He shall be called Immanuel, God with us. God is really with us. God is really with you. There are times when we think to ourselves, ‘is God really with me?’, ‘is He really here cause it doesn’t feel like it’. We go through many situations that are both good and bad and in these bad situations, we begin to question our belief, we begin to question God’s Word but we must remember that He is always with us.
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
Matthew 1:22-23 (NKJV)
God sent His only begotten Son into the earth through a virgin birth. Through the birth of Christ, we have someone who is eternally with us. We have God, the Father, we have Jesus, the Son and we have the Holy Spirit. We have the Trinity who is continually for us and not against us and who is always with us.
The Lord is with us. Jesus is with us. We don’t have to question God’s presence. He said that He would be with us always even to the end of the world (Matthew 28:20). We are not alone. A lot of times, the enemy puts negative thoughts in our minds and we believe those lies and then we live them out. The enemy says ‘you are not worth it’, ‘you are all alone, no one wants you’, ‘your mother and your father forsook you and God has forsaken you’ and ‘ He has forgotten you’. He wants to deceive us and wants us to believe a lie so that we lose faith in God, so that we no longer trust Him and we go further away from Him. In these times, we have to remember what God says in His Word.
Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me under the shadow of Your wings. Psalm 17:8 (NKJV)
When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me. Psalm 27:10 (NKJV)
Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” Deuteronomy 31:6 (NKJV)
God is the Omnipresent God. He is with us wherever we go. We don’t have to be afraid, we don’t have to worry. The Lord is with us. David asked the question in Psalm 139, ‘where can I go from Your Spirit?’. He asked ‘where can I flee from Your presence?’. David realized that he was not alone. He realized that the One who created the heavens and the earth was with him. Where can we run from God, where can we hide? No where.
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. Psalm 139:7-10 (NKJV)
In this Christmas season, remember that Jesus is with us. Immanuel is really with us. No matter how the situation may seem, God is really with us. No matter if you have bills to pay and you have no money to buy Christmas presents, God is still with you. He is the same God yesterday, today and forevermore and He is still here with us.
By Trisha Carter, author of The Christian Life Blog You can read more of Trisha’s work at www.thechristianlifeblog.blogspot.com [/column]
