Rev. Brent L. White

I’ll post my full sermon manuscript later, but this excerpt from yesterday’s sermon can serve as a devotional on God’s great love for his adopted sons and daughters. I was preaching on John 1:1-18.

Finally, this passage also speaks of the Word-made-flesh giving us the “right to become children of God”; we are adopted into God’s family as his children.

This really speaks to me because I was adopted. This created some turmoil in my life when I was young. So to make me feel better about the fact that I was different from most of my friends and classmates, my parents used to tell me that, unlike so many other babies, who are simply born into a family—whose parents don’t have a choice and are just sort of stuck with them—I was extra special… Because my parents chose me. They weren’t just stuck with whoever they got; they chose me.

And that sounds great and all, but even as eight- or nine-year-old kid, I didn’t quite believe that, you know—my parents showed up one day at Grady Hospital and the nurses in the maternity ward wheeled out a bunch of babies in bassinets, and my parents said, “We’ll take that one.” Even as a child, I didn’t figure they had much choice in the matter. They would take whoever the adoption agency gave them.

But now that I’ve been a parent for a while, I see the deeper truth in their words: they did choose me. They already had two kids, after all. They were going into this with eyes wide open. They already knew how risky, and difficult, and costly, and worrisome that I or any other child could possibly be; they knew that they would have to sacrifice themselves again and again for the sake of their adopted child; they knew they would have to suffer for this child—for years. So when they adopted me, they willingly chose all of that—whether they chose me personally or not.

Now I know I’m making parenting seem like a terrible ordeal, but not so fast: You see, if you had asked either of my parents before they died, “Was it worth it? Was it worth all the trouble, all the pain, all the worry, all the sacrifice, all the humiliation, all the heartbreak, all the disappointment, all the expense, all the time, all the suffering that Brent caused you in order for your to rescue him and give him a home and give him a family and give him unconditional love? If you asked them that, what would my parents say? They would have been indignant at the question! “Was it worth all the suffering… to adopt Brent, to make him part of our family? Absolutely it was! And we’d suffer it over and over and over again if we had to—for the sake of our love for our son!”

And this is what God’s Word, the Word-become-flesh, is saying to us, his adopted sons and daughters, this morning and for all eternity: Let me prove how much I love you. Let me show you.

I recently created a 26-day Advent devotional booklet for my church called “Good News of Great Joy.” I will be posting a devotional from it each day between now and Christmas day. Enjoy!

Scripture: John 1:1-18

In January 2007, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran from New York named Wesley Autrey was taking his two young daughters home on the subway in Manhattan. While he was standing on the subway platform, a 20-year-old film student suffered a seizure and collapsed onto the tracks in front of a fast approaching train. The student was dazed. He struggled vainly to climb back onto the platform but fell down. That’s when Autrey did something so brave and heroic I can’t comprehend it.

Without having a moment to spare, Autrey leapt onto the tracks as the train neared. There was a trough between the two rails about a foot deep. Autrey pushed the student down into the trough and lay on top of him, holding him down, while five subway cars passed over the both of them, inches above Autrey’s head. Autrey, who was underneath the train, shouted to bystanders that they were O.K., and could someone look after his two daughters until he got out.

Both men were saved. Autrey said afterwards, “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right.”^[1]

All I can say is, I hope Wesley Autrey is around if ever I’m in trouble!

I said a moment ago that I can’t comprehend it, but that’s not quite right: I can comprehend it, but only because I’m a parent. Not that I’ve ever had to put it to the test—and not that I want to—but when my daughter was born I understood for the first time that impulse to sacrifice one’s life for someone else. I remember thinking for the first time, “In the interest of love, I would do anything out of love to protect and save this precious life. I would jump in front of a speeding locomotive to save her. I would push her out of the way of a fast-approaching bus. I would take a bullet for her. Without giving it a second thought!”That’s love, and I fell in it deeply and unshakably and unfailingly when I became a father.

Now consider our heavenly Father’s love for us: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 KJV). The “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” so that God could lay down his life to save us, his children. As my friend Kevin Hargaden, a Presbyterian pastor in Ireland, put it well in a Facebook post one Christmas: “And remember, folks, the real meaning of Christmas is Easter.”

Christmas means that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the word that God spoke so powerfully through the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of his Son is “I love you.”

Have you experienced God’s love for yourself? You can! 

If you’re ready to receive God’s gift of salvation in Christ, begin by praying this prayer:

Almighty God, I confess to you that I am a sinner in need of your forgiveness. I know that because of my sins I deserve nothing better than death and hell. But I also know that you loved me too much to leave me this way. I am sorry for my sins and with your help I am turning away from them now. I believe that your Son Jesus is Lord. I believe that through Jesus—through his death on the cross and through his resurrection from the dead—you are offering me forgiveness and eternal life. Enable me to receive that gift now. I promise, by your grace and power, to be a faithful follower of Jesus for the rest of my life—in this world and in the world to come. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

If you prayed this prayer, please let me or someone else know. I would love to help you as you begin this journey as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

📲 Here’s a link to the New York Times article.

