“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52 NIV84).

For many years I have made it a habit to spend the last week of the year in prayer, meditation and Scripture study. I call it my annual study break. It’s also a time to evaluate how I am living life. I want to be intentional about how I live. It’s so easy to let the urgent and the maintenance stuff of life fill up my days. I want to know that I have focused on the important.

I have developed a tool for setting annual goals and for self-evaluation that I call my “Luke 2:52 Goals.” Reading a description of how Jesus grew in Luke 2:52 motivatied me to want to grow in those same ways. If Jesus grew, than I want to be like Jesus. I want to grow too.

Notice that Jesus grew in four areas. He grew in wisdom, stature, in favor with God and in favor with men. For the benefit of my goal sheet, I list these four growth areas as follows:

1. Mental. 
2. Physical.
3. Spiritual.
4. Social.

Under each category I list several items of which I believe God wants me to focus or where I want to grow for personal reasons. I try not to list too many things. I keep the total list small enough so that it fits on a single page. I usually post it in my church office and home study, so that I can see it every day.

Under “Mental” I might list: 1) Read a book a month, 2) Learn to play the banjo, 3) Take a course in Latin, 4) Attend a leadership conference, 5) Write four articles for the Wilson Times…

For “Physical” my list might be: 1) Lose 20 pounds to weigh 185, 2) Workout at Y three days a week, 3) Get a physical…

The “Spiritual” category might have items like: 1) Read the One Year Bible every day and post a comment about it on facebook, 2) Memorize the Sermon on the Mount, 3) Take a Sabbath day weekly to recharge and reflect, 4) Take two days quarterly and one week annually to reflect and study what God wants of me…

“Social” might include: 1) Take Robin out on a date weekly (Friday night), 2) Be active in a WCC Community Group, 3) Spend quality time with my family (Sunday lunches and Combs family vacation in September), 4) Reach out to and pray for my neighbors (I name them specifically)…

I know that it is God’s job to cause me to grow more like Jesus. He is the One who will accomplish it. But I want to cooperate. I want to yield to the Spirit’s pull.

I want to grow more like Jesus. Don’t you?

“If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14 NIV84).

“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world… Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels…And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46 NKJV).

What happens when we die? This is the oldest of human questions. Both our greatest philosophers and scientists have applied themselves to this mystery, yet the question remains.

Is there life after death?

We rarely wrestle with this question on the sunny days of our lives. It is the gloomy day of suffering and trial that moves us to wonder. It is the dark day of grieving a lost loved one that causes us to hope of a day of reunion. It is the day a doctor says “malignant” that we cry out to God for answers.

Job asked this question. When he had lost all his children and all of his wealth, when his body was covered with sores and he sat grieving in ashes, he longed for an answer. He hoped for a life beyond this one.

Jesus is God’s answer to our question about life after death. Jesus is the one who conquered death. His resurrection is the historical proof of life after death.

It is Jesus who holds the keys of life and death. He has the authority to answer this ultimate question. And it is Jesus who teaches us that what we do with His answer will determine our future destiny.

Jesus taught that there are two places prepared by God for all of humanity. He taught that He would be the Judge who would determine in which we would reside. His judgment is righteous and sure.

For those who believe and receive Jesus in this life as their Savior and Lord, He will welcome into His Kingdom. This is a prepared place, a heavenly place where believers will dwell with the Lord forever. For those who choose to reject Him and go their own way, He will reject them and send them into a place of everlasting punishment.

The Bible teaches that man was created to exist eternally. The decision we make in this life about Jesus will determine where we spend eternity. There are only two possible destinies: Heaven or Hell. Heaven and Hell are real places of eternal existence.

How one answers the question, “Is there life after death?” really matters.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.  I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30 ESV).

“I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5 ESV).

My son Jonathan has always liked to run. When he was a toddler, you really had to keep your eye on him because he would run off and leave you without ever looking back.

He once scared us nearly to death at the local grocery store. We had just gotten him out of the shopping cart and turned to load the groceries, when he took off running across the parking lot. I sprinted to catch him just before he ran in front of a car.

I wonder who people would have blamed if he had been run over? Would they have said, “Tough luck. The kid shouldn’t have run. He should have listened better to his father.”

No. I think they would have blamed me. I know that I blamed myself for even letting it be such a close call. From that day forward, I always kept my hand on Jonathan. Sometimes he would take both of his little hands and try and pry loose, but I held firm. He was not getting free of my grip.

Isn’t that what good fathers do? They hold firmly to their child’s hand. They won’t let anyone “snatch them” from their protective grip.

And isn’t our God a great father? The Word says that He will not let anyone “snatch” those of us who belong to Him out of His hand. He says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

I’ve never worried that God would leave me, but I have been concerned about myself. What if I decide to up and run off?

Well, God didn’t stutter when He said “never leave” and “never forsake.” The first means He won’t leave us. The second means that He won’t let go. He won’t forsake hanging on to us.

This is called the doctrine of eternal security. The idea is that the God who saved us by grace, keeps us by grace. For the Calvinist, this is the “P” in their “TULIP” (Perseverance of the saints). Although they are right to observe that those who are saved will persevere to the end, I think they are putting the emphasis in the wrong place. It isn’t the saint’s perseverance. It’s God’s. Eternal security puts the emphasis on Him, not us.

God just won’t let go of my hand.

“I will not leave you as orphans;I will come to you” (John 14:18 ESV).

