The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Incarnation (Page 1 of 10)

Looking and Waiting

December 2, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Dallas Stars finally unveiled their brand new alternate sweater in Friday’s win over Utah and wore the new/old uniform again in Sunday’s rout of the Ottawa Senators. And they look so great. The design is almost an exact replica of the uniform the Stars wore during their Stanley Cup runs in the late ’90s and early 2000s and, by far, my favorite Stars look. There’s more black than green in this re-imagined version, and there’s no gold outline, no gold anywhere. But, man, I love the unique look of that sweater, the big and bold Lone Star feel to the whole thing. It goes very well with the way the team is playing right now.

If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for me, they’re selling these things.

Check out the video above, if not for Razor’s narration, for the sight of a gracefully-aged Brett Hull rockin’ the new sweater in front of an empty net. Is his foot in the crease?

“My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the nations and for glory to your people Israel.” ~Luke 2:30-32

The old man Simeon is looking at a baby, but he sees salvation from God. Anna is gazing at an infant, but she sees God’s deliverance.

“She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” ~Luke 2:38

You know why they saw it? You know why they recognized it? Because they were looking for it. The Scripture says they were waiting for the promised consolation, they were looking forward to the promised redemption. Anticipating it. Expecting it. Laying awake at night like a little kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t sleep because I can’t wait. It’s all I’m thinking about. Longing and yearning.

That’s Christian hope.

Our Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It’s a confident leaning, or even leaping, into the promise of God that he will one day make all things right. Something has happened that has changed our lives and redirected our destinies. Something has happened that changes everything. The holy Son of God came to this earth in our flesh and blood. He came! He did!

And he’s coming again. He is! He will! That’s the hope we’ve been given. That’s the hope we have.

And it’s real. Hope is real. Hope does not ignore anxiety and doubt and fear, it doesn’t ignore the bad stuff; it confronts it. Hope holds you steady in the face of the fear and anxiety and doubt by the conviction that truly great has happened and something even greater is going to happen again.

Hope waits for his coming. But it waits in a certain way.

Luke describes Simeon as righteous. He was living in peace with our God and with his neighbors. He was seeking the welfare of others. He was acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God. The Bible also says Simeon was devout. He was devoted to our God, he was committed to tackling the tasks the Lord had given him in a way to honor God. Anna is also righteous and devout. She’s described as worshiping and fasting and praying. Both of them are at home with God’s people in God’s house and being led by God’s Spirit.

Waiting and looking.

There were others at the temple that day who did not see God’s salvation in the holy infant. They hadn’t been hopefully longing for it. They hadn’t been waiting and looking. Maybe they were just going through the motions. Maybe they were just in maintenance mode. They were at the temple when they had to be. They prayed to God and read his Word when they remembered to. They spent most of their time at work, chasing their career. They worried about getting rich, or just breaking even. They were overly-consumed with parenting their children or improving their house. Or maybe they were too occupied with what it takes to just get through the end of each day.

At the end of Luke 19, Jesus weeps over the people who missed it: “You did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:44).

What are you waiting for in your life because of Jesus? Something out of the ordinary is in store for you. What do you see? Can you see the darkness in your circumstance being turned to light? Can you see the despair in your situation being turned to joy? Can you see the boring and mundane parts of your life being filled with excitement and purpose for our God and his salvation mission? The reality of what’s coming for you–better, who is coming for you–should compel you to a deeper devotion to God. And a life lived every hour of every day in breathless anticipation of his promises for you coming true.

Let us adopt the attitude of Jacob who prayed, “I look for your deliverance, O Lord” (Genesis 49:18). Let us commit to the way of the psalmist who sang, “I wait for your salvation, O Lord, and I follow your commands” (Psalm 119:166). Don’t miss it. Don’t be preoccupied with something else. Don’t be distracted by less important things and miss it.

Let us live like Simeon and Anna. Looking and waiting.

Peace,
Allan

Personal Relational Ministry

October 29, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Our vision statement at GCR Church is “Being Changed by God to Love Like Jesus.” It’s about both transformation and mission. It’s viewing everything through the lens of what God is doing both in us and through us. The vision emphasizes, without apology, the transformation of our people for the sake of loving others like our Lord. It’s our people doing ministry in personal and relational settings–being powerfully present with one another in our congregation and with others in our community.

We get that from our King. Thankfully, for us, it’s been part of our GCR DNA for several decades now.

 

 

 

 

 

Eugene Goudeau, in 1981, is one guy from GCR who said I must go to Brazil to help plant churches. That’s how SerCris Training School in Campo Grande got started.

John DeFore, 30 years ago, is one guy from GCR doing World Bible School correspondence courses with people in Kenya. He says I need to go meet these people, I need to do some personal follow-up with these new Christians. That’s how Kenya Widows and Orphans got started–KWO.

Jarrod Brown, 20 years ago, goes to Honduras with not much more than his Bible and a Toyota pickup. He said I want to live with these people, I want to do life with these people in their community. That’s how Mission Lazarus got started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we partner with our missionaries in foreign lands, it changes us. It transforms us. It informs and shapes the way we do missions here in Midland. Personal. Relational.

We don’t drop dinner off at Family Promise and leave. We sit down and we share a meal with the people at Family Promise.

We don’t do Harvest Party in our parking lot anymore. We take Harvest Party to the people at Family Promise and Midland FairHavens and Safe Place. I love the way we do Harvest Party now. All the pictures in this post are from the Harvest Party we threw for Family Promise this past Sunday evening.

 

 

 

 

 

We go inside Emerson Elementary and read books to the kids during lunch. We stand at their door on Mondays and fist bump all those little kids as they begin their week.

We don’t just pass out Thanksgiving food boxes in a drive-thru in our church parking lot anymore. We take time to visit with those we’re feeding. We pray with people. We hold their kids. We share desserts. We try to connect.

That’s our vision at GCR Church.

Personal. Relational.

Peace,
Allan

Opened from the Outside

December 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We can’t save ourselves, have you noticed? We’ve been trying for centuries. We are completely unable to save ourselves. In fact, believing we can somehow save ourselves has only led us into deeper darkness and loss. The forgiveness we desire, the acceptance we chase, the restoration we crave, the salvation we need only comes through God in Christ. It can only come from outside us as a gift.

On November 21, 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter from Tegel prison. He was being held by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler and for running an illegal underground seminary. In the middle of the letter, Bonhoeffer writes:

“Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent–one waits and hopes and potters about but, in the end, what we do is of little consequence, for the door is shut. And it can only be opened from the outside.”

For God so loved the world that he OPENED the door! For God so loved the world that he GAVE his one and only Son! God SENT his only Son for us as a gracious gift of his limitless love!

May we receive God’s gift of great joy to us. May we experience God’s presence with us. And may our hearts be changed so that God’s life is our life. Today and every day until our Lord Jesus comes again.

Peace,

Allan

 

God Gets You

December 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

If God really has been born in a manger in Bethlehem, then we have something no other religion in world history has ever claimed. We belong to a God who truly and totally understands you. He gets you, from the inside of your experience. There’s no other religion that says God has suffered, that God had to be courageous, that God knows what it’s like to be abandoned by his friends, to be crushed by injustice, to be tortured and to die. Christmas shows us that God knows exactly what you’re going through. When you talk to God in Christ, yes, he totally understands.

Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote this in the 1950s:

“The Incarnation means that God himself has gone through the whole of human experience–from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. He was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain–all for us–and thought it well worth his while.”

God taking on our everyday human condition is the means of our salvation. God reclaims us as his own by becoming one of us. That is good news of great joy for all of us. For you.

God joins you in the middle of your mess in order to save you. No one is so lost or so broken, YOU are not so far gone or so messed up that you are beyond God’s reach. Our God specializes in the mess. And I don’t care how messy your mess is, it doesn’t phase our God one bit. I don’t care how small or insignificant or unworthy you feel, you are exactly the one God came for.

God chose to be born in a manger and to come from Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Exactly! That’s the whole point!

This is how our God works. God brings his salvation to the ends of the earth not through the Egyptians or Romans, not through the Assyrians or Babylonians, but through Israel. He tells us he chose Israel because they are small and weak. God destroys Goliath, not with a bigger giant, but with a smaller shepherd boy the giant was laughing at. That’s the way God works. How does God speak to Elijah? Not through the earthquake or the wind or the fire, but through a small, still voice. A whisper. God works through Isaac, not Ishmael. He works through Jacob, not Esau. God works through Joseph and David, not their older brothers. God chooses old broken down Sarah, not young vibrant Hagar. He chooses unattractive Leah, not beautiful Rachel. He chooses Rebekah, who can’t have children. He chooses Hannah, who can’t have children. He chooses Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who can’t have children.

