Christmas: He came for you and me

With each new season of life, God call us to step out in faith and trust Him with what’s next. With each new call to step out in faith, it seems the stakes are higher… they are different each time, and God is committed to growing us, stretching us, ultimately maturing us and deepening our awareness of our complete and utter dependence on Him.

Because you see we all depend on Him for all things. For the air we breathe, for the lungs we breathe it with, for our lives, our skills, our jobs, our income, our health, our futures… all these things depend on Him through which all things have their being.

So is it our awareness then that needs to grow. And God uses everything to remind us ‘depend on Me, look to me, trust me for this, believe I am with you, I am for you, follow me.’ Each new season He asks us to step out in faith, and though we are fearful, He assures us with His love. Because “All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends.”

So we step out in trust of His love, all the while knowing that if He doesn’t show up, everything will fall apart…
As fear starts to grip me, my fears change into pleas with Him, “Lord, you have GOT to show up… please come through for us”

And yet it seems so silly, to worry about whether He is going to show up to the place He is leading us- to the place He is calling us to. He has gone before us, and yet I wonder whether He will be there when we get there… what?!?

We find ourselves in these moments where if He doesn’t show up, everything falls apart.

And we remember- He has shown up, He does show up, and we can know that He will.

This time of the year, we celebrate the incredible fact that Jesus showed up for you and me. He came, he stepped into time, He stepped into human flesh and came for you. He came for his people, not as they expected, but as a servant. He came for us- but not riding mightily on a horse, swooping in and erasing all our problems. He steps into broken flesh, he steps into this problematic world and walks through life with us. “He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger” He knows what it is to be weak and helpless and completely dependent on someone for everything.

Oh to have been Mary, the one who the creator of the universe depended on for His life. The one through whom and for whom all things exist, depended on a young girl to care for His every need. “The child that you delivered will soon deliver you.” And he wrote the final word on all our problems, all our stresses and worries- by dying so that we may know His love, that we may be one with Him, that His life may be ours, and our doubt of His love for us may forever end.

Do you doubt whether God will show up for you? Do you fear his coming through for you this time of year?

Look to the manger- see the tiny baby, and know that He has come, He does come and and He will come for you- but- remember- it is often not as you expect.

I say theses words to myself now, in my heart I need to believe He came for me, He is here for me, and He will show up.
How greater can the God of this world express His love for His people, than by making Himself nothing, stepping into our fallen flesh, coming as one of us, and then dying in our place? There is no greater picture of love- and to this love we must cling this season, when the fear and the stress and worries creep in, I cling to Jesus, God incarnate, a tiny child, the God of the universe, whose love casts it all away.