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Hello Sisters, My apologies, here is the post for today. God bless you,Michelle
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14
For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king;
it is he who will save us. Isaiah 33:22
There are plenty of times when I wonder is God really with me? These thoughts pop up when I sit in the doctor’s office discussing infertility, or when my husband gets another email that he didn’t get the job after a year of unemployment. It’s when a friend is sick. It’s when somebody has died. It’s when I have a bad day and my phone screen cracks.
“Emmanuel” means “God with us”. It doesn’t mean “God gives us whatever we want” or “God says everything will be great all the time”, or even “God will make sure everything is great if you do what he says”, but I’m sure by now you know this. I also know that this is hard to remember. The problem in my thinking with “God with us” is that I tend to focus an awful lot on the “us” or rather “me”. That’s right sisters, I tend to think an awful lot about me.
It’s so comforting to think about God is always with me. And God really is always with you and me! Even when it doesn’t seem like it. But today I’d like us to take a step back from the “us” of “God with us” and focus on the “God”. I want to focus on Jesus.
How incredible is it that God humbled himself to literally walk among us? He allowed his Son to perish for our sins so that we can be with Him forever. Emmanuel is more than a name and a nice idea (my name means princess, but it definitely didn’t work out that way for me!) “God with us” is a declaration, it is an action, it is a promise.
How often do I pray “God be with me,” and then set off to solve all my problems on my own? Isaiah 33:22 tells us that God will save us. Now that doesn’t mean we sit around doing nothing, but it does mean that we should trust in God more than we trust ourselves.
But guess what is the even better part? God already did the saving! He did it about 2,000 years ago when Jesus was born and lived and died and lived again! I know that Advent tends to be the season that we focus on baby Jesus and His birth, but we must always keep Easter in our minds, for that is when the saving takes place!
I bet a lot of you have asked the question “Why wasn’t Jesus actually named Emmanuel?” I’ve asked it myself. How can this prophecy be true if they didn’t name him Emmanuel? Well the idea of “to call him Emmanuel” in the scripture doesn’t mean Mary and Joseph would name him Emmanuel. It’s more like how Dwayne Johnson is called The Rock. It’s not his literal name, but it is what he is called! Just take a look at the last verse of Matthew where Jesus says “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
So whatever you are going through today, whether it is a big problem or a small one, I hope you will remember that God really is with you, that Jesus promised to be with you forever. Remember that you cannot save yourself alone. Remember that God is sovereign and in control. If he has your heart, he has everything.
Reflect: What is a time when you struggled to remember that God was with you?
What is a time when you knew for sure that God was with you?
Act: Take a moment to write about what “Emmanuel” means to you. What might “God with us” look like in your life?