Why?

Over and over again our God says, “I will choose Nazareth over Jerusalem. I will choose the girl nobody wants. I will choose the boy everyone’s forgotten.”

Why? Because God just likes the underdog?

No. Because God is telling us something about salvation itself. Every other religion and moral philosophy in history tells you to summon up your strength and willpower and try real hard to live like you’re supposed to. That appeals to the strong. That appeals to gifted and talented people, people who are privileged, people who are able to pull it all together. Jesus is the only one who says, “I have come for the weak. I have come for those who admit they’re weak. I will save them not by what they do, but by what I do.”

Can anything good come from __________? Fill in the blank with your own mess, your own situation, your own failure. Go ahead. What is your shortcoming, your burden, your sin, your circumstance? Can anything good come from there?

If you repent and come to God through Jesus, not only will God accept you and work in you and through you, but he absolutely delights to work in and through people just like you. He’s been doing it through all of world history.

I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone or how far away you are. It doesn’t matter how dark it is or how bad. Christ Jesus is all in. He’s all in with you and he’s all in for you. He knows all about you and your past failures and your present situation. He knows. And he’s still all in.

That’s the best news you’ve ever heard.

Peace,

Allan

Best. News. Ever.

December 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

If God really was born in a manger in Bethlehem, then we have something no other religion in the world has ever claimed. God became a human being. God himself, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth, has become one with us by becoming one of us. The best news in the whole world is that God and us are brought together in Jesus. In fact, God taking on our everyday human condition is the means of our salvation. God reclaims us as his own by becoming one of us. That’s the best news ever!

But a lot of us are missing it.

I saw a survey early last week from 2022 that showed 43% of U.S. Christians agree with this statement: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.”

How can that be? That’s impossible! Unless Jesus is both 100% fully God and 100% fully human at the same time, the Gospel is powerless to save. The Good News is just an empty announcement.

Think about, in the Bible, how people responded to Jesus. It’s mostly over-the-top extreme reactions. Nobody was ever just “meh” about Jesus. Some are so furious with him they try to throw him off a cliff. Others are so terrified they cry out, “Go away from me!” Others fall down before him and worship. Why all the extremes?

Because if Jesus is God, then you have to change and center your entire life around him. If he is not God, then he is someone to hate or fear. No other response makes any sense; it can only be one of the two extremes. Either Jesus is God or he’s not. So he’s either absolutely crazy and dangerous or he’s infinitely wonderful and good.

But our world is filled with people who say they believe in Jesus, they say they understand who he is, but it hasn’t revolutionized their lives. There’s no change. They still look and think and act like everybody else. The only way to explain this is that, contrary to what they claim, they haven’t really understood the meaning of Immanuel, that Jesus Christ is God with us.

The Advent of Christ, the arrival of Jesus changes everything. If anyone is in Christ, there is new creation! The old has gone, the new has come! Ezekiel says we’re given a new heart and a new spirit. Romans 12 says we’re given a new mind. Jesus tells us we’re given a new identity and a new family in him. And at the end of Matthew 19, Jesus gives us the hope of living in a brand new world, what he calls the renewal of all things!

Something has happened. Something has been done. And it totally changes everything. It’s the best news you’ve ever heard. And it gives you and it gives all of us a whole new world.

Peace,

Allan

The Second Incarnation

October 5, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Jesus is the incarnation of God. Incarnation just means flesh and blood. The Gospel of John says the Word of God – the will of God, who God is and what God wants for the world – became flesh and blood in Jesus so we could see it and know it. In his own words, Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” You see it and you know it. You get it because you’ve experienced it in me.

The Church is the second incarnation. And, yes, we are mostly a mess. We’re just like the people Jesus called to follow him, just like the people he surrounded himself with: ordinary fishermen and business people, blind people, loose women, weak men, liars and cheaters and cowards. And people who’ve been hurt. All of us have been injured. We’re all wounded and put back together with duct tape and twistie ties. And grace.

Grace that in Christ we are God’s chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. It’s a great mystery, but for some reason the Church is the way Jesus has chosen to be real and present in the world. He lives in us and through us by his Spirit. His heart beats in our chests, his eyes see through ours; when we speak, his voice is heard; and his welcome is felt in our embrace. We are the flesh and blood Body of Christ.

When people see the Church, they expect to experience God. When Jesus says, “You give them something to eat,” he’s talking to you. He’s talking to us.

Peace,

Allan

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