and those who are “not-so-nice”. My mom’s been in heaven for decades but I still remember that she didn’t think there were any really bad people in the world just people who were not behaving like they knew they ought to. So as a nod to Mom, instead of saying nice or nasty people, (she would not be happy with me if I said it like that) I’ll call them "Nice“ and “Not-so-Nice”. I thank God for her teaching and example because she helped me understand that even those people who are “not-so-nice” are people loved by God and created in his image.

And when you think about it, most of us are neither totally “nice”, nor totally “not-so-nice”—we are mostly somewhere in between.

We find these two kinds of people in all races and all religions, in both genders, all family groups and in every diverse kind of people we can imagine. If we would stop categorizing people according to race, gender, religion, etc., and just think of them as either “nice” or “not-so-nice” we’d all be a lot better off.

Of course we would still have our problems because not everybody is nice. They could be if they wanted to, but some of them don’t. The great thing about these two kinds of people is that we can choose which group we want to be in. We're all in some groups where we don’t have a choice. I didn’t choose my gender, my skin color or the country where I would be born. Many people think we can't choose our sexual preference, but I really think that is a choice. I could be wrong about that, but I know for sure that each of us can choose to be nice if we want to. Or, we can instead choose to be nasty or not-so-nice.

Because there are people in every society who refuse to be nice, we sometimes have to do things to protect ourselves from each other. Thankfully we have families, churches, schools, and various other organizations to help us deal with those “not-so-nice” people and in the extreme situations we have police and the military to protect us from them. Most of the police and the military in our nation are in the “nice” category, but they can be pretty firm if necessary when dealing with “not-so-nice” people and sometimes the results can be painful. Unfortunately, a few of the people in power, whether they be police or military, employers, parents, politicians, etc.,  are “not-so-nice” and the powerless or less powerful need to be protected from them.

I could name some “not-so-nice” people, but I won’t because you all know some so you know what I mean. However, after writing this article and thinking I really need an illustration to make it complete, Carol (my wife) shared an article with me she found on the internet about Andrew luck, star quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts. He is one rough and tough football player and isn’t afraid to mix it up with the best of them, but what the article was about was his style of “trash talk”. According to Kevin Clark, the author, (Nice Trash Talker, Andrew Luck) when Luck gets hit really hard he is likely to yell at the player who hit him and say, “Great job!” or “What a hit!”

Clark writes

“When New England pass rusher Rob Ninkovich pulverized Luck last month in a Patriots’ 42-20 win, he got the customary congratulations. As Ninkovich tells it, he found himself paralyzed with confusion by the well-wishes, so he blurted out “Thanks for...uh...accepting that hit?” before running back to the huddle.

It doesn’t matter what color we are, what job we do or just about any other real or imagined division we experience, there are “nice” and “not-so-nice” people in all groups.

I don’t always succeed, but I always try to be in the “nice” group and I hope you will too. We do have a choice.

I'm Rick Blumenberg and that's My View from Tanner Creek.

 

A Life of Quiet Inspiration

By Rick Blumenberg / @RickBlumenberg

In most churches we celebrate those loud and boisterous souls who preach our sermons, lead our singing, build enthusiasm and in general carry out their extroverted tendencies as they serve the Lord with gusto and enthusiasm. (We could be more spiritual and call it passion.)

Thank God for the Extroverts!

We love them! They add excitement and zeal to worship and often get us to do things we never thought we would do but find we even enjoy doing—well at least sometimes. I really do thank God for the extroverts, and one reason we love them is because they are so noticeable. They are usually up front both literally and figuratively.

But I also thank God for the introverts

You won’t see them up front. They are usually at least three rows from the front and maybe way back. (Unless, like my poor wife, they move up just to make their extroverted spouse happy.) The introverts in the church (and in the home, the office, and everywhere else) are often not appreciated for the value they bring to church and many other areas of life, partly because we may not notice them. But that’s okay with them. They prefer it that way. You could say they definitely do not want to be noticed. It is also because they like to do background tasks that are so important to our lives, but often fly quietly under the radar of public view.

These introverts are often really good at (and enjoy) those background jobs. They may never teach a class, but they may be good at a ministry of prayer without which teachers, pastors and worship leaders would be worthless.

In Bible School they are more likely to work in the craft room where they may discover a future Leonardo DaVinci or Claude Monet when no one else has noticed. They might send that future artist out of the craft room feeling "God can use me just the way I am.”

Or that quiet introvert may be in the kitchen making food that nourishes the body (the temple of God) while the extroverts are working on the soul.

The problem is,

too often we sell the introverts short.

While we applaud the extroverts with hand claps and hearty “amens”, those quiet introverts are thinking about how to feed the extroverts who are too busy to even think about it until they are ravenous.

Introverts, of course, are not perfect—none of us are. They sometimes get bogged down, like Mary’s sister Martha, with the details of life so they’re caught up in what we call the “tyranny of the urgent” at the expense of what is really important. However, in doing so they often accomplish things we extroverts (and many introverts) don’t want to do without, but don’t really want to do.

So I thank God for the introverts

You find them at home, at church, at the office and just about everywhere in life (except the platform, the podium and the center of attention.) They are glad we more extroverted types get most of the attention, because these introverted types are happy with lives of quiet inspiration.

I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek.