{"id":651,"date":"2022-06-13T19:12:57","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T19:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/?p=651"},"modified":"2022-06-13T19:12:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T19:12:57","slug":"dec-22-that-you-may-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/dec-22-that-you-may-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Dec. 22 – That You May Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of\u00a0the disciples, which are not written in this book; but\u00a0these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is\u00a0the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you\u00a0may have life in his name.<\/em>\u00a0\u2014John 20:30\u201331<\/p>\n

\nI feel so strongly that among those of us who have grown\u00a0up in church and who can recite the great doctrines of\u00a0our faith in our sleep and who yawn through the Apostles\u00a0Creed\u2014that among us something must be done to help\u00a0us once more feel the awe, the fear, the astonishment, the\u00a0wonder of the Son of God, begotten by the Father from\u00a0all eternity, refecting all the glory of God, being the very\u00a0image of his person, through whom all things were created,\u00a0upholding the universe by the word of his power.\u00a0You can read every fairy tale that was ever written, every\u00a0mystery thriller, every ghost story, and you will never find\u00a0anything so shocking, so strange, so weird and so spell binding as the story of the incarnation of the Son of God.How dead we are! How callous and unfeeling to his\u00a0glory and his story! How often have I had to repent and\u00a0say, \u201cGod, I am sorry that the stories men have made up\u00a0stir my emotions, my awe and wonder and admiration and\u00a0joy, more than your own true story.\u201d\u00a0The space thrillers of our day, like\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The\u00a0Empire Strikes Back<\/em>, can do this great good for us: they\u00a0can humble us and bring us to repentance, by showing us\u00a0that we really are capable of some of the wonder and awe\u00a0and amazement that we so seldom feel when we contemplate the eternal God and the cosmic Christ and a real living contact between them and us in Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0When Jesus said, \u201cFor this I have come into the world,\u201d he\u00a0said something as crazy and weird and strange and eerie as any\u00a0statement in science faction that you have ever read (John 18:37).O, how I pray for a breaking forth of the Spirit of God\u00a0upon me and upon you. I pray for the Holy Spirit to break\u00a0into my experience in a frightening way, to wake me up to\u00a0the unimaginable reality of God.\u00a0One of these days lightning is going to fll the sky from\u00a0the rising of the sun to its setting, and there is going to\u00a0appear in the clouds one like a son of man with his mighty\u00a0angels in faming free. And we will see him clearly. And\u00a0whether from terror or sheer excitement, we will tremble\u00a0and we will wonder how, how we ever lived so long with\u00a0such a domesticated, harmless Christ.\u00a0These things are written that you might believe that\u00a0Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world.\u00a0Really<\/em>\u00a0believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of\u00a0the disciples, which are not written in this book; but\u00a0these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is\u00a0the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you\u00a0may have life in his name.\u00a0\u2014John 20:30\u201331 I feel so strongly that among those of us who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vcf.church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}