A post here on Christmas to share a couple words from my heart to yours. I pray they encourage you! That is why I write!
Christmas always causes me to reflect and think about past Christmases and this past year. I am grateful. This year has brought along many blessings. But at the same time, there have been new challenges. Blessings greater than I imagined, but challenges I couldn't foresee. Through this time, the story of David from the Bible has been encouraging me. He had many battles to fight, but that didn't mean that God wasn't with him. In fact, God used those battles to prepare him to be king and to live as someone with a heart after God's heart.
This morning, I was reading about David's perspective on Goliath. I love it! Unlike the other Israelites and King Saul, he isn't intimidated by the challenge. He stands on God's faithfulness in the past and has total confidence that the same God who delivered him from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver him from the hand of the Philistine (1 Samuel 17:37).
I pray that I could always approach my challenges like this! Instead of getting discouraged or overwhelmed, I pray for a heart that remains confident in God at all times. God has been faithful - so very faithful to me! But why is it that present challenges can make me forget this?
To keep God's faithfulness ever before me, I started a wall of remembrance last month just after Thanksgiving. During my devotional time in the morning, I'll take out my pretty scrapbook paper and write out one memory of God's faithfulness in the past. It's been life-changing and so life-giving to me. The wall above my bed is now covered with little squares of scrapbook paper, memory after memory of God's great and perfect faithfulness to me. One morning, I woke up and looked at the wall and started crying and crying. Good tears. Happy tears. Thank-You-God tears. God has been so good and faithful to me! Father, let me never forget!
Day-to-day life can sometimes make you forget or put aside God's faithfulness, but don't let it! Tell the stories of God's faithfulness and tell them again! I recently visited my alma mater while my friend was attending class there. I took a walk around NU and ended up at the library. I love books, so I was looking around and reminiscing about all the days I would study there as an undergrad. As I'm doing this, I hear someone talking on their cell phone. I wasn't trying to listen in on his conversation, but he was talking so excitedly and loudly, I couldn't help it. This young man was so impassioned as he spoke. What was the deal?
As I listened, I soon realized. He spoke about the faithfulness of God in his life. On and on he went about how God had taken care of him and led him in the past, and how God was taking care of him and leading him now. It was beautiful to listen to him speak of God's goodness. Hearing about the faithfulness of God in a place where I had so tangibly seen the faithfulness of God when I was there at school blessed my heart so much. So much!
We need to hear about the faithfulness of God in each others' lives and we must share about the faithfulness of God in our lives. When we do this, we are filled with joy and live expectant to see how He is going to take the Philistine challenge in front of us and deliver us like He has before from the lion and the bear. Like David, we live from a place of victory because we stand on the faithfulness of God. Not because we're awesome, but because God is awesome! He is mighty, strong, powerful, and nothing is impossible for Him!
This Christmas, as we reflect on Jesus' birth, let us remember that the Baby born in that stable that starry night was God's faithfulness on display for all the world to see for all time. God's promises all fulfilled as Jesus opened His eyes and breathed His first breath on earth. All of hell could not stop the promises of God unfolding in that humble manger in Bethlehem. Jesus reminds us of God's eternal faithfulness. His faithfulness can never be erased; forever and forever the Truth and Light of Jesus' birth will remain. Because of Jesus, we can know without any doubt that God will be faithful. Again and again. He came for us! He loves us! He is with us! He is for us! Jesus is how we know this! And even more, He will be faithful to us! And not to just deliver us from a lion or a bear or a giant. But from sin and death. From life without Him. From hopelessness and darkness. From discouragement and sorrow.
The birth of Jesus should awaken our hearts - and not just Christmas Day, but every day! Jesus is Emmanuel - God with us! We don't have to do this life on our own, in our own strength, in our own courage. God is with us and His faithfulness in Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection guarantees His faithfulness to us. This is Good News, friends!
The whole message of God sending Jesus to this world is one of love. Why else would God enter into our world in the most vulnerable and humble way? All for love! God's love for us! He put on flesh and dwelt among us so that we can experience a relationship with God so deep and peaceful and beautiful. So we can be freed from sin and death and eternal separation from Him. So we can live with Him forever and walk in abundant life here on earth and eternal life in heaven.
Jesus is all of God's promises fulfilled. Jesus was born for you, for me, for all. And because He came for all of us, all of us can say that we know of the faithfulness of God. All of us can say that God is faithful. All of us can point to Christ and kneel in awe of the Savior who did everything it took to save us. As we trust and believe in Him, as we live in His love and obey Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will see His faithfulness in our lives over and over through all seasons, all circumstances, all of our lives. Because God is with us. Jesus is God with us. God's faithfulness is forever with us!
O, come let us adore Him. Christ the Lord!
Merry Christmas!
Love always,
Colleen