The Bristow’s dot COM

Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.

James 1:22-26 NLT

This verse has been very meaningful in my life the past couple of days. Jaime and I have been faced with a huge decision. The choice to adopt two children and have a baby or just have the baby. There are a number of things that we have thought about, from ‘coincidences’, to the process that we have gone through the past 6 months. And this verse from James has been on my mind these past few days. Last night I believe the full weight of what we are doing landed on me, and I don’t mean this in a negative way. We had an initial visit with the kids last night, and although it was short with little interaction I feel very energized that we are following God and doing the right thing. I believe I also grasp how huge the responsibility is, and also how huge this will be in the lives of the Children.

James says that “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” And this is not because the person helping an orphan or helping a widow is somehow a great person. The greatness has nothing to do with the person helping, but with the obedience of that person to see a need and step in to help. Verse 22 says “Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.” And helping orphans and widows is part of making God’s words real and active. Allowing His words to not simply be theoretical or good ideas, but real and active and meaningful in our lives and the lives of others.

I honestly believe that if Jaime and I were to step away from trying to adopt these children right now, that we would be guilty, that we would be sinning. It is our desire and our responsibility to be agents of the Father in the lives of these children. We know the road will be long, and difficult. Probably far more difficult than we actually think. But we know that God is great and that when we follow Him, we are always in the best situation possible.

So, we are excited to be taking steps of faith that others may never understand because our Father is with us and preparing the way before us.

There is a lot in American culture that distracts us from truly celebrating Christmas. To an observer the meaning of Christmas might appear to be about gifts, or spending time with family. Yet, Christmas is not supposed to be about gifts, or even family. It is about the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is for this that we celebrate Christmas.

Below is the real Christmas Story according to Luke in a letter to Theopholis.

Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught.

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold
When Herod was king of Judea, there was a Jewish priest named Zechariah. He was a member of the priestly order of Abijah, and his wife, Elizabeth, was also from the priestly line of Aaron. Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God’s eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments and regulations. They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old.

One day Zechariah was serving God in the Temple, for his order was on duty that week. As was the custom of the priests, he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense. While the incense was being burned, a great crowd stood outside, praying.

While Zechariah was in the sanctuary, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar. Zechariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him. But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John. You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and he will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly.”

Zechariah said to the angel, “How can I be sure this will happen? I’m an old man now, and my wife is also well along in years.”

Then the angel said, “I am Gabriel! I stand in the very presence of God. It was he who sent me to bring you this good news! But now, since you didn’t believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak until the child is born. For my words will certainly be fulfilled at the proper time.”

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah to come out of the sanctuary, wondering why he was taking so long. When he finally did come out, he couldn’t speak to them. Then they realized from his gestures and his silence that he must have seen a vision in the sanctuary.

When Zechariah’s week of service in the Temple was over, he returned home. Soon afterward his wife, Elizabeth, became pregnant and went into seclusion for five months. “How kind the Lord is!” she exclaimed. “He has taken away my disgrace of having no children.”
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”

The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she’s now in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”

Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.
Mary Visits Elizabeth
A few days later Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to the town where Zechariah lived. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”

Mary responded,

“Oh, how my soul praises the Lord.
How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!
For he took notice of his lowly servant girl,
and from now on all generations will call me blessed.
For the Mighty One is holy,
and he has done great things for me.
He shows mercy from generation to generation
to all who fear him.
His mighty arm has done tremendous things!
He has scattered the proud and haughty ones.
He has brought down princes from their thrones
and exalted the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away with empty hands.
He has helped his servant Israel
and remembered to be merciful.
For he made this promise to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children forever.”

Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months and then went back to her own home.
The Birth of John the Baptist
When it was time for Elizabeth’s baby to be born, she gave birth to a son. And when her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had been very merciful to her, everyone rejoiced with her.

When the baby was eight days old, they all came for the circumcision ceremony. They wanted to name him Zechariah, after his father. But Elizabeth said, “No! His name is John!”

“What?” they exclaimed. “There is no one in all your family by that name.” So they used gestures to ask the baby’s father what he wanted to name him. He motioned for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s surprise he wrote, “His name is John.” Instantly Zechariah could speak again, and he began praising God.

Awe fell upon the whole neighborhood, and the news of what had happened spread throughout the Judean hills. Everyone who heard about it reflected on these events and asked, “What will this child turn out to be?” For the hand of the Lord was surely upon him in a special way.

Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy:

“Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has visited and redeemed his people.
He has sent us a mighty Savior
from the royal line of his servant David,
just as he promised
through his holy prophets long ago.
Now we will be saved from our enemies
and from all who hate us.
He has been merciful to our ancestors
by remembering his sacred covenant—
the covenant he swore with an oath
to our ancestor Abraham.
We have been rescued from our enemies
so we can serve God without fear,
in holiness and righteousness
for as long as we live.

“And you, my little son,
will be called the prophet of the Most High,
because you will prepare the way for the Lord.
You will tell his people how to find salvation
through forgiveness of their sins.
Because of God’s tender mercy,
the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
and to guide us to the path of peace.”

John grew up and became strong in spirit. And he lived in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel.

The Birth of Jesus

At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.

And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
The Shepherds and Angels

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”

Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.

——————– Luke Chapters 1-2:20 from the New Living Translation

This past Sunday my former boss, Jean Steinberg, passed away. She had been fighting cancer for a number of years. About one year ago I learned that she was a Christian and that she knew her cancer was terminal. My brother in-law, Greg, passed away at the end of last year from cancer, so Jean and I would sometimes talk about this experience. She was confident of where she was going, because of her faith in Jesus. She was a very strong woman and kept working no matter how bad she would feel.

