Skip to main content

Immanuel--God with Us


              Advent draws our thoughts towards the beyond-good-news that God shared with the world over 2000 years ago.  God’s news spread throughout the whole world and continues to encircle the globe.  This news began broadcasting long before our modern media communication tools.  Similar to the way the good news spread in the vicinity of Bethlehem on the eve of His birth, this particular news has best been shared through word of mouth from individuals whose lives have been personally transformed after encountering Jesus.  After the angels, sent from heaven, startled the shepherds by announcing the birth of Jesus, the people of God have taken it from there.  The church can’t stop sharing the reality of what it means that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came to our world to be one of us.  He did this so that God could restore any who will put faith in Jesus Christ to become one with Him.
              As we prepare to gather in crowded churches on Christmas Eve, let us consider how we have become proclaimers of this good news.  How do we experience God with us, and how does that impact the news we discuss?  Do we digest the police shootings, riots, protests, unrest in this world in light of the Good News?  Does the fact that God is with us make any difference in our personal response?
              God is with me.  He entered this fallen world.  He told me that a day is coming when He will make all things new.  This is a promise.  It is His promise to keep.  Just as He kept His promise to send the Messiah, He will keep this promise.  In the in-between, He has sent me good news.  The Good News He sent was that in the meanwhile —from the time He sent His Son and after He died and rose again to cover the sins of the whole world to the time that His Son returns to make the world right again—He wants me to spread the Good News. 
              Advent Season returns my focus to the First and Second coming of Christ.  During the four Sundays before Christmas, the church calls me to prepare my heart through repentance and anticipation.  Christmas marks the point in time when we celebrate the unimaginable promise of God fulfilled in the unexpected way—He, God, became one of us so that we can become one with Him.  The way that I become one with Him is through repentance and recognition of my utter inability to be holy.  God tells me that my faith in His Son’s righteousness will bring me holiness that has the potential for oneness with God.  When Christ comes again, my holiness will become a true reality, but in between He gives me the power to experience tastes of holiness through the Holy Spirit who lives in me. 
              Immanuel, God with us, and Salvation, us with God, are the too-good-to-be-true Good News that gives hope because most other news stings of bombing, murder, heartache and destruction.  The Good News of Advent and Christmas is best shared from household by household, by changed life to changed life.  God sent Jesus to be one of us so that we can become one with Him.  God sends all who are one with Him to demonstrate the salvation He longs to share with the whole world.  As Peter explains:  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). He also instructs how we can best broadcast the Good News until the day He comes to earth the second time: Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:12).
              I get to light the first candle of Advent this year with my first granddaughter born on the first day of Advent. My great hope for her is to find out about the day that this too-good-to be-true Good News becomes transformational for her!  And I’m going to love every day of the in-between!

Copyright © 2016.  Deborah R Newman  teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th
Post a Comment
Read more

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on
2 comments
Read more

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that
2 comments
Read more