Christmas is over. But...

Well, Christmas is over and I hope and pray that each of you who read this had a very Merry Christmas!  I hope this wasn't just any other Christmas.  I pray God revealed Himself to you in a way that you've never viewed Him before.  I know He did that in my life this Christmas season.  As we embark on a new year, I don't want these things that He taught me to escape my mind, or be put in a box like all the decorations and lights, not to be opened again until next Christmas.  I want to live my entire year this year with the truth that God is with us.  He is Emmanuel!

"Therefore the  Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, the  virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." (Isaiah 7:14 ESV)

Emmanuel, God is with us.  What  a promise!  We know the story, we know this name, we know it's translation.  But do we really know what it means?  "God is with us!"   After 400 years of silence from God, the Israelite people knew the significance of this promise.  Generation after generation longed for a sign or a message from God and heard nothing.  They heard the stories of God from their ancestors and of His protection and provisions for their people.  But they heard nothing.  They longed and cried in their humanity for a sign that God still cared.  Then on that silent, holy night the silence was broken.  It was broken with a baby's cry.  God Himself was crying.  I find that significant.  He sympathized with the pain of humanity.  He cried with humanity as He came to save us.  God is still with us and He still sympathizes with us.  He walked this earth just as we walk the earth.  Now, He dwells in us and walks with us.  He is Emmanuel!

"And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling  to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.  But as he considered these things, behold,  an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:19, 20 ESV)

As a man, I understand Joseph's predicament and reaction in this situation.  What other choice did He have.  God had been silent for 400 years, and now his fiance is coming to him saying that God had spoken to her and conceived in her the child of God Himself.  However, as the Bible says, he was an upright man and decided to not publicly humiliate her (which would've been understood and acceptable to society), but rather to divorce her privately and quietly.  Yet after hearing from God himself, he knew what she had said was true and followed obediently what God had commanded him to do.  

In our lives, so many times we fall short of being the person God has designed and desires for us to be.  We sin.  We don't deserve God's grace.  Just as it would've been socially acceptable for Joseph to publicly punish Mary, so it would be just for God to punish us eternally because of our sin.  Yet in His grace and mercy, He chose to adopt us as His children.  To give us a new life.  We didn't (and don't) deserve it, but He still promises us His love.

And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all  the people. (Luke 2:10 ESV)

The first message the angels brought to the shepherds and to Mary (Luke 1:30), was to "Fear Not."  These two words carry a message that is often over looked when we look at the Christmas story.  The angles were bringing the greatest news the world had ever known, yet when presented with it, a sense of fear came over the recipients.  Which is why the angels said first, "Fear Not!"  

You know, when we encounter the holiness of God, we have much to fear.  Yet, Jesus' message by coming is "Fear Not."  The message of Christmas is "Fear Not!"  When we trust in Him and surrender our lives to Him, we no longer have to fear our unworthiness because imparts to us His worth!  We no longer have to fear our unrighteousness  because we live in His righteousness!  God punished His one and only Son as if He had lived our sinful life, so that now, He can reward us as if we had lived His Son's holy and sinless life!

It doesn't make sense.  But God, in His love and mercy, chooses to do so!  

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!