Yesterday evening I attended her memorial service in Fort Myers. Some of her brothers and sisters were there, and I was overjoyed that they were all very dedicated Christians. So I know her daughter has a good network of family to help her through this loss. And a good number of Atos Origin employees came to the memorial service as well. The entire Memorial service was a testimony of the power of Christ in Jean’s life. I would suspect that the majority of the people attending the memorial service were not followers of Jesus. And this is when I realized why Christians die.

On occasion, I have wondered what my memorial or funeral service will be like. I know this may sound odd, but I do daydream about this sort of thing. I always imagine Christian friends and family being there, and knowing that they cared about me. But last night I realized, Jean had a close network of people who were not followers of Jesus. Most of the people that came to her memorial service heard a message that they desperately need to respond to. Her life became a testimony to them. And I believe that this is why Christians die. So that Christians can be a testimony to those who are not followers of Christ.

I want my memorial service to be full of people who need to know Christ. I want the recounting of my life to be a testimony to those who do not know Jesus. I want to be building connections now with people who are not already followers of Jesus. That is what life is truly about, sharing God with everyone around us. Hopefully, these connections will not be so weak that it takes my death for them to hear the gospel, but I recognize that for many people, death is the only thing that shakes people hard enough that they will take Gods message seriously.

Until last night I had sometimes wondered why Christians die. I mean couldn’t God spare his children from death? And yesterday evening I realized that it is truly simple. We die so that others can come and hear our testimony at a time when they may actually listen and understand the message.

I know Christians can sometimes be critical of other Christians who spend time with non-believers. But I am coming to realize, that if we only surround ourselves with Christians that we end up living in a bubble where the Kingdom of God is hindered. And I think it is for this reason that I have felt a strong pull to stay away from full time ministry. Full time ministry so often pulls you into the largest of Christian bubbles. Jean’s life has been a great example to me, and I look forward to the day that I can share with her again in paradise the blessing that her testimony was to those left behind.

Here is the text from Jean’s Obituary as published in the news-press on November 7th, 2007

Guestbook for Jean Steinberg

Dr. Watson is currently in the news because he has made some controversial statements. Here is what he said that is causing such a stir in the media today:

Dr Watson is �inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa� because �all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours � whereas all the testing says not really�, and I know that this �hot potato� is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that �people who have to deal with black employees find this not true�. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because �there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don�t promote them when they haven�t succeeded at the lower level�. He writes that �there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so�.

The last remarks above in bold are the ones I want to focus on at the moment. Dr. Watson has made a logical leap that others who believe in Evolution just don’t want to make. That if humans evolved in different regions to produce various races, then we can expect to observe that we have all evolved differently. His claim is that since Africans evolved in Africa that they evolved differently from Europeans, and that one difference is intelligence. Everyone is offended by this, yet they are not realizing that the problem is that this idea is inherently a part of what the theory of Evolution teaches. The theory of evolution gives credence to anyone who wants to claim that one race is better than another. Essentially, Racism.

Dr. Watson has simply followed his world view to the logical conclusion. That if humans are the product of millions of years of evolution, then some races of humans have evolved at different paces.

The truth is that we are not a product of evolution, but a product of creation. When we understand that we have all been created, then the idea that any race could be better than another becomes ridiculous. I doubt that many people will read Dr. Watson’s words and realize that the problem goes to the heart of one of the fundamental beliefs that many Americans hold, that the human species evolved into what we are now. When we look at the world through an understanding that we have all been created, we can see each other as equal even though we look different. We can see each other as important even though we may have different cultures. The simple fact that God created humans is unifying and should extend beyond race and culture.

So then if Dr. Watson’s research proves to be valid, how can the disparity of intelligence possibly be explained? I am no expert, but I have been to Africa and the living conditions there are far from ideal. I suspect that if anyone (regardless of race) had to live in poor conditions that their focus on life would be on survival. Not developing critical thinking skills for an intelligence exam.

So, if you are shocked at Dr. Watson’s statements and you believe in Evolution, you should seriously look at what you believe and try to follow any belief you might have to any logical conclusion, and I make this challenge to Christians as well. Don’t simply believe something. Think about what you believe and explore where the logical conclusion of your beliefs will take you.

I watched a video the other day by a guy named Rob Bell called, ‘Dust’. This video taught me something that I had never heard before. Not to brag, but usually this is not the case. I often hear things that get me thinking about something differently, but rarely is something completely knew placed in front of me. This video answered a question I have had for a while, one that I have never heard a satisfactory answer about. That question was: “Why did Jesus disciples drop everything and follow him when Jesus said ‘Come, follow me.’” I have always thought, that there must be more to this story. Maybe the gospel writers left out some important instructions between Jesus and these men. The most common teaching I have heard to answer this question has been that they just knew that Jesus was special, but I honestly have never bought that simple explanation. They knew one thing about Jesus at this point, that He was a Rabbi. Until I watched this video by Rob Bell I didn’t understand how powerful that simple fact truly is in understanding Jesus disciples. So I recommend getting your hands on ‘Dust’ if possible or check out the sermon video at the bottom of this blog post where Rob Bell explains Discipleship at a Church. (this is an excellent video but is a bit longer than the ‘Dust’ video)

Here is a teaser of the ‘Dust’ video. (Only about a minute and a half of the 14 minute video)

Discipleship Video
I found this video online, it isn’t the Dust video, but it is Rob Bell explaining a lot of the information presented in the full ‘Dust’ video. I highly recommend watching this video to understand what it means to be a disciple in the context that Jesus disciples understood it.