Advent: The Time of Spiritual Renewal

Deuteronomy 7:9 (NIV) “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.”

* author's note: This is a very worthy repost from Nov. 26, 2014

What Advent means to ME

The season of Advent is upon us and while many believe this is a season for the Catholic faith to celebrate the coming of Jesus’ birth, they are sadly mistaken. While the Catholic Church does celebrate through rites and rituals such as burning a colored candle each week as they focus on the coming of the Lord, many Christians such as myself celebrate Advent as a spiritual renewal.

This was a time in history documented and prophesied about in the Old Testament and came to fruition in the advent of the New Testament. The weeks leading up to Christ being born into this world are a pivotal proclamation to every single Christian. Our faith in Jesus Christ is solid proof, to ME, that the Advent of Christ is true to the biblical word.

Granted I don’t believe December 25th as the exact day He was born. But it is the day that man has chosen to appoint and celebrate as the day of Jesus’ birth. Advent to me is preparing for the coming of the Lord instead of getting all caught up in the commercialization of a sacred Holy Day.

We’re living in a world where people make up their own choices and minds with how to honor the King of Kings. Christians everywhere claim to be Christian but shrug off Lent and Advent and other spiritual expectancies that the very bible they claim to read speaks of and are happy just declaring they’re Christian’s. To me, that’s a mockery of Christ and the Holy Bible.

Yes, claiming to be a Christian is all well and good but it is more than just words, you have to put physical and spiritual ACTION behind those words for them to be believed. Even through my computer screen I can tell which friends are spirit-filled and which ones put on a show. When sitting in Church I can physically see who is there just to show people that they’re there. I am not judging people; I am confirming that I have eyes to see.

THIS is why a spiritual rejuvenation is needed throughout the year. THIS is why Advent and Lent are so dear to ME. Yes, I spiritually reflect throughout the year, but these two seasons take on special meaning to my spiritual growth.

I watch as a globe erupts in turmoil; races against races, wars against innocent, death to believers, fear in the loving. Satan is standing at the threshold of corruption, rising in great power throwing swords of fire at the earthbound physically and spiritually weak. The flames have reached every corner of the earth, blades of fire have licked the spirit of all as we sit and watch, waiting, just waiting to understand.

THIS is the season for true Christians to fully understand the biblical elements at work. This is where we gather our spiritual strength and prepare for the coming of Christ. We can’t shrug off what we are called to be; we can’t ignore and draw a blind eye of what is to come. We can’t walk and pretend that we’re doing everything in our power to prayerfully heal a nation in the throes of an uprising while we're too busy to reflect even once on the spiritual growth of our being. We’re not called to ‘just’ believe.

This is not a time to wear a mask and delight in the show of the Christmas spectacle; this is the time to be spiritually awake in the depths of your soul. This is not the time to look around at all you don’t hold in your hands; this is the time to be grateful for every little thing you DO have. This is not the time to walk in confidence knowing you have a faith and belief in God; this is the time to meditate on all you are, all you hold true and all you hope to one day become THROUGH the blood and power of Christ.

THIS, my friends, is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. (Pss.118:24) 

Poetry Sunday ~ In His Glory

Luke 23: 34  Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

~ In His Glory ~

(c) Joni Zipp 

I’ll deeply inhale the mornings breath

walk through the day of your death;

Weep as tears falls from the sky

raise my eyes to ask You why?

Why did you leave us, why let man win

to bury the burden of human sin?

Will we sit idle and watch as you hang

forgetting all the Hosannas we sang?

Will we remember the blood on the cross

as we lust for life forgetting the loss,

can a man walk ‘round with his head held high,

knowing you came if only to die?

Agony washes through my veins

my heart laments for all of your pains.

I don’t pretend as hypocrites do

to immerse in honor every holiday or two.

I walk in the path that is set before me

trying to bathe in all your glory.

You rise to bask in heaven's glow,

and gave to me the right to sow.

I’ll carry your words, I’ll heal my heart

knowing that you will never depart.

Man tries to mask all that you’re seeing

not knowing You’ve leaked into his being!

I drench myself in the beckoning light,

that cradles me through day and night.

I drink from the cup of all your words

that fill my soul like fluttering birds.

My heart weeps red but unlike you

it only seeps my garments through.

Your bloodshed gives to me new birth

a righteous soul unveiled on Earth. 

All rights reserved: © Joni Zipp

Matt.28: 19-20 “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Reflection

Reflection

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 

1 John 4:18

My forty days of reflection has begun with the beginning of the Lenten season. Some people will announce what they are doing for the Feast of Reflection, some will not give the Fast of Sacrifice a second thought, and others will wonder what all this Christian hokey pokey is about. Well turn yourself around and I’ll tell you.

Isa. 58:6-8 “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.”

Lent, just like Advent is a highly misunderstood Holy Time of the year. Many people assume it is just something Catholics partake in and it’s a ritual they WON’T take part in. Some people will tout that they reflect and sacrifice all year so they won’t partake but I’m here to tell you, it is SO much more!

