A WIMP FREE CHRISTMAS

Fear and Loathing in Las-Christmas

As a Church leader I am happy about the opportunity to use the Christmas season and the culture to reach people with the Good news that Christ was born. But truth be told, as an average guy I feel the same kind of feeling right before Christmas that I do right after a chili cook-off. Not that I hate Christmas, I love Christmas, I just hate my inability to do so much of the Christmas thing right.
For instance, I am fearful of phrases like, “Some assembly required.” As far as I am concerned, in most cases, you might as well have placed that sticker on a Jarvis mechanical heart. I know I’m not alone in this. The outside sound of slamming car doors sends terror into many hearts and signals the annual migration of the dysfunctional family members. People you can’t believe are in your same gene pool and proof that in some cases, cousins still kiss.
If there is anything I know about Christmas , it is that Christmas is not for wimps. Its always been like that.

Holi-daze

Two thousand years ago, a young girl had to tell her fiancée that she was pregnant, it wasn’t his child but not to worry because it was a “God thing”. From there things went rapidly down hill for Mary setting the first precedent that Christmas season would be marked with emotional trauma.
Nine months later she found her self seventy miles south in the middle eastern version of the Mardi Gras. Bethlehem was over ran with lots of stressed out people that didn’t want to be there. The houses were packed, the hotels overbooked and the traffic was horrendous. Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it? From the very beginning Christmas has not been for the faint of heart.

Manger Danger

When you consider all the mess and stress that goes with Christmas time you might be tempted to wonder if the hassle is even worth it. That is until you catch a glimpse of the child whose birth splits time from BC to AD.
I know that Christ-o-phobes would love to haul baby Jesus off like the Lindbergh kidnapper but you cant take Christ out of Christmas When you do all you have is a big mas. For those of us who are silly enough to believe in the biblical version, Christmas time is the point on our calendars where we remind ourselves God has done what none of the rest of us could have. More than that, He did it for us.

Mission Impossible

When none other than Gabriel himself was sent on the special mission to announce the birth of Jesus. He said a whole lot of things to little Mary but one phrase stands out that makes Christmas worth shouting about “With God nothing shall be impossible.”
What couldn’t be pulled off had been pulled off. What couldn’t be made right had been made right. That which was impossible became tangible reality and it has been that way ever since.
Because Christ is born in my life, I can say what used to be impossible is no longer impossible. What couldnt be made right can be made right in an instant. Every Christian on the planet has the capacity to live life with constant awareness that nothing is impossible. All that started in an overlooked stable a few miles south of Jerusalem nearly two thousands years ago.

Tough enough for Christmas

So when you start to stress out I encourage you to know that it has always taken true grit to celebrate the impossible birth that hits home with us today. May you be blessed in spite of what is against you and because Christ is born, really believe that these are the days where anything is possible.
On behalf of the Brewer family and the congregation of Open Door Church, we wish you a very merry and wimp free Christmas Season.

www.opendoorexpereince.com

Learning Happiness from "the Dumps."

About ten years ago I made my first trip to the border and across into the trash dumps of Matamoras. It was a lot like going to the moon for me. Anytime you get out of your box you are likely to hear God speak to your heart in a profound way. It tends to be dangerous territory because when you really hook up with the heart of God, you tend to get changed. I have discovered Jesus never leaves me the same way He finds me.

I had seen things on TV. I had an idea of what to expect, but I was completely unprepared for the effect it would have on me personally. I went to Mexico and came back completely different. The impact of those beautiful people in that terrible place was so strong that in some ways it defines me today. A lot of the ways I think and deal with life’s issues, the Lord taught me from a trash-dump pulpit. I still go back there four or five time a year. It’s something like another semester in Brewer’s theological seminary.

Planes and Trains

It’s not the traveling part that changed me. Yes I’m a gringo, but hardly a greenhorn. I’ve been to India twice, Uganda four times, all over Central America and even made an illegal missionary trip to Cuba. The trips we take tend to be rugged, raw and off the beaten path. Always on the bad part of town.

Still traveling has its perks. I’ve prayed at the wall in Jerusalem, suffered for Jesus from hammocks on the Caribbean and had the high honor of addressing the King in his actual palace at Kampala. I have had just as great an honor in hugging leprosy victims at a colony in Asia. It’s been awesome.

I’ve been so sick in Nicaragua that the locals put me in a 50-gallon oil drum full of water to cool my fever down. I’ve been so pampered I’ve eaten steak from first class on Singapore Airlines with a ticket I didn’t even pay for.

I’ve seen little kids in East Africa playing with a deadly black mamba snake and two men fight to the death with machetes for money in Cuba. I have actually witnessed Muslim rebels coming into Western Uganda from Congo and seen the village after they got through with it. I’ve also seen people have so much mercy and compassion it defies explanation.

My son and I were robbed in a taxi in Bombay. I have protested anti-American protestors in downtown London and dawned a kilt in Scotland. When my wife and I were offered marijuana in Jamaica, I said, “No thanks brother, we are Christians.” The drug dealer smiled, gave me a big hug and said, “Yo mon, I am too!” He promised me the “weed of wisdom” would help me receive a higher revelation.

That’s just scratching the surface so when I say the Matamoras dump had a profound effect on me its not because I don’t get out much. In fact, I have been back to the dumps nearly sixty times since then, taken hundreds of people with me and nearly half a million pounds of food. It affects me because I want it to. Matamoras makes my priorities rightly align. It makes me realize how privileged I really am.

A Higher Education

Last week, we took 2,200 backpacks and tote bags stuffed full of toys to the kids in Brownsville (TX), Matamoras (Mexico) and yes, even to the city dump. The advantage of loving on kids and giving things away is one of the greatest gifts God has personally given me. My wife and I not only take a bunch of crazy people from the church down there but we always take our kids with us too. The impact it has made on them has been just as incredible.

This Christmas we will be in our little house on our little spot in Johnson County, Texas. We will have just come back from another experience in the trash dump of a major Mexican city. We will know we are blessed. We will know life is special and we will know that God’s goodness is overwhelming.

We won’t have an exuberant amount of gifts to give each other because we spent it all on our trip. But what we will have is happiness and appreciation. Sometimes happiness is wanting what you already have. I learned that in the dump.

Merry Christmas friends and may you be blessed with a Christmas of wanting what you already have.

Psalms 63:5 (NLV)
"You satisfy me more than the richest feast.
I will praise you with songs of joy."

The Gift That Keeps On Giving!

I write this sip of flavored wisdom on my birthday. I know its later than December 6^th when you read this but its takes the Brewer a little more than a week to grind his column, but please feel free to send gifts.

December 6^th is not only known for the glorious day God blessed the world with my 3 pounds of splendor (my how I’ve grown since then) but it is also famous for being known as the day America got drunk. About 30 years before I was born, prohibition ended on December 5^th and most of America went to have a legal drink on the next day. I think God has a big sense of humor about a lot things and having me born on that day is somehow poetic. I have probably driven several people to drinking. Sorry, but still feel free to send gifts.

Kill the Grinch

The whole world is about to celebrate the birthday of the greatest troublemaker and peace giver ever seen. Christmas might have an X in the name of your holiday but you probably are still going to give or get a gift or two. The whole gift-giving thing goes back to the original scene. Wise men from the east of Israel came to Bethlehem with three kinds of gifts that would bank role Mary and Joseph on their exiled trip to Egypt.

If you look at those three gifts in the book of Matthew, we discover an important, yet often-overlooked, theological fact; in this account, there is no mention of wrapping paper.

If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said, "And lo, the gifts were encompassed about with 7 square cubits of paper. The paper was covered within and without with pictures of Frosty, a man of snow.

Joseph purposed in his heart to cast the paper into the barrel of refuse, but Mary saith unto him, ‘Cease man. Thou shalt not. For Mary had purposed in heart that the paper should be set-aside for future generations, and Joseph didst roll his eyeballs at the wonder of his wife. It came to pass that the babe was more interested in the paper than the frankincense.”

…But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were NOT wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics: 1. They were wise. 2. They were men not women.

Men are not big gift wrappers. Men do not understand the point of putting paper on a gift just so somebody else can tear it off. You can tell when I have wrapped a gift because it’s either in a hefty bag with a bow on it or it looks like a giant spitball.

For some reason, I can never completely wrap a gift. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards and put it the exact center of a section of wrapping paper the size of a rodeo arena but when I am done folding and taping, you can still see a piece of the gift poking out.

On the other hand, if you give my wife a 12-inch square of wrapping paper, she can wrap a C-130 cargo plane. My stepmother, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is bordering on mental illness.

Roll Your Own

The editors of Woman's Day magazine recently ran an item on how to make your own wrapping paper by printing a design on it with an apple sliced in half horizontally and dipped in a mixture of food coloring and liquid starch. Those people are smoking crack and need to get a job!

Remember that the important thing is not what you give, or even how you wrap it. The important thing, during this very special time of year, is that you save the receipt. Because most of us knucklehead men don’t have since when it comes to buying gifts anyway.

I find that Jesus Christ, who the Bible calls the unspeakable gift, does tend to come gift-wrapped. Part of the journey of Christianity is about discovery and revelation. Jesus Christ is not the guy that lives in the building with a big steeple on it, take that wrapper off and you discover He’s the God that lives with you in your living room even when its messy. He loves it when we unwrap him from religion and our pain and see him for who he really is. Yes wise men and girls still seek him and yes, incredibly blessed people still receive Him for the gift He really is.

Unwrapping Jesus as a gift is not a one-time thing. God’s goodness towards us is ongoing and never ending. It’s a progressive journey into an inheritance that is so awesome it will take an eternity for us to unwrap it. Keep unwrapping guys, and see Him this season in a way you’ve seen him before.

"Thanks be unto God for his UNSPEAKABLE gift.''--II Cor. 9:15