Advent-ure 2020 December 21: Alpha and Omega (Always There)

God is present with us at all times - the One who was present at creation and with whom we will be present for all eternity. Jesus is called the Alpha and the Omega, and He promised to never leave us. Psalm 139 states:
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me.

Our Creator God, Maker of heaven and earth, has made us for fellowship with Himself, and sent His Son in order that we might come to know Him, that we may walk in Him and bring honor to His name. We are a reminder to the world of the love of Christ and we are called to reflect His faithfulness. We can demonstrate our reliance on Him and consistently be ready to call on His name, so that we might see Him do incredible works.

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We have reached Christmas week - yesterday was the fourth Sunday of Advent, and we continue to 
anticipate what God will do through us, His people. We are on Day 21 of our Faith Radio Christmas Advent-ure, and there is a passage in Revelation 1 in which the supremacy of Jesus is laid out for us - He is the Alpha and Omega. These verses say:
8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
9 I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,
11 saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," and, "What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea."

We think about Jesus, who was with God the Father in creation, and who will reign forever. We can remember the words of Abraham Kuyper, that adorn the home page of the Kuyper Foundation website: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  And, that can be the cry of our heart: to allow Jesus to be so in control of our lives that we reflect His glory.  He wants to sit on the throne of our lives as King and Lord.

There is a surgeon named who recognizes God's preeeminence over His creation. He is Michael Haglund from Duke University. There was a story at CBN.com recently about the doctor, which says that he is "considered one of the top cervical surgeons in the country." It recounts how a patient was being prepped for surgery, but his blood pressure was too high. He stepped up to pray for him. As the story goes...

"So, I go on, and I pray for him, and he calms down a little bit. It went from 220 down to like 170," says Mike. "We do his surgery, he does great, pain's gone, gets back to work in two weeks, I see him at six weeks, and he comes in. He goes, 'You know that prayer you prayed for me?' And I go, 'Yeah,'" says Mike. "He goes 'Something changed. Something's different.'" And so like right there in the clinic we like prayed, and he accepted Christ and, you know, that's what it's all about," says Mike.

The story includes his account of an encounter with a ten-year-old boy after Dr. Haglund and his wife accepted Christ: He said, "A young kid ten years old, bad snowboard accident, got air-flighted into Harborview Medical Center with a big epidural hematoma on his brain...If you can get it out quickly, they do really well, and they wake-up like right away after surgery, which is great, not like when you're in a bad car accident..."

The doctor said they removed the hematoma, but the boy didn't come out of his coma. Haglund sensed that God was leading him to go pray for the boy - in person. The doctor says: "...I just went up and laid hands on him and said, 'Lord, you know we've done everything we can do, we need you to do a miracle. Amen...'" 15 minutes later, he received word that the boy was awake.  Haglund went to tell the boy's father, an associate pastor, who showed the doctor that there were 30 people in the waiting room, people from the church, and they were praying, too!  That was over 30 years ago.

The article states that, "As a renowned surgeon, Dr. Haglund has not only been able to talk about prayer with his peers on a scientific level but on a personal, spiritual level as well," and shared the story of a lady whom the doctor led to Christ at a medical conference. She says that she was at a point of knowing that "something was missing" in her life and Haglund, "...began to help me connect those dots and just putting words to the gospel in a conversation was just so critical for me that somebody who didn't even know me would care to share that truth with me. It was just—it was life-changing, and I knew I needed to do something."

CBN.com relates:

As the top in his field, Dr. Haglund is well aware of the millions who've been helped through modern medical science. He also knows that it's the undeniable power of prayer that truly changes lives.

"Once you see how much God moves, you build that faith that He's there, He's ever-present, and He's walking through life with you. And you don't realize how many things He does if you kinda' look back a little bit," says Mike. "And, I think that builds your faith, right?"

Three admonitions for you today on reflecting the light of Christ to the world today:

First: Be ready...whenever He moves by His Spirit, we are to be obedient to Christ and to minister to someone in need.  We can be convinced of the availability of God's presence and call upon Him in prayer.  Our Alpha and Omega is always there.

And, we can be real - prayer is something that we can integrate into real conversations with real people.  We can show that He is real, that we are truly committed to calling out to Him and seeing Him do mighty things in our midst.

Plus, we can be reliant - the power of God is there, we can call out to Him in faith, recognizing that that we can be dependent on Christ at all times. Rather than be driven by the world, we can be motivated by the love of the Lord. As we use our gifts and perform the craft entrusted to us, we can be active in praying for our actions.