Posts with the tag “god-with-us”

Let's confronts one of our deepest longings during the Advent season - the longing for peace. We sing beautiful carols about silent nights and heavenly peace, yet many of us carry hearts heavy with chaos, anxiety, and unrest. The profound truth revealed here is that the Prince of Peace doesn't wait for our circumstances to calm down before entering our lives. Instead, He steps directly into our mess. Drawing from Isaiah's prophecy and the birth narrative in Luke, we discover that Jesus was born into political oppression, violence, and a dirty stable - not into tranquility. The armies of heaven didn't whisper their announcement; they proclaimed with authority that peace had arrived. This peace isn't something we manufacture through perfect performance or peacekeeping - it's something we receive through His presence. The distinction between peacekeeping and peacemaking is transformative: peacekeeping exhausts us as we try to manage chaos, while peacemaking invites Jesus into the center of our storm. When we look at Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4, we see that His peace doesn't just soothe - it confronts and commands chaos to bow. The biblical words for peace - shalom (wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken) and eirene (reconciliation, restoration) - reveal that peace isn't a feeling but a Person. Jesus doesn't hand us peace as a gift separate from Himself; He says, 'I am your peace.' This Advent season, we're invited to stop striving to create calm and instead behold Emmanuel, God with us, who brings wholeness to our brokenness and stands with us in the fire.  Read More

We're all invited into the profound mystery of Advent - not as a season of frantic doing, but as an invitation to behold. We're reminded that the essence of Christianity isn't about behaving better, but about beholding Jesus. Explore Romans 8:22-25, revealing that all creation groans, and we groan alongside it. But here's the revolutionary truth: groaning doesn't disqualify us from hope - it actually positions us for it. Pain becomes the soil where hope takes root. When we carry disappointment, weariness, or unanswered prayers, we're not lacking faith; we're simply recognizing that the world isn't as it should be. The beautiful promise of Emmanuel - God with us - means hope didn't arrive as instructions or advice, but as a person born in a manger. Jesus stepped into our darkness not to explain our suffering, but to liberate us from it. This living hope sustains us in the 'already and not yet' tension of the kingdom, where we've tasted redemption but still await its fullness. The practical application challenges us to shift our gaze upward - not ignoring our struggles, but refusing to let them define us. When we behold the light of Christ shining in our darkness, the Holy Spirit fills us with an overflow of confident hope that circumstances cannot shake.  Read More