Prince of Peace

In Charles Dickens’ classic story, a Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is confronted by the ghosts of Christmas’ Past, Present and Future. When faced with his past, he laments the pain of the loss of his sister, and the gradual descent into the greedy miser that he became. In the frightening climax of the story, Ebenezer is horrified to see his bleak future of impending doom without a single person to mourn him.

More than likely, you won’t be visited by 3 spirits this Christmas Eve and if you are then maybe it’s time to put down the egg nogg. Even so, some of us are equally tormented about the choices and losses of our pasts or filled with worry about what lies ahead of us in our future. Today, we’ll continue our December series, bringing hope for the holidays, as we look to the Gospel to help us see how Christ not only redeems our pasts but gives hope for our futures.

So, how can we reconcile our past mistakes and move forward without having them hanging over us year after year? Well, a great place to start is to stop calling them mistakes! Have you ever noticed how we can have a tendency to minimize our own sinful choices while not being quite as gracious for about the sinful choices of others? Now, this isn’t everyone, but for a good number of us we use words like “mistakes,” “accidents,” or “errors in judgement” to describe what we have done. When we describe things that have been done to us, they are “hurtful attacks,” “violations” or “offenses.” If we want to find freedom from and forgiveness for our past, we need to aknowledge our sin as sin. James 5:15 and 16 tell us:

“And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

Jerrod – Confession is like a salve to your soul. Verbalizing what you’ve done wrong and admitting it to others that you trust relieves you from the burden of feeling like your past is going to catch up with you. Coming forward, taking personal responsibility and, when necessary, even submitting to corrective discipline, natural and potentially even civil consequence for your actions allows your past to stay in your past without fear of future reprisals. Confession and admittance of guilt can also help those whom you have wronged to begin to heal, as well. An excellent example of both of these sides of confession can be seen in the testimony of Zachaeus. If you’re not familiar with the story, Zachaeus was a wee little man and a tax collector, known to be a scoundrel and to overcharge his fellow Jews and keep the extra for himself. Jesus invited himself over to dinner at Zachaeus’ house and, in turn, Zachaeus experiences a radical transformation. Luke 19, verses 8-10 describe what happened.

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

When Jesus enters our lives, everything changes. For Zachaeus, he publicly confessed his theft and made recompence by repaying 4 times what he had stolen. These acts were not the cause of the salvation that Jesus spoke of, but a result of it. In one night, Zachaeus went from being a crook, a thief and a traitor to his people to a completely changed man whose past had been forgiven.

And what about the future? What do we do with our fears, our anxieties, our worries about tomorrow? Our past sins may be absolved, but our future is filled with uncertainties and all sorts of potential troubles.

Philippians 4 starting at the end of verse 5, we read:

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Lord is at hand, so there is nothing in the future that we need to be anxious or worried about. We have the ability to present our prayers to God and tell Him what we need, what we want and seek His guidance for everything that life throws our way. If we really understood how good this news is for us, we would never worry about anything again. We will constantly be faced with opportunities for distractions, for opportunities for worry, but we have the choice to give into fear or to give those fears to God and trade them for His peace.