The Christmas season is a time for new beginnings.
If we believe the Hallmark Channel, we need to reevaluate who we’ve become and the people who populate our lives and make sure we haven’t veered from our core values.
We need to ensure the name and the image we’ve created for ourselves is the way we want to be known from here on out.
Our friends and associates might call us Shawn, Beatrice, or Lucy, but how do they see us? Who are we really in their eyes?
The holiday season is about looking in our mirror and discovering how others see us. That’s our real name: friend, companion, or dependable worker.
We become better when we are honest about who we are.
Matthew 1:23 gives the true name of Jesus.
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel which means, God with us.”
We’ve seen the manger scenes and attended more Christmas plays than we can recount. We might even have a baby Jesus perched under our tree or on the mantle. “How sweet,” we remark, when we see the iconic Christmas image in advertisements or store windows. It’s so cute our heart melts.
Here’s the thing. Jesus is not that baby’s real name.
Wha—!?! Of course, it is! Where is this teaching going?
Let’s look at that verse again. They shall call his name Immanuel which means, God with us.
That little baby in the manger? He is God With Us. That’s his name. We can call him Jesus, Christ, or Lord, but it all means the same thing. Jesus arrived in that manger, and God was with humanity … in the flesh … and in real time.
Ann Voskamp, Christian author, says this:
“So God throws open the door of this world—and enters as a baby. As the most vulnerable imaginable. Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with you. What religion ever had a god that wanted such intimacy with us that He came with such vulnerability to us? What God ever came so tender we could touch Him? So fragile that we could break Him? So vulnerable that His bare, beating heart could be hurt? Only the One who loves you to death.”
We are to be like Jesus. When we model ourselves after him, we become the presence of God to those who interact with us.
We want people to say about us, God is with us. That’s what being a Christian means. We get a new name, and it’s the name of the Savior.
When we take our Christian walk to heart, we become more and more like Christ.
Copyright © 2019 MyChurchNotes.net
Code: FGO.H.11.19a.vp.esv