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16 ESV).

[Adoption] “is the highest privilege that the gospel offers; higher even than justification… justification is the primary blessing, so it is the fundamental blessing, in the sense that everything else in salvation assumes it, and rests on it– adoption included. But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves… To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater” (J. I. Packer, Knowing God).

This photo hangs over the fireplace at my brother’s home. It captures a moment in time when our parents were still living and we were happily safe in their care. Only a couple of years later, my mother had another child, a daughter, and within a year my father died of cancer.

It’s amazing how life changes when a home becomes fatherless.

My mother didn’t handle my father’s passing very well, so we moved from Virginia to Michigan to live with my mother’s sister. At the age of eight, I left my third grade classmates, my own bedroom, our southern yard to play in and my collie dog for the cold climes and shared quarters of a small suburban home outside Detroit. We were all aching with grief.

Later that year, in Sunday School at a church in Wayne, Michigan, I made a public profession of faith. I had heard the gospel all my life, but now I saw the reality of death and eternity with greater clarity. I wanted to be sure that I was ready to meet God when I died. I also wanted to be with my Daddy again.

The following years of my life were marked by the absence of my father. As I grew into my teen years, I began to rebel against my mother and against God. I believed in God, but I didn’t trust Him. After all, He had allowed my father to die. I knew that I needed Christ to justify me before Him, but I didn’t think that He wanted my best in this life. So, I tried to walk a fine line between receiving Christ as Savior without following Him as Lord.

It was as a teenager that a youth leader asked me why I wasn’t more serious about my faith. He said that he could tell that I believed, but my life didn’t line up with my faith. He asked, “Have you made Christ the Lord of your life?”

I tried to change the subject, but he was persistent, so I finally acknowledged that I was afraid of God. I knew He existed. I had trusted Christ as Savior. But I certainly wasn’t ready to surrender control of my life to the God who took my father away.

Hearing my response, he asked, “If your father was still living and you told him that you loved him and wanted to obey him and to be just like him, would he grab you by the shoulders and shake you? Would he look you in the eyes and say that he was happy to have you as his slave because now he would make your life miserable?”

“No way! My Dad was my best friend!” I shouted. “In fact, I used to tell him all the time that I wanted to grow up to be just like him. And he would say that he loved me, that he was so proud of me and that he would do anything for me.” I responded.

“Well,” my youth leader continued, “Your Heavenly Father loves you even more than that! And He is waiting for you to call on Him as Father. If you ask for fish, he won’t give you a snake. And if you ask for bread, he won’t feed you rocks!”

It was on that day that I began to call on God as Father. I started trusting Him with control of my life. Since then, my father wound that hurt with an aching grief, has been replaced with the joy of knowing the Lord as “Abba, Father.”

I am so happy that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, offering Himself as a propitiation through His shed blood that justified me before the Judge of Righteousness. This is a great blessing. But I am forever changed by the even greater blessing of God’s adopting me as His own son. I am a co-heir with Christ. All that belongs to Him is mine and all that is mine is His.

And someday both my Dad and I, along with all of God’s children, will stand before our Heavenly Father together, worshiping Him forevermore.

“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

“Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth” (Traditional Hebrew blessing of the bread).

I’m sure the disciples were surprised by the words that Jesus said after he gave the traditional word of blessing over the bread. They had heard the blessing of the bread at every Passover celebration since their birth, but these new words that Jesus taught them gave new and deeper meaning to their tradition. For the Lord’s Supper represented the fulfillment of the Passover and the beginning of the New Covenant.

How do you respond to the remembrance of the Lord’s Supper?

When my daughter was about 5 or 6 years old, she would get so upset after we had a Lord’s Supper service. Returning home after church, she would say, “Daddy, when am I going to get to eat that bread and drink from that little cup?”

I would reply, “Honey, when you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior and get baptized, then we’ll let you start receiving the Lord’s Supper. You should be a baptized believer before receiving the Lord’s Supper. Understand?”

“OK Daddy.” She’d say. Then, after a while. “Daddy, when can I get bapatized?”

You see, there’s something powerful about the symbols of our salvation. Even little children are moved to ask questions when they encounter the two symbols of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both help us remember and proclaim what Christ has done for us!

The unleavened bread represents the Lord’s body. Throughout the Bible leaven or yeast is seen as a symbol of unrighteousness or corruption. It only takes a little yeast to affect the whole loaf. Yeast is actually a living organism that feeds on the sugars and starches in bread dough. As a byproduct of this process, the yeast begins to release gas bubbles of carbon dioxide, and small amounts of ethanol alcohol. These bubbles, trapped in the bread dough, cause the rising action with which we’re familiar. The yeast organism dies in the heat of the oven, but it leaves a fluffy, airy texture to the bread. Unleavened bread is flat because it does not go through this rising process.

The unleavened bread reminds us that Christ’s body was sinless and that it did not experience corruption in the grave because of Christ’s resurrection on the third day. It also reminds us that Christ gave His body as a sacrifice for our sin.

The cup represents Christ’s blood which was shed for us. It also points to the Passover Lamb which was to be slain without any bones being broken.

These symbols engage our senses more than words alone could. As we eat the bread and drink the fruit of the vine, we remember how Christ has died for us. But we also proclaim that His spiritual life has now been imparted to us by faith in Him.

We should never stop being surprised and awed by what this remembrance means to us.