Merry Christmas–Hope has come!

This Christmas is much different for us–different sites, sounds, traditions, and even weather! But the depth of meaning of the Savior coming into the world is only getting clearer for me at Christmas this year. I’ve been reading the devotional Come, Let us Adore Him, by Paul David Tripp. Here are some of his words that have really hit home for me this year.

• So here’s what the Christmas story is all about: a willing Savior is born to rescue unwilling people from themselves because there is no other way.

• The incarnation of Jesus Christ pointedly preaches our inescapable need for radical, personal, and moral rescue and forgiveness.

• At Christmas we celebrate a God who is glorious in his abundant love and patient mercy.

• In the psyche of every human being lives this weird and uncomfortable battle between hunger for God and a desire to hide from him…The fearful awkwardness between us and God has been forever broken by Jesus, so we can run with confidence into God’s presence and know that he will never turn us away.

• The Way, the Truth, and the Life was in the manger, causing angels to rejoice, Mary to wonder, shepherds to worship, and us to have hope…He came to serve, to suffer, and ultimately to die so that his kingdom would reign in the hearts of his people.

I am just so thankful that God provided a way for poor and needy people like me. Mission life has probably shown me more of my soul poverty than I had ever seen before. It’s striking really. I battle my desires for comfort and going my own way on a very consistent basis, and perhaps in a more glaring way, here. It’s a “battle for glory,” Tripp says. A battle against my own kingdom of self, in order to give glory to the One who truly deserves it, and to ultimately lift up the kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of me.

Praise God that he has met our every need in Jesus Christ. We can live in this sin-soaked, painful world with hope because He is Hope! As you celebrate this Christmas, I pray that this reality will sink in deeper with you also. No matter where you are, you are never too far and your situation never too dire to be rescued by the King of Glory, the baby in the manger, the man who took on all our sin, Jesus.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. May the LORD draw you nearer and show you greater depths of his love in 2020!

Krismasi Njema!

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” -Romans 8:32