1. Cara Buckley, “A Man Down, and a Stranger Makes a Choice,” New York Times, 3 January 2007.

I recently created a 26-day Advent devotional booklet for my church called “Good News of Great Joy.” I will be posting a devotional from it each day between now and Christmas day. Enjoy!

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-21

Since I became an adult, I have been afflicted with recurring bad dreams. They’re mostly related to academic insecurities. For example, in one of these dreams, I get a call one day—out of the blue—from the principal of my high school. I’m sure he’s long since retired now—and, besides, my high school is now a middle school.

But in my dream it’s still a high school, and he’s still the principal.

He informs me that there was a mistake in the record-keeping back in 1988 when I graduated, and, as it happens, I’m going to have to go back to high school in order to receive all the necessary credits I need to earn my diploma. And, oh, by the way… If I don’t go back to high school, they’re going to call Georgia Tech and Emory University and tell them to take away the three degrees that I earned between those two schools.

I’m pretty sure my old high school didn’t have the authority to do that, but in my dream it did!

This is hardly a terrifying nightmare, but when I wake up—after I slowly regain my senses—I am so relieved that this was only a dream. And I don’t give it another thought.

In today’s scripture, Mary tells her fiancé Joseph that she’s pregnant. Joseph knows that he’s not the father, and he knows the facts of life. He doesn’t believe Mary’s story about an angel visiting her, God working a miracle within her, and how she’s giving birth to the Messiah. Who would?

So he decides to quietly break off their engagement. Before he can do so, however, an angel visits him and convinces him otherwise—that Mary’s story, as hard as it is to believe, is true.

Except… there’s a little more to it than that. Notice that the angel doesn’t just show up one day out of the blue, nicely backlit with a halo, like Roma Downey in Touched by an Angel. No. The angel comes to Joseph the same way the principal from my old high school comes to me… in a dream, in a crazy, crazy dream.

Yet somehow, Joseph had the faith, the insight, and the wisdom to discern that this wasn’t just another crazy dream like so many others—that the messenger in his dream wasn’t the result of some spicy food he ate the night before but was actually the voice of God, telling him that his new mission—should he choose to accept it—was going to completely turn his life upside down.

What prevented Joseph from waking up from that crazy dream—the way I wake up from my crazy dreams—and thinking, “Whew! It was just a dream!” No one could blame him if he did. His life certainly would have been easier! Instead, he took the risk to believe, which wasn’t easy.

But the truth is, a Christmas kind of faith is never easy.

Has God ever spoken to you in a dream? How do you discern when God is leading you to do something? When in your life have you taken a risky step of faith?

📲 Watch this movie I made about Bethlehem from my trip to the Holy Land.

I recently created a 26-day Advent devotional booklet for my church called “Good News of Great Joy.” I will be posting a devotional from it each day between now and Christmas day. Enjoy!

Scripture: Revelation 3:14-22

In How the Grinch Stole Christmas! you may recall that the Grinch snuck into the town of Whoville on Christmas Eve night and hauled away the toys,  presents, food, and Christmas decorations that belonged to the town’s residents, the “Whos.”

We’re tempted to look down on the Grinch and think, “Shame, shame, shame… How could he imagine that he could steal Christmas by stealing all these things? Things aren’t what Christmas is about.” As the Whos sing, “Christmas is always in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp.”

But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we might instead forgive the Grinch for being so confused.

In his book Christmas Is Not Your Birthday, United Methodist pastor Mike Slaughter points out that while the size of the American family has shrunk over the last 30 years, the size of our houses has increased 42 percent. “We eat out more,” he says, “and spend less time cooking, yet kitchen sizes have doubled.”^[1] He quotes an author who says that, for us, shopping is spirituality. We attempt to find meaning and purpose in products we buy. We confuse our real, built-in desire for God our Creator, with a desire for created things—things that can never possibly satisfy our souls. This is the very definition of idolatry.

In Revelation chapter 3, Jesus tells the church at Laodicea, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” The Laodiceans professed faith in Christ, but they put their trust in money and possessions. Do we ever do that, too?

Good old-fashioned American consumerism, which is a form of greed, has this destructive ability to reduce our Christian faith to nothing but words: we say we believe in Jesus, but our faith is somewhere else.

How does the sin of greed manifest itself in your life? Are you facing the temptation to be greedy during this Christmas season? Take this time to repent of the sin of greed. Pray that the Lord will help you resist this temptation and replace greed with generosity.

📲 Watch a clip of the Grinch discovering the joy of Christmas.

1. Mike Slaughter, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011), 77.