The God Who Saves --Christmas 2022

I am now almost three years into a job where I commute between 40 minutes and an hour (sometimes more) one way.  This commute leaves me time to listen to a lot of audio books and most of the year those are business related.

At Christmas time, I try to find one "inspirational" book in keeping with the season--hopefully a feel good little tale similar to the ones we publish--a fun story with just enough sentiment and just enough message to make it worth my time.

This year I chose two--The Return of the Gods (released September 2022 by author Jonathan Cahn), and Tell Someone, an evangelistic older title from Pastor Greg Laurie about how to effectively share faith.  I had never read anything by Cahn although I am familiar with his body of work, and I will say this his book is neither "feel good" nor "inspirational" but it is powerful and thought-provoking and I highly recommend it.   In a world that is becoming increasingly secular and increasingly pagan, Cahn's book does a lot to explain the spiritual source of the problems of our day.  We are now in a world where unchurched people with no faith comprise a bigger population than followers of any single Protestant denomination.  As that group of unchurched with no faith continues to grow, so does paganism.

I have been writing the Christmas post of this blog for 12 years.  Every year, the world seems a little more secular, a little darker and a little more without God.  That's not just my imagination--in 2007 78% of Americans identified as Christian and only 16% identified as atheist or agnostic.  The ratio of Christians to atheists was roughly 5 to 1.  Now, 15 years later, only about 64% of American identify as Christians while 29% identify as atheistic or agnostic.  The ratio is roughly 3-1.  By 2070, Christianity is projected to be the religion of only 46% of the population--no longer a majority.   Every year at Christmas time we see a little more evidence of the shift--religious cards are harder to find; there are fewer references to the birth of Jesus, and the culture becomes coarser, more corrupt and more attracted to ancient paganism and earth worship.  

Yet, Cahn's book is also a powerful reminder that it was the story of the gospel that drove out paganism the first time.  As the gospel spread, paganism lost its influence and its power in the world. Its horrible practices, including human sacrifice, became forbidden acts.  Magic and witchcraft were driven underground--all because of the gospel.  The gospel did not just change individuals--it changed cultures, nations and ultimately the world.

At this time of year, we have a unique opportunity to share the gospel through the story of Christmas. The story of Christmas is not the story of a refugee family fleeing Palestine, nor is it the story of a struggling single mother.  The Christmas story is the story of how God fulfilled His promise to save a fallen world by being born as a human, living among us, and dying on a cross. Jesus was a God unlike any other--a God who became the sacrifice and died for us rather than demanding that people die as sacrifices to Him.  He experienced life as a human, suffered through the things that we do and paid the price for our sins. Without Easter, Christmas has no meaning and without Christmas, Easter has no victory.

As we look into 2023, rather than focusing on recessions and political infighting, we who know God need to focus on the power of the gospel--the power to change everyone who believes--the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the sophisticated and the unsophisticated.  Everyone needs Jesus--no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they have or what they need.

The story of Christmas teaches of us that no situation is too dark for God's love and that our hope can never be in a human being--our hope is only in God.  The Psalmist tells us that salvation belongs to God (Psalm 3:8).  Salvation is proprietary--He owns it.  If we don't find it in Him, we don't find it all.

Christmas reminds us that salvation is not far away or out of reach.  Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world that He came to live as one of us.  The name Jesus, Yeshua, is the Hebrew word for salvation.  It is in this name that God has revealed Himself as the savior of the world.  If we don't experience salvation through Jesus, we don't find it all.

I invite each of you this Christmas to experience the God who saves.  He is strong enough to deliver you out of whatever circumstances you are facing.  And He is the only hope for this lost and fallen world.  If you already know Him, then take the gospel that changed your life and find a way to share it with someone else.  In the words of Greg Laurie, tell someone this life-changing message that drives out darkness and shines light.  

Merry Christmas.

Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her holiday series, Kinsman, is available in paperback and on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

 

The Freedom Prayer

  I originally wrote this nine years ago for The Planner.  It is much more timely now than it was then.  May God have mercy on America.

“Lord we come to You tonight to ask for Your forgiveness. The Bible promises that when we seek You, we will find You, if we search with all our hearts.

"Lord we confess that we have not followed Your commands. We have not loved You with our whole hearts--we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not stood for the truth of Your Gospel. We have sat by and said nothing when Your name was blasphemed and mocked. We did not take a stand when we saw Your laws despised.