Lent is a forty-day period of prayer, penance and fasting. It is a season of sacrifice, spiritual exercise and renewal. My season begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts until Easter Sunday the day I celebrate my New Year and my spirit is mentally refreshed and healed.

Sacrifice – It can also mean fasting, not always celebrated with the refusal of meat, unless meat is a hindrance in your life. Sacrifice means to give up something that is hindering your spiritual growth. To REALLY sacrifice is not hiding on days you feel like it and slipping into old routines because no one is watching. Can you imagine giving up politics, hate and judging of people like blacks, Jews, Christians and yes even Muslims for forty-days? Imagine giving up Social Walls for forty-days. Giving up sex for forty-days. There are so many things YOU can give up and sacrifice for your Lord.

This sacrifice is all about YOU and God! A forty-day sacrifice is extremely hard and grueling, sometimes painful and feels like it is punishment but this is the LEAST we can do for a man we believe was whipped and had skin shredded, falling off the bone and hung on the cross for US!

Prayer – This isn’t the normal prayer you pray when someone says they need prayer and you say, ‘praying’. This season of prayer is deep meditative prayer for YOU, for all you hate, for all you judge, for strength in lasting forty-days. This is a cleansing prayer feast between you and God. 

Renewal – After the season is over and you awake on Easter Sunday there is a refreshing, honorable feeling that overwhelms you knowing you made it the forty-days without fail. That is the secret. Not failing. We fail all year but in these forty days WE DO NOT FAIL! That is where the sacrifice, prayer and renewal of spirit comes from and washes over as if you yourself bathed in the river Jordan.

My prayer for you is to know and understand what this season is all about. I pray that you know and understand the true meaning of sacrifice and that you see and feel internal growth by the Rising of the Lord. 

May God walk with you all and bless you in more ways than one!

Because I am loved by God… I can be grateful for another day of life.

1 John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.”

Change

Proverbs 2:1-5 (NIV) "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God."

Today is the day I will renounce my Christian label. Before you all go ballistic on me, allow me to explain. The label Christian means absolutely nothing these days. People toss the word around like a basketball; dribble it here, toss it there. 

Definition of renounce (before vocab nazi’s attack): to give up or put aside voluntarily: to renounce worldly pleasures.
2. to give up by formal declaration:

As I’ve been working through some tough things lately, I’ve sure been hit hard with a realization lately; I need the courage to let go of what I can’t change. I can’t change my past I accept that. I can’t change humans I have to accept that also. 

These humans are the very reason I will no longer call myself Christian. They have me struggling with my faith and it doesn’t seem fair to me. I have an extremely strong faith, a viable strength in the Lord, and an apparently different way of seeing things.

They (Christians) drink because hey, Jesus drank wine so it must be okay. Well to me, I don’t believe he drank a beer in His life and definitely don’t see Him nipping at some mushrooms in the garden before being tempted by satan. Was it all a hallucinating experience for Him and He just wish-washed the truth?

I wanna drink.  Thanks Christians.

They also curse, and that is okay too because I guess Jesus rode an ass so everyone must get the symbolization that we’re all asses? 

I wanna curse. Thanks Christians.

Is this a lie?

Ephesians 5:4 ESV “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.”

So is it okay to joke and use crude vulgar language. All in fun, right Christians? 

More lies?

James 1:26 ESV “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.”

I struggle. Thanks Christians.

I’m beginning to think hell is the better place to end up when I die. Heaven is going to be full of people cursing, drinking, laughing at people cursing and drinking and maybe THIS is not where I want to end up. Christians believe they’re all going to heaven and these same Christians are the drinkers and cursers. Are they all going to change AFTER they get into heaven? Hmm...

I’m confused. Thanks Christians.

I will now call myself a Follower of Christ. Not a follower of humans who fill people with lies, have no remorse, have no character and basically they have a wilted soul. I can only pray for them in their disillusionment. I cannot change THEM I can only change ME! And this is what I strive for!

Romans 12:2 ESV “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Thank you Jesus! 

Now this is a post not many will like, maybe because of the truth it holds? My point is this I can call myself a Christian but it doesn’t mean I AM one. Just as I can call myself a butterfly but until I CHANGE from a caterpillar, I am just a caterpillar.

Thank you God! For making me, ME!

Psalm 19:14 ESV “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Lent: Day Eighteen ~ Quotation Saturday

~ Lent ~

"Lent is like a long 'retreat' during which we can turn back into ourselves and listen to the voice of God, in order to defeat the temptations of the Evil One. It is a period of spiritual 'combat' which we must experience alongside Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the arms of faith: prayer, listening to the word of God and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our Baptism."

~ Pope Benedict XVI

"Prayer does not change the purpose of God. But prayer does change the action of God." ~ Chuck Smith 

"Everything in life has its own time. There is time to celebrate and there is time to mourn. This is the time for reflection and transformation. Let us look within and change into what we ought to be." 

~ Aaron Saul

“During these 40 days, let me put away all my pride. Let me change my heart and give up all that is not good within me. Let me love God with all that I am and all that I have."

