God is always with us
Just a little heads up – it’s less than five months until Christmas! We’ll soon be seeing trees and decorations, along with the incessant jingle bell-type music. But I’m not saying this to remind you to start thinking about your shopping list. I want to remind you about Emmanuel, God with us. During the Advent season, we talk and think a lot about how Jesus came to be one of us, living among us and just as human as we are, but not so much the rest of the year. Emmanuel isn’t just for Christmas. He’s with us all the time.
In our western culture, we have a tendency to believe we do things on our own, including praying. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote about how we do nothing by ourselves and how God – Father, Son and Spirit – is with us in everything. “An ordinary Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God. But if he is a Christian, he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God – that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.”
Christmas will be here before we know it, but let’s remember God is with us every day of the year. The threefold life of the three-personal being is always going on inside us, around us and with us, guiding, motivating and helping us “press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called (us) heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14, NIV).
Study by Tammy Tkach
First published on 1 August 2023, at www.gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com
Tammy Tkach is the Assistant Pastor of the Eugene, Oregon, USA congregation. She is a speaker and writer, and publishes a blog at www.gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com
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