I’ve heard the Christmas story SO many times, but this year, I’m hearing it in a totally new way.
New Take on an Old Story
Mary a virgin, devout follower of God, turning up pregnant before officially being married. She would’ve been stoned to death with Jesus in her womb had it not been for Joseph hearing clearly from God that he should not have her stoned but go on and marry her (he clearly loved Mary deeply because he planned to separate quietly anyway).
What did their parents and relatives say, friends at the synagogue? How many friends they must have lost. What a scandal! I wonder if this had anything to do with their being “no room” at the inn for them – could it be that they were being shunned?
On top of that, after Jesus is finally born, for 2 years they had to escape to Egypt so He would not be murdered with all the other male babies. What a terrible time – fear, scandal, scorning, fleeing. I’m sure it didn’t feel temporary, either – that was at least 3 years of difficulty and terror.
What Does it All Mean?
I think there may be more to this realization than I’ve recognized so far, but for starters (a BIG one), this gives me hope considering our world right now. Perhaps another most wonderful time is coming soon in the earth’s life, a time of terror but also the second coming of our Lord, His ultimate triumph. Our world has undergone tremendous change in the past 2 years, and it has felt long, heavy, hopeless. But I am, we are, not without hope.
What to Do Next
For now, think about the details of the Christmas story for yourself. You may find some other gems and I’d love if you’d comment and share with me! Also, check out this message on the Power to Live.
Come fix your eyes on Jesus and get to know Him, really know Him, so that we can continue to walk forward in His strength and Will in the coming year.
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Myth: I Must Feel Joy
This winter, I’ve had a lot of time to think, reflect, search internally as I anticipate a difficult Christmas season. I’m only one of many, many stories around how low this season can feel, when everywhere are big letters of “JOY” and signs of impending celebration. And, of course, I should feel celebratory. The most important event in the history of the world is being remembered!
I want to feel celebratory, I want to be joyful, and I am so incredibly grateful for the only reason we even have Christmas, for my King Who came in such an amazing and humble way. No king, anywhere, does what my King did for me. I’m constantly grateful and humbled. I’ve realized more this year than before what Mary and Joseph must have gone through to have the baby Jesus, how messy that was (read about that here).
Myth: My Feelings Will Change
I can’t say that my feelings follow what I know about why I should feel so elated and joyful. Despite all the valid reasons I should feel those emotions, I don’t. In front of my face every moment of every day is my raw sadness, depression even. It’s driven this year in particular by my daily sacrifice for our country’s freedom, which sounds grandiose, but in some ways, I want others to feel sorry for me.
My husband and I both are sacrificing for you. How selfish. How arrogant! How not Jesus-like of me. I want my husband here, but at the same time, I am also proud of him for signing up to wear the uniform and for defending and maintaining freedoms that I, