Monday, December 30, 2013 -- The God Of Christmas Who Is Now With Us
Monday December 30, 2013
THE GOD OF CHRISTMAS WHO IS NOW WITH US
Christmas - the celebration that God came to earth in the form of a baby to reveal His unfailing love for us. The presents have been opened. The turkey has been eaten, or is going on bread, to make an enjoyable leftover turkey sandwich. With Christmas Eve and Christmas Day behind us, we are now doing a variety of things. Some of us are back at work. Others are still on vacation, some are shopping, some are playing in the outdoors and some may even be using the gadgets that were left under the tree. Perhaps we're taking stock now of our daily life, our relationships, and even our hopes and dreams for the upcoming year
Let's take stock with God first. God is completely filled with beauty, goodness, and kindness. He has nothing ugly, nothing bad, and nothing harsh or unkind in His nature. All the humans we know, including ourselves, are a mixture of many things. Many of us have witnessed that again this holiday season as we've gathered in family groups to celebrate. We love each other dearly and still say and do things that disappoint and anger one another.
God says we are created in His image -- beauty, goodness, and kindness. Sometimes we may act in other ways but God wants us to be aware that we are created in His image so that we can share beauty, goodness, and kindness. We may fail at this, because we are born into a fallen state, in a fallen world. However, God has demonstrated through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus that, as we submit to Him, He will live His wonderful character in and through us.
As we look back over this year and even this holiday season, we need to remember that there is nothing ugly, nothing useless, and nothing broken beyond repair in our lives. There is no hopeless set of painful thoughts we have to carry with us. There are no heavy burdens of painful guilt, shame, or rejection that need weigh us down. God makes a new life of beauty, goodness, and kindness available to us right now. This new life is actually beyond our ability to imagine. He is now offering it to you.
The wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. .....“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” .... But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. (1 Corinthians 2:7, 9-12 NLT)
God is inviting you and me today to a new life with Him. Will we give our old life over to God? Will we welcome and enter into the new, unimaginably satisfying life God is offering us today?
©2013 Partners in Hope
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