Christmas contradiction

Luke 2:33 And Joseph and His mother marveled at those things which were spoken of Him. Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, This child marks both the failure and the recovery of many… a figure misunderstood and contradicted. But the contradiction will force truth, as God reveals to people who they really are (the thoughts [dialogismos – self-talk] of many will be revealed). The pain of a sword will piece your heart.

The Contradiction

We will fail and/or recover according to how we trust Jesus as God within us to reorder our minds to think in line with who he has created us to be. The self-talk is based on fear and the God-talk is based on faith. There’s only ONE of you and you are God’s design. We ourselves are a contradiction – the good that we want to do we don’t do, and the things we don’t want to do is what we do.

We are gifted with a life designed by God that is meant to work in harmony with His life within us. This gift of his ‘God with us life’ can make our lives a gift to one another, through faith and love. ‘Failure’ can occur when people try to design another life for themselves, based upon the self-talk that helps them control whatever threatens their idea of what this world should give us. But the world remains indifferent to our needs, tempting us to trust in the self-talk and not to hear the God-talk that tells us the truth about our real self.

This ‘failure’ brings us under too much pressure.

2 Cor 2:8-9 8. We want you to know what kind of pressure we came under when we were in Asia…we didn’t think we would ever survive. But this death sentence that was over us was only to teach us that we were not expected to trust in our own strength but to trust in God, who is able to raise the dead back to life.

The ’recovery’ from this contradiction is God’s grace and our faith and hearing the God-talk. We REST in that faith with hopeful expectation of God with us. Romans 12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them:.. in proportion to our faith; Giving, serving, encouraging motivating, showing justice and mercy, organizing.

How do these gifts ‘fail’ and recover? - Our failure is a personal fear in the area of our gifting (Each gift has its own fearful self-talk).

Note the story of Gideon. Self-talk sabotages the Gift. Judges 6:12 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about. And he went on to say, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.” And the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

Moses ran away from his gift of leadership and authority. (Exodus 4:1)

Givers can fail by being anxious about God’s provision. Self-talk says how can I give if I don’t have. God is the source – the world is the means not the source.

Servers (helpers) can get overwhelmed by helplessness - self talk says I should be able to do this better, just not good enough. ‘help of the helpless, abide with me’

Organizers can fail when they get overwhelmed by the disorder around them. The result is irrational fears – self-talk says it’s all going to go wrong and that disorganizes my mind. A discouraged encourager’s self-talk says – why do they hold back. They dread poor results – but it should be about being an influence, not being influenced – the results will come. Jeremiah 15:18