God urges His people to return to Him and He uses His holy priesthood to serve as leaders. You are a royal priesthood. May you allow Christ Jesus to transform you into His holy priesthood, sanctifying you day by day as you continue seeking Him, growing in Him and serving Him. Amen.

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Merry Christmas! God, the eternal One, the holy Creator, surrendered His heavenly glory and came to earth as a baby human – fully divine and fully human – to show us how to live and to teach us about God and to provide the path for our reconciliation with God. Today we celebrate His birth, and worship and praise Him for who He is, and thank Him for everything.

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God’s holy word urges us to have the mind of Christ Jesus, and to reveal strength through humility, mercy and love. How can we possibly have His mind? The only way we gain bits and pieces of Him is through His holy indwelling, by abiding in Him and allowing Him to abide in us, through studying His holy word, by prayer, surrender and truly following Him, by loving Him, which necessitates following His commands.

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Christ Jesus is with us, but how do we go to Him? We follow Paul’s example. We bow before Him, we surrender to Him, we acknowledge and proclaim our nothingness and total depravity apart from Him, and we ask Christ Jesus to dwell in our hearts through faith and to fully transform our spirits and souls, filling us with Him.

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I thank God for who He created us to be. Thank God for the purposes He designed us to fulfill. Thank God for the opportunities He grants us to serve in His great mission on earth, for His strength, His power, His salvation, His grace, His life that He bestows upon us.

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In the context of His union with God the Father and our union with Him, in the context of God’s great mission on earth, Jesus will do whatever we ask in His holy name “so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

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I sat in the solemn service, memories of the boy and his voice and the melting hearts and my grandson swirling in my mind, feeling the warmth of it all with tears streaming down my cheeks. We gathered worshiping God through Christ Jesus with the Holy Spirit. Do I make Him feel the way my grandson made me feel? Do I delight in Him? Do I desire Him and desire to share my entire existence with Him, and reveal my delight by calling out to Him the way my grandson shrieked when he saw me or like the boy in the sanctuary called to his father?

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Praying matters. Prayers make a difference. Heavenly events influence earthly matters, and God hears and responds to our prayers. As a result, our prayers influence heavenly events.

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When we gather in prayer, amazing things happen. The Holy Spirit reveals Himself and we gain fresh connection with Him, and we build relationships with one another that are unlike any other. Jesus prays that we might be one with Him, one with God the Father, and one with one another, and gathering in prayer is a way to accomplish this. This is why, while cleansing the temple, Jesus quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah, reminding everyone that His house shall be a house of prayer.

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Jesus explains that He is the bread of life and concludes by explaining that people who refuse to eat His flesh and drink His blood have no life in them. Consuming His flesh and blood are essential elements of gaining the life He offers – spiritual life, abundant life, eternal life, the kingdom of God.

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Like Timothy, we each possess good treasure. We may not have the exact elements that Timothy had, but we share common elements. We have faith, and God’s power, love and self-discipline. We know the gospel and God’s holy truth. And God calls each of us into His great mission here on earth. Like Timothy, God’s holy word urges us to join Paul in suffering for the gospel of Christ Jesus, to join in his reliance on God’s power and provision, and to guard the good treasure.

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Jesus taught a great deal about our desire for power and possessions, and His teaching blurs the line between the two. Our desire for wealth, possessions, power, social position, prestige and the messy mix of it all is an outward indication of our spiritual condition. As we grow toward Him, our focus shifts to Him, our desire shifts to His will, and our behavior changes.

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God offers His friendship to mere humans. Pause and absorb that thought. It is an incomprehensibly awesome concept that we might have the holy Creator of the universe, the One who holds the world and everything in His hand, at our side as our companion, confidant, advisor, and everything else friendship suggests. It is an amazing gift of grace that carries with it responsibility because all friendships are bilateral.

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Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Ezekiel’s vision and Jesus’ teaching illuminate each other in striking ways. In many ways, using a variety of images and words, Jesus explains that He is the only path to spiritual life and communion with God. The image of extremely dry bones suddenly coming to life because God breathes His breath of life into them is a glorious, unforgettable image of God’s holy grace available in and through Christ Jesus.

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God’s holy word explains that God releases people to their passions. It is a shockingly awful judgment but far more merciful than other options. I pray God continues to reveal His mercy, not the justice we deserve. I pray that God never stops pursuing us, because He is the source of faith and life and everything. Apart from Him we are nothing.

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From noon until three, darkness covered the land. Jesus cried out to God the Father asking why the Father had forsaken Him, and as He breathed His final breath the temple curtain ripped, the earth shook, and tombs opened. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Everything about the scene is dark – the noon sun disappeared, God’s glory hid, Jesus, the light of the world, was not shining. For a time, darkness seemed to prevail, and God seemed absent, but the light soon overtook the darkness in new splendor.

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Proverbs explains that God’s holy words “are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.” God’s holy words are life. The words are alive, living and life, providing wholeness, peace and satisfaction to those who find them. They are healing. God’s holy words are medicine, the cure, deliverance for spirits, souls and bodies who find them. They are healing to all their flesh. God’s holy words are power, and they are powerful. Jesus is the Word. He is life. We gain faith by hearing His word (see Romans 10:17) and faith is empowering. Through Christ Jesus we gain new life and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, transforming our spirits, souls and bodies. And we receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us (see Acts 1:8).

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Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit, Christ Jesus and God the Father dwell within certain people. God, the Creator of the universe, dwells within lowly humans. Ponder the majesty of that thought.

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Through Christ Jesus, we are each offered new life, but we must each make the leap and we should do so joyously, and by leaping into His loving arms we leave our old lives behind. We must do so, because Scripture shows that God does not respond well to fence sitters. We must be born again, we must gain new life, we must allow our old life to wither and die.

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God of the heavens came to earth, died and rose again, for you and me, for our atonement, and He died, not for some hypothetical sin, but He died a real death for real sin. He died for my sin and yours, not some abstract, hypothetical notion of sin, but real sin in real life. And when we gather to share Holy Communion, we refresh our intimate communion with Christ Jesus. This is awesome, but have you ever stopped to consider the implications of being in communion with Christ Jesus and having the holy Creator of the universe dwelling within you? What does it mean to be united with Christ? Union with Christ changes who we are.

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