“We know that many times we ourselves have been among the worst offenders. We have lived sinful lives that are contrary to the word of God. Like Esau, we have traded away our birthright for a little convenience; we have despised this incredible gift of freedom that You provided for us and allowed all of the liberty that our country offered to be trampled down. We have forgotten the words of King David who said that it is better to fall into the hands of God than to be at the mercy of men, and so we now find ourselves living under the rule of a cruel and despotic government who has stolen everything from us and shows us no mercy.

“We know that everything that is happening to us is a result of our bad choices, both individually and as a nation. You gave us the gift of being born into a free nation—the greatest nation the world has ever seen. You gave us a form of government unlike any other that had ever been known by any other people, and we did not value it enough to defend it.

“For all of these things, Lord, we ask Your forgiveness. We pray tonight that You will change our hearts so that each of us will begin to love what You love, to hate what You hate and to want what You want. We ask You to save our nation, for we know that the Bible teaches that salvation belongs to our God—no political party, no ideology, no government can save us. If we don’t find salvation in You, we won’t find it at all.

“Please turn Your face to us again, and give us back our freedom, and restore our country so that we can truly be one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We ask all these things in the name of Your son, Jesus. Amen.”

Alexandra Swann's novel W: The Set, incorporates her novels The Planner and The Chosen which tell the story of  an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21 and NDAA.  The set is available on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

Search and Rescue--2022

For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost”  Luke 19:10 KJV   Once again, another year has come and gone and now 2021 is behind us.  The year started with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of questions.  How would the incoming Biden Administration react to COVID?  Would there be more lock downs?  What would our daily lives look like?  Unfortunately, it ended with almost an equal amount of uncertainty.  Will the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the vaccine mandates?  What will the 2022 elections look like?  And will the CDC finally be reined in, or will an unelected bureaucracy continue to dictate our daily lives?  

Sandwiched in among these major questions there were a lot of bad things that happened, and individually for many of us, some very good things that happened.  It was a year of growth and change and personal soul searching.

 Two days ago, we released our fifth installment of our Kinsman series: The Do Over.  More than any other book in this series, The Do Over is a story about Grace.  It's a reminder that everyone needs Grace, and sometimes the people who appear to the world to have the most actually are in the most need of God's Grace--the ultimate do over.

We just finished celebrating Christmas, and we looked at nativities and sang songs of the child in the manger, but Christmas is so much more than a sweet story about a little baby who was born in a stable.  The cave in which Jesus was born is symbolic of the tomb where He was laid after His crucifixion, and the swaddling clothes in which His parents wrapped him represent the grave cloths.  He did not come to earth to be a good man or a good teacher—He was born to die for us in the greatest search and rescue operation of all time.  The God of the universe looked down and saw our lonely, lost, dysfunctional world—a world which we were powerless to change—and loved us so much that He sent His only Son to save us. Jesus is our Kinsman Redeemer who came to release our debt, and He extends to each of us the greatest invitation we will ever be offered. But for His invitation to impact us, we must recognize the immense opportunity which we have been offered; then we must be willing to accept it for ourselves and fully embrace our new life.  And we have to understand that as we accept the invitation for ourselves, we take on both the ability and the responsibility to impact and change the lives of others.

In the books, the invitations extended to the recipients warn that if the individual fails to respond no later than "precisely at midnight" the invitation will be considered to have been declined and "no further invitations will be extended."  In reality, God extends His priceless invitation to give us forgiveness, a new start and a new life repeatedly throughout our lifetimes, but, if we refuse to accept it, there is finally a day for all of us when the invitation is considered declined and no future invitations are available. 

As we start the New Year, I invite each of you to see 2022  as more than an opportunity for a new resolution.  This year can be a time for a rescue—a moment for salvation and a new life.  Accept God’s invitation to you in 2022. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

 

Alexandra and Joyce Swann's fifth  installment in the Kinsman Series, The Do Over was released January 1, 2022. For more information, visit their website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

The God Who Saves

Once again, the Christmas season is upon us.    We had another year of COVID 19 followed by federal vaccine mandates that threaten jobs, supply chain shortages, people leaving employment without new jobs, international unrest, crime waves in major cities, and a host of other issues.  We are told that the the newest COVID 19 variant will be far worse than everything that has come before.

And yet...there is hope--much more hope than there was last year at this same moment. Last year when I wrote this post, I was discouraged because I had forgotten my own admonitions.  Our hope is not a political party or a political leader or even in our fellow citizens. Our hope cannot be for more favorable elections or better laws.  Whenever our hope is in any of those things, it is always misplaced.  As Paul said in his epistle to Timothy (4:10) "our hope is in the living God who died for all and particularly for those who have accepted His salvation."

