Merry Christmas!

by Angie Thomas

May the Lord keep you very close to His heart during this very busy and so often very distracting time of year. May we all have eyes to see and ears to hear God’s still small voice directing and leading us as we walk through this Christmas season where Satan wants desperately for us to be consumed with worry and stress and not be able to enjoy the wonder and anticipation of celebrating Christ’s birth!

We have had the privilege of learning so much this semester about Jesus and His words of blessing and wisdom to us in the Beatitudes.  But you know, we would not have Jesus’ powerful teaching recorded in Matthew 5 had Jesus not chosen to humble himself and leave the comfort, glory, and beauty of heaven to come to our broken and dirty world.

May we all follow Christ’s example of humility this Christmas.  Even though we might experience verbal persecution for our faith among family and friends who do not understand or hope and trust in Christ, I pray we will respond in love and grace and that the light of Christ will shine through us…that we will be a City on a Hill.

May we meditate daily on Christ’s example in Philippians 2.  Take a moment to read this passage and let its truths sink deeply into your heart!

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:1-11)

May the Lord keep you near and give you the grace to continue to spend time with Him in His Word and in prayer! There is no greater joy and delight!

Much Love and Merry Christmas,

Angie