This post was written and contributed by Emily Zanke.
God With Us
Immanuel, God with us, is one of my favorite names for Jesus. I became a believer when I was fifteen years old after hearing the Gospel for the first time. Up until that time I was unaware of a beautiful Creator let alone one that would go so far as to send His only son to come down to me, to die for me just to have a beautiful relationship with me. As many of us know, life didn't magically get better, but life never looked the same either. Through life's course He has continued to be the hope my heart can hang on and through relationship of being with me He has given me deeper freedom from any deep valley.
Gazing over my life’s past eleven years, I realize many major meaningful milestones where Jesus’ faithfulness has been overwhelmingly evident. I can look back over the past eleven years of Jesus being with me and recount His faithfulness in these major milestones in my little life. Orphaned in South Korea as an infant, my story begins with being adopted to America at five months old.Because He came down to be with me and calling my heart to His, I no longer have an identity as an orphan. He has spoken and taught me to lean into my identity as His redeemed and renamed as His Daughter. When we speak of Jesus coming down and being with us, our circumstances may not change, but His presence with us changes everything. He continues to root this truth deep down in my heart.
Throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, my self-image was gravely skewed. This began a treacherous slope struggling through an eating disorder.Without Jesus walking through that season with me I would not have been able to claim freedom and victory over that dark struggle. Last year, my life shifted dramatically. I was engaged to be married, preparing for the wedding and walking into a whole new season of life. Plans changed and were redirected as the wedding was called off. All of a sudden my reality became too much to bear on my own in the midst of real heartache. Even though my reality did not change, His presence with me is what healed my heart. The promise of His presence became more real than ever, overwhelming and outweighing the burden of heartache.
In the midst of valleys and trials. Anywhere from not knowing your identity, to addictions, to a broken and fragile heart. Whatever it may be, whatever pain, whatever loss, Jesus stands right in it with us. He is deeply intimate, ever present, and He does not shutter or turn away in the midst of or in spite of pain. After all, He enwrapped Himself in all of those pains and bore it all fully just so that He could be that close to us. Closer than even our own skin. Immanuel, God with us, His presence truly changes everything we could ever face in this life. I hope that we, as His children, delight in this more than anything in this world, and I pray we be lovers of His presence in every season under the sun.