~ Genesis Grain

~ RENEWAL ~

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”
~ Vance Havner

“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”
~ Boris Pasternak

“The first step in conforming our intellect to God's truth is to die to our vanity, pride, and craving for respect from colleagues and the public. We must let go of the worldly motivations that drive us, praying to be motivated solely by a genuine desire to submit our minds to God's Word - and then to use that knowledge in service to others.”
~ Nancy Pearcey

 ~ LOVE ~

“Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -- by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.”
~ John Welwood

“A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.”
~ Mother Teresa

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
~ Paulo Coelho

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
~ William Shakespeare

 Isa. 63: 9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.

Quotation Saturday ~ Season of Lent

Pss. 51: 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

I need no explanation as to why I chose these quotes. This is the season of Lent and for the next seven weeks all, including Quotation Saturday, will pertain to Lent and the season culminating into Easter Sunday.

LENT

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.
“But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant.
“Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sin and not to judge my brother, for You are blessed from all ages to all ages. Amen”
~ Ephrem the Syrian

“God is not interested in your art but, your heart.”
~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

“As Lent is the time for greater love, listen to Jesus' thirst...'Repent and believe' Jesus tells us. What are we to repent? Our indifference, our hardness of heart. What are we to believe? Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor -- He knows your weakness. He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you."

~ Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

"Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God."
~ Andrew Murray

Renewal

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”
~ Vance Havner

“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.
The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.
And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”
~ Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring

“Renewal requires opening yourself up to new ways of thinking and feeling”
~ Deborah Day

“The first step in conforming our intellect to God's truth is to die to our vanity, pride, and craving for respect from colleagues and the public. We must let go of the worldly motivations that drive us, praying to be motivated solely by a genuine desire to submit our minds to God's Word - and then to use that knowledge in service to others.”
~ Nancy Pearcey

SPIRIT

“I challenge every one of you who can hear me to rise to the divinity within you. Do we really realize what it means to be a child of God, to have within us something of the divine nature?”
~ Gordon B. Hinckley

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
~ Hermann Hesse

“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.”
~ Mother Teresa

“[...] I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could.”
~ L.M. Montgomery

Lent ~ The Season of Renewal

“Sometimes God doesn’t change your situation because He’s trying to change your heart.” 

~ from Peace Be With You

Lent defined is this: the period preceding Easter that in the Christian Church is devoted to fasting, abstinence, and penitence in commemoration of Christ's fasting in the wilderness. In the Western Church it runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday and so includes forty weekdays.

Dan. 9: And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes:

I was raised in the Catholic religion and that meant Ash Wednesday we children would be marched off from School, across the street to the Church where we’d have a service and receive ashes in the form of the cross on our foreheads. The church always smelled so good on Ash Wednesday, the odor lingered for hours after the service departure.

We were not to remove the ashes and had to wear the cross of ashes on our forehead until it wore off or the next day. Imagine how that went over in a non-religious community. Boy was THAT a heavy load to carry a cross on my forehead for hours on end! But then it really made me think of the cross Jesus had to carry and it really was the beginning of rooting me in Christ.

I converted at the tender age of fourteen, much to the chagrin of my parents who were Catholic by mouth only, not religious by any means, they just deemed themselves Catholic. Christianity was my new course. I became a Born-again Christian.

I was mocked and persecuted more for becoming born-again than the ashes I wore on my forehead. Christianity was a heavier cross but one I was willing to carry for the rest of my life. It was as if I had become the bridesmaid and married Christ.

When I put it that way, it makes more sense doesn’t it? In marriage you vow to love, honor and cherish until death do you part? Well the good news was that I would never part with being married to Christ because He promised eternal life; then the hard part, being submissive and learning to LIVE Christ, another heavy cross.

Lent isn’t always about ‘giving something up’, it can also be about adding something that adds to the Glory of Christ. Say you don’t attend church, for Lent, you might want to attend every Sunday finishing up with the Easter service. A lot of people only attend TWO services a year, Easter and Christmas. Why? Doesn’t make sense.

Say you want to add time to your bible reading for lent; maybe attend a bible study group. All of these are a form of the sacrifice that Lent calls for. Adding bible scripture posts to your facebook wall IS NOT glorifying God, it is glorifying YOU. Glorifying yourself is not what Lent is about.

If it was warmer out, this is the time I’d be outside communing with nature. Instead my communing with nature will have to wait a few days and I’ll just walk and talk to the empty fields that will soon burst forth with life. Yes, to me, communing with nature is communing with God. God IS mother nature. God IS father time. God IS all those emotions you feel running through your veins. BUT God IS NOT hate! When you feel the need to lash out, sure, claim it as ‘just stating an opinion’, but really you are drawing AWAY from God and filling yourself with HATE. Then that negative energy will reseed and grow. That is also NOT what Lent is about.

Lent to me is sacrificing for God. Lent to me is a spiritual renewal ending on Easter Sunday when I celebrate my New Year’s Day. Lent to me is Glorifying God in all I do and not myself.

1 Cor. 7: 5 Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.