As you go into your Christmas Eve celebrations, I thought I would send out some verse to help us remember that God is with us. That He came to earth as a baby to live amongst His people. No matter your circumstance this Christmas season, remember God is Immanuel in your life !
Isa. 40:31, if we hope in the Lord, He will Renee our strength Psa. 27:8, my heart seeks your face ! Eph. 3:20, He can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine Mark 1:3, prepare a way for the Lord, make your paths straight for Him John 1:14, full of grace and truth Phil. 4:4, rejoice on the Lord always ! Luke 2:13-14, suddenly In times of trouble, it’s hard to feel God near. He may feel distant and far off, but we know that we don’t serve a far off God. We serve a God who is beside us and in the thick of life with us. Does this seem hard for you to remember? Cling to these truths with us today. Write them down. Commit them to memory. Pray them. He is near, dear friend. Take heart. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Isaiah 43:2 “I have set the LORD continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. “ Psalm 16:8 “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 "Am I a God who is near," declares the LORD, "And not a God far off.” Jeremiah 23:23
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts…” James 4:8
Trusting God is the hardest lesson to learn but the most crucial. To trust God is to trust His timing. To trust God is to trust His way. It’s remembering that God loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time and in any other way than the right way. This doesn’t change the fact that we want all of our pain to go away. We want happy. We want normal. We want easy. At least, that’s what I have wanted over the course of my life. Because that’s all I can conceive of as a good plan. But God sees things we can’t see. He knows things we don’t know. Only God knows what the good plan is and what it will take to get us there. And most of all He knows, if we saw the full road ahead, we would stop about halfway through and never choose to continue with His plan. We would think the cost is too high, the path too scary, the way too daunting, and the enemy too frightening. No human is strong enough to withstand seeing too much of God’s plan in advance. It must be revealed daily. We must be led to it and through it slowly. And Jesus is the perfect one to show us the way, the truth, and the life.
Let’s fix our eyes on Jesus… choose to believe that God’s plans really are the best plans… and remind these fragile, human hearts of ours that we can trust Him at all times.
Comments