Here in Texas. there are beautiful light displays everywhere and families, now mostly unmasked, are gathering to enjoy the festivities   Still, I cannot help but wonder how many of these families are out just to see something beautiful at the end of another long and tiresome year.  Even most of those who grew up in church no longer apply Christianity to their lives in any meaningful way--they may talk to their children about the birth of baby Jesus on Christmas day, but they don't really apply His teachings to their lives.  Christmas celebrations are really an interesting comment on a society that is surrounded by Christmas from before Thanksgiving until January 2 but that has forgotten the meaning behind the celebration.

The story of Christmas is not the story of a refugee family fleeing Palestine, nor is it the story of a struggling single mother.  The Christmas story is the story of how God fulfilled His promise to save a fallen world by being born as a human, living among us, and dying on a cross.  Without Easter, Christmas has no meaning and without Christmas, Easter has no victory.

As we look into 2022, rather than focusing on what laws are passed and what new COVID variants are waiting around the corner, we need to refocus on the One who came into a dark world that was completely without hope and brought light into that darkness.  His power is eternal; it does not waiver in the face of illness or political wrangling.  

The story of Christmas teaches of us that no situation is too dark for God's love and that our hope can never be in a human being--our hope is only in God.  The Psalmist tells us that salvation belongs to God (Psalm 3:8).  Salvation is proprietary--He owns it.  If we don't find it in Him, we don't find it all.

Christmas reminds us that salvation is not far away or out of reach.  Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world that He came to live as one of us.  The name Jesus, Yeshua, is the Hebrew word for salvation.  It is in this name that God has revealed Himself as the savior of the world.  If we don't experience salvation through Jesus, we don't find it all.

I invite each of you this Christmas to experience the God who saves.  He is strong enough to deliver you out of whatever circumstances you are facing.  And He is the only hope for this lost and fallen world.

Merry Christmas.

Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her holiday series, Kinsman, is available in paperback and on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

 

The Freedom Prayer

 I originally wrote this nine years ago for The Planner.  It is much more timely now than it was then.  May God have mercy on America.

“Lord we come to You tonight to ask for Your forgiveness. The Bible promises that when we seek You, we will find You, if we search with all our hearts.

"Lord we confess that we have not followed Your commands. We have not loved You with our whole hearts--we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not stood for the truth of Your Gospel. We have sat by and said nothing when Your name was blasphemed and mocked. We did not take a stand when we saw Your laws despised.

“We know that many times we ourselves have been among the worst offenders. We have lived sinful lives that are contrary to the word of God. Like Esau, we have traded away our birthright for a little convenience; we have despised this incredible gift of freedom that You provided for us and allowed all of the liberty that our country offered to be trampled down. We have forgotten the words of King David who said that it is better to fall into the hands of God than to be at the mercy of men, and so we now find ourselves living under the rule of a cruel and despotic government who has stolen everything from us and shows us no mercy.

“We know that everything that is happening to us is a result of our bad choices, both individually and as a nation. You gave us the gift of being born into a free nation—the greatest nation the world has ever seen. You gave us a form of government unlike any other that had ever been known by any other people, and we did not value it enough to defend it.

“For all of these things, Lord, we ask Your forgiveness. We pray tonight that You will change our hearts so that each of us will begin to love what You love, to hate what You hate and to want what You want. We ask You to save our nation, for we know that the Bible teaches that salvation belongs to our God—no political party, no ideology, no government can save us. If we don’t find salvation in You, we won’t find it at all.

“Please turn Your face to us again, and give us back our freedom, and restore our country so that we can truly be one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We ask all these things in the name of Your son, Jesus. Amen.”

Alexandra Swann's novel W: The Set, incorporates her novels The Planner and The Chosen which tell the story of  an out-of-control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21 and NDAA.  The set is available on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

Search and Rescue

 For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost”  Luke 19:10 KJV   There were so many hopes for 2020 and the start of a new decade, but instead we had a year with a host of problems.  For most it was a terrible year, for others, in spite of all of the challenges, it was one of the best of their lives.  But it surely was not what anyone expected.  

Now we are two weeks into 2021 and still waiting to see what challenges and opportunities this year will bring.  Will we face more lockdowns?  Will life get more or less back to normal? What will the new administration do that will affect us?   Many of us will make resolutions to change some aspect of our behavior in.  We may want to lose weight, or get in better physical condition or to get promoted at work or develop better personal relationships, but for most of us when night falls on 2020, most of those resolutions will still be unfulfilled, shuffled forward to another year as we continue in a never-ending desire to become a better us.

Last fall we released our fourth installment of our Kinsman series--The Land of the Blind.  Like the rest of the series, the fourth book follows characters who need to be rescued--either from the consequences of their own actions or the actions of others.  I smile when I read reviews of the first three books saying that the books make them wish that "something like this could happen in real life."

We just finished celebrating Christmas, and we looked at nativities and sang songs of the child in the manger, but Christmas is so much more than a sweet story about a little baby who was born in a stable.  The cave in which Jesus was born is symbolic of the tomb where He was laid after His crucifixion, and the swaddling clothes in which His parents wrapped him represent the grave cloths.  He did not come to earth to be a good man or a good teacher—He was born to die for us in the greatest search and rescue operation of all time.  The God of the universe looked down and saw our lonely, lost, dysfunctional world—a world which we were powerless to change—and loved us so much that He sent His only Son to save us. Jesus is our Kinsman Redeemer who came to release our debt, and He extends to each of us the greatest invitation we will ever be offered. But for His invitation to impact us, we must recognize the immense opportunity which we have been offered; then we must be willing to accept it for ourselves and fully embrace our new life.  And we have to understand that as we accept the invitation for ourselves, we take on both the ability and the responsibility to impact and change the lives of others.

In the books, the invitations extended to the recipients warn that if the individual fails to respond no later than "precisely at midnight" the invitation will be considered to have been declined and "no further invitations will be extended."  In reality, God extends His priceless invitation to give us forgiveness, a new start and a new life repeatedly throughout our lifetimes, but, if we refuse to accept it, there is finally a day for all of us when the invitation is considered declined and no future invitations are available. 

As we start the New Year, I invite each of you to see 2021  as more than an opportunity for a new resolution and as more than a decade promising new vision.  This year--and this decade--can be a time for a rescue—a moment for salvation and a new life.  Accept God’s invitation to you in 2021. “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

 

Alexandra and Joyce Swann's  fourth installment in the Kinsman Series, The Land of the Blind was released November of 2020  For more information, visit their website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

The God Who Saves --2020 Edition

Once again the Christmas season is upon us.    COVID 19 and the media and government's response to it has made this a strange year and now at Christmas time, business are beginning to shut down again.  Here in Texas there are still beautiful lights and decorations to be seen, but in spite of the beautiful Christmas displays, there is an unmistakable general joylessness everywhere.   Last night I drove through the Vitruvian lights display in Addison, Texas and I waited in line behind a significant number of visitors waiting to see trees wrapped all the way to the tips in various colors of amazing Christmas lights.  Masked families were getting out of their cars to walk down and see the lighted trees reflecting gorgeous colors in the creek.  I cannot help but wonder how many of these families were there just to see something beautiful at the end of a long and tiresome year.  Even most of those who grew up in church no longer apply Christianity to their lives in any meaningful way--they may talk to their children about the birth of baby Jesus on Christmas day, but basically they don't apply His teachings to their lives in any significant way.  Christmas celebrations are really an interesting comment on a society that is surrounded by Christmas from before Thanksgiving until January 2 but that has forgotten the meaning behind the celebration.

The story of Christmas is not the story of a refugee family fleeing Palestine, nor is it the story of a struggling single mother.  The Christmas story is the story of how God fulfilled His promise to save a fallen world by being born as a human, living among us and dying on a cross.  Without Easter, Christmas has no meaning and without Christmas, Easter has no victory.

This year, more than any other I have seen in a long time, has left so many of us with a general feeling of hopelessness.  We are being promised a "dark winter" by the media and the incoming administration.  We have a thread of hope to hang on to the Senate next month--if we lose that we pretty much guaranteed a socialist country in the next two years.  We have seen riots and looting in our cities, a breakdown in law and order and calls to defund the police.  Looking into 2021, there does not seem to be much basis for hope but that might be because we have focused our hope on the wrong things as a society.

The story of Christmas teaches of us that no situation is too dark for God's love and that our hope can never be in a human being--our hope is only in God.  The Psalmist tells us that salvation belongs to God (Psalm 3:8).  Salvation is proprietary--He owns it.  If we don't find it in Him, we don't find it all.

Christmas reminds us that salvation is not far away or out of reach.  Christmas reminds us that God so loved the world that He came to live as one of us.  The name Jesus, Yeshua, is the Hebrew word for salvation.  It is in this name that God has revealed Himself as the savior of the world.  If we don't experience salvation through Jesus, we don't find it all.

I invite each of you this Christmas to experience the God who saves.  He is strong enough to deliver you out of whatever circumstances you are facing.  And He is the only hope for this lost and fallen world.

Merry Christmas.

Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her holiday series, Kinsman, is available in paperback and on Kindle. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.