Today’s Scripture: Matthew 1:23, NKJV- “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
God is with us you know. There are a lot of moving parts to life yet at the core of our lives when everything and everyone else are stripped away, God is with us. The complicated becomes the simple. Bewilderment becomes confidence. What seemed distant becomes oh so close.
Matthew 1:18 makes the birth of Immanual sound so simple. The NIV puts it this way “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.”
Sounds simple yet in this one statement we have Mother Mary becoming pregnant through the Holy Spirit. An angel of the LORD appeared to Joseph to make sure he stayed with Mary, and they lived out prophecies from hundreds of years before. Previous verses in Matthew chapter one cover the genealogy of Jesus fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations from David to the Exile of God’s people to Babylon, and another fourteen generations from the Exile to the birth of our Messiah Jesus. Simple enough?
Forget all the noise and just know God is with us. In the hustle and bustle, the yin and yang, the secular and the spiritual, God is with us. As a matter of fact, God is with us even when we feel isolated and alone. In the dark and in the light our God is with us. It is so easy to get lost in our moments that we lose sight and connectivity with anyone, including God. As the old saying goes, God did not go anywhere, we did.
From the kings of Jesus’ day to today’s politics we continue to complicate life and attempt to remove God. My affirmation journey for about a generation of my life was about making “I” statements of what I wanted to manifest in my life. I experienced the fact that when we claim just about anything as already received it somehow comes to pass. Yet, I claimed things that also removed God. Affirmations of God has changed me forever because I welcomed Immanuel into the process.
I am still maturing in my faith as I do desire to affirm God’s characteristics into my life but there are moments of clarity, like now, that make me realize it is not about me. My affirmations should be less about me and I and more about God and us. Here In Matthew 1:23 I am reminded of Immanuel being translated to God with us. I still think it is OK to affirm that God is with me because He is. However, we were born too into God’s genealogy to be a part of His family. We are God’s creation, and He sent us a savior.
There is no need to complicate this. Simply welcome and thank God for being with us. Will you?
Today’s Prayer: Thank You Immanuel for being God with us. Forgive me Father God for when I am so selfish and blind to others. Forgive me Father when I focus more on myself than on You. You are our LORD and our Immanuel. Help us LORD to share You with all people so they too may come to faith, comfort, and peace in the presence of the one true God. Amen.
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