Pastor Chuck’s 2014 Christmas Countdown Blog #7 – I love that the PRESENCE of Christmas is more important than the PRESENTS of Christmas! Oswald Chambers once wrote: “It is not God’s promises we need, it is [God] Himself.” Christmas is all about Presence. Let me spell that - it’s presence. Not Presents. It is about how God is with us, with us all. Indeed God’s greatest Christmas present to us is his presence - God is with us. In fact, Immanuel means God with us. Jesus wants to be with us. He wants us to be in His presence. Yet, God is so big, it's often hard to understand that presence — to grasp, let alone glory in it. If we can focus more on the presence of Jesus, we will truly discover what it means to have Christmas all year long! In certain parts of the world, people give gifts on December 6. By doing so, they have the rest of the month to focus on Jesus and the wonder of His birth, God’s perfect gift to us. The story of Jesus especially the story of Christmas is a story about how God is not far away but is close at hand and no matter how humble or far away any person or situation might seem God is there. Often we want gifts from God more than we want God Himself. We want health, wealth, knowledge, a better job, a better place to live. God may indeed want to give us these things, but we can’t have them apart from Him. As David said, “In Your presence is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11). Presents may make us happy for a time; earthly gifts from God may make us happy temporarily, but fullness of joy comes only when we remain in a right relationship with God. In the Christmas story, this all this starts in a feed trough with some shepherds, and a peasant couple, and a helpless baby. God shows himself in this most unlikely of places. If God is available there God surely must be available, must be present here too. This is a big part of what we Christians celebrate at this time of year. And this idea that God is present and available to everyone was really a new idea. You see the God we Christians worship is not some far away being but a loving ever-present Dad. The God we worship was revealed in a child born in a stable and laid in a feed trough. He came to us and he became like us so that we could truly know him and understand him.
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