Isaiah 42:1-12
Psalms 8, 24, 29, and 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 3:16-21
The
single greatest thing that we can and should know about God is that He is love.
God uses this quality of love to love us while we are still sinners. But He
desires to take us to a different level. God loves us so much because he had
created each one of us in His own and most fabulous, beautiful image. When the
devil deceived our ancestors Adam and Eve and made them to fall from the glory
of God, God felt so grieved because Satan had stolen God’s image in us and
subjected the entire human family to his satanic dominion. God was grieved that
Satan stole and distorted what belonged to Him [God]. So the greatest truth
that motivated God’s plan to save us from the dominion of Satan and sin is that
God loves us. But it is more than this; each one of us should be glad to know
that when God loves us, He loves Himself in us. He therefore sent Jesus Christ
to restore us to the original fabulous and beautiful image of Adam and Eve.
God
loves us that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, that if we accept and trust Him to
change us from the power of sin that we all inherited from Adam and Eve, then
God will restore the vitality He had planned for us before Satan brought his
corruption to the human family. The vitality that Jesus brings is eternal life.
Eternal life is not an extension of the miserable and mortal life that we see
and have in this world. It is God’s life embodied in Jesus given as a guarantee
that we will live forever with no sickness, no death, no enemy, no evil or sin.
When we refuse to have Christ, we make a choice as though all this life is all
that we have. So for this advent, let us pray that Christ be born into our
homes, our living rooms, our bedrooms, and, yes indeed, in our kitchens since
he had the only chance of a manger. Let Him be born into our hearts that we may
begin to experience all that happens from an eternal perspective.