He was King when He came in the manger. He was King when He was with the disciples teaching them and healing many while doing the will of God. He is still King and He will be coming back to be King on the throne of David one day soon. God loves all of us so much that He sent Jesus to be the Lamb which paid the price for our sins.
Jesus is our Savior and creator and He will soon reign over the Earth for one thousand years. Life will be the norm during that time and death will only come to those who reject Him as their Savior. We celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus Christ but that is not the main theme of the season. We give and get presents and go to parties, when celebrating His work on our behalf is what we should be celebrating, if we believe in Him for our salvation.
Life as we know it today is changing all of the time and one day it will change drastically. When He comes for the church, believers who have died and those who still live, the world will change dramatically. Can you imagine? A world without believers in Jesus. Some people will be glad that they/we are gone. But…hell will be coming to Earth for seven years after this. Still, some will be happy about this, but I don’t think that everyone will be happy about this.
God loves you. He has made a way for you to live with Him for eternity. Life more alive than we are today. Working for and with the Creator of everything! We will not be bored for thousands of years, He will have something for us to do. We may be in His kitchen cooking or painting beautiful scenes for Him. Whatever your real talent is, God will find a way for you to use your talents. There will not be schedules or time clocks or cell phones (thank God). I am truly looking forward to being there. I pray that you will be there too.
How much do you need in this life? God gives us everything that we need every day but most of us take that for granted and we still wonder, “Where is God when I need Him?”. As someone who has grown up in America and has so-called “privileges” because I live here, I can tell you that those privileges are few. Some think that because I am “white” I have everything but I don’t. Life and friends can be cruel at times even when the “friends” don’t intend to be. Life is what we make of it or so I am told and in many ways that is true, but when you see many people who are wealthier than you are, don’t assume that their life is a happy one all of the time. Nobody can be happy every minute of every day regardless of the amount of money they have access to.
Joy, on the other hand, can be had by someone who lives in a cardboard shack. Why? Isn’t happiness and joy the same thing? Not by a long shot. Joy is not fleeting. It is a feeling that you can have just because you were able to get up this morning and walk to the kitchen. Many people in the world don’t have that blessing. Happiness comes and goes and depends upon your situation at the time. Joy can go on forever.
Where am I going with this? In many parts of the world poverty is so crushing that even having rags on your body may be all of the clothes that you have, and yet some of those who live in this situation are joyful because they are believers in Jesus. In America, we can’t imagine being impoverished to that point, yet there are some in our country who do live that way.
God watches over all of us whether we are rich or poor, but many still don’t acknowledge Him as their Savior because when they felt the need for Him to intervene in some way for them, He did not. We can’t know why He didn’t heal or fix a problem or disease but He does. He may use a doctor or a prayer to heal but the answer is always up to Him. As Christians, we have access to Him all of the time but many of us allow the world to dictate when we seek Him. We try all kinds of treatments and other ways of healing us before we, as a last resort, turn to Him.
Being joyful in the face of a medical problem that feels overwhelming is not something many of us even consider, but one of Jesus’ disciples said that we should “count it all as Joy”, the good and the bad days. If you have given your life to Jesus and are walking through the world feeling sad or even angry because of a prayer that hasn’t been answered, ask Him to show you why it hasn’t been. God uses the good days and the bad days to give us strength and increase our faith. We may not like the way He does it but we will see the outcome one day and realize that it was for our good and His glory that it happened that way. Seek Him today and know that He loves each of us warts and all.
The Living Message of Christ 