Emmanuel

Emmanuel....it's a total Christmas word. You only really hear it during this time of year. For most of my life I had no idea what it meant: God with us. The "with us" God. I love that.

God with us.

This transformed my life to know that God didn’t just create the world, set it into motion and sit back in Heaven to watch us all flounder and try to live it out…but that He said – I want to be with you.

I want to come to you – because you cannot possibly do enough to get to me.

He saw our deep problem of being separated from God by rebellion in our hearts.

He saw that we had no solution on our own.

He decided to be the solution. To be the rescuer. To be with us.

He is not far, He is near.

This God (the One Who spoke and creation burst into being)

This God (the One who holds the mountains in the palm of his hand)

This God (the One who was, and is and is to come)

This God (the One who reigns as King of Kings) – came and lived among humanity.

Now, I know that some of you reading don't buy into “This God”. Feel very free to be just where you are spiritually. But as each of us sit here today, in this moment in your lives, where would you need God to be with you?

Do you need Emmanuel to be WITH YOU when anxiety overtakes you in your bed at night?

Do you need Emmanuel to be WITH YOU when you are lonely?

Do you need Emmanuel to be WITH YOU when you feel unloved, unwelcomed and unwanted?

Do you need Immanuel to be WITH YOU when there is an emptiness that kinda naws on your soul every now and then….like you are made for more?

Do you need Immanuel to be WITH YOU when your loved when has cancer, when you can't conceive, when you are out of answers?

For several years of my marriage I needed a WITH-ME God as I struggled, wrestled, wept through infertility. And He was with me. He was with me in the darkness. And he has been with me in the light of my own 2 children now.

Immanuel. God. With. Us.

I invite you to ask Immanuel to be with you if you never have. His very name means that He longs to be with you.

My With-Me God in my two kiddos: