December 18: IMMANUEL (GOD IS WITH US)

Nearly 800 years before Christ was born a Prophet spoke “a virgin shall bring forth a child and you will call his name Immanuel”. (Isaiah 7:14) And on the night of Jesus’ birth the angels and the shepherds shouted it out in praise. It was daring, incredible, inconceivable that God would slip into the world in this way! Today “Immanuel’ slips easily from our tongues for centuries have dulled mankind’s sense of wonder. Join me in a sense of wonder today! God is with us!
God as a person is here! All the qualities of man are used to describe God; He is holy, righteous, and just. The God of Abraham, Moses, David! God, the Creator of all things. There was only one way for God to reveal himself to us and prove his love for us and that was by becoming one of us. Many pagan peoples worship God vaguely because they have never been told of Jesus the Christ yet. When I watch Reality shows on TV and some person screams out “O my God” I wonder who they are talking to and what they are talking about! The saying, “you can give without loving but you can’t love without giving’ certainly describes the God-man Jesus who came to us!
God as a presence is here! John 1:14 says, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Known to us today because he is with us as a personal Savior. We no longer need to build an altar to “The Unknown God” because Jesus said “if you have seen me you have seen the Father”. If you will, Jesus is God’s visual aid to man. Hope is a reality now, prophecy is a fact now, faith is fruition now, desire is fulfilled now.
God as a Loving Savior is here. Salvation, in its fullest meaning of forgiveness, healing, comfort, moral strength cannot be given from afar. Sin is not forgiven by a word or stroke of a pen by one who knows nothing of its anguish. So Christ entered our world, faced sin and temptation at its worst, and carried us out of it. As Isaiah 53 gloriously says “He has borne our grief, carried our sorrows, and healed us with His stripes.”
“Merry Christmas” everyday! “Joy to the world” everyday! On March 2, 1791 the great Christian, John Wesley, died. One of his last statements was, “the best of all is, God is with us.”

“The reality of your presence is best of all and the very foundation of our
being children of hope. Hallelujah! Amen”