The Perfecting Church

God has an overarching plan for creation and our lives. He has created all things for His glory, that all of creation might reflect His goodness, honoring Him as Lord. When we get off track, departing from the unique plans and purposes for which we were created, God is so fierce in His all encompassing love that He interrupts the course of our lives. Our lives are marked by holy interruptions and divine timeouts, God Himself intervening, rerouting and brining us into His glorious designs.

Christmas expresses the truth of God With Us in a way that requires us to grasp its gift over and over again to truly and fully appreciate it. Receiving the gift of Immanuel transforms us into someone radically different from who we were or ever could be. Jesus, embodying flesh, yet miraculously ushering in His Spirit and truth, is the most awe-inspiring act of and for humanity. Mary, the mother of Jesus, lovingly reveals how we are to respond to the truth of God With Us… either refuse to believe who He is or grasp and embrace all of Him, realizing we have nothing without Him.

Since the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, we have sought to return to God’s presence. Despite man’s best efforts to obey the law or carry the Ark of the Covenant, we were unable to return to Eden. However, God’s love is so great that when we couldn’t get to Him, He came to us. The greatest gift, God with us, changes everything because even when we aren’t looking He sees us!

We must always remember who we are, priest of the Most High God. And despite the difficulties and seeming failures in our lives, we must trust and believe that the God of creation has our times in His hands. Since God is with us, we are free to hope in the salvation only He can provide for every situation.

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, God with us — Matthew 1:23. As we enter into our last series of 2019 and the Christmas season — the celebration and remembrance of God wrapping His only begotten Son in human flesh and sending Him to be with and ultimately to give Himself for us — we are asking God to help us see and more deeply understand what it means for God to be with us. How would our lives, our hopes, our thoughts, our concerns, our perspectives change if we really believed God is with us?

We live in a world full of exhausted people. Social media is taking its toll. Sleeplessness, anxiety, stress and depression are on the rise. While the age of connectivity grants us access to everything, we fend for ourselves, denying the One who can deliver us from anything what He most wants and we most need—connection with Him.

We live in a world and time where the popular solution to every difficult experience is cheer up and get over it. Too often our tendency, with even the most excruciating experiences and crippling emotions, is to shake it off with happy. Many of us are exhausted because we’re going through life with so many unresolved issues. It’s foolish at best and ungodly at worst to think we can simply put a bandaid on everything. Some things in this world are difficult beyond explanation. We must learn how to mourn and find the supernatural comfort of God or we are going to die trying to be happy.

There’s an exhaustion that comes from remembering and rehearsing the negative events and experiences we have. The words and events we remember and rehearse, build memorials within us; and tragically our tendency is to build memorials around negative experiences and carry them for the rest of our lives. When God establishes memorials He does it to remind us of Him and the significant ways He has moved, demonstrating His power and love for us. God’s memorials are established to anchor us in the confidence and power that comes from knowing He is with us and for the plans and purposes attached to our lives. The way we remember a thing not only shapes the event; the way we remember a thing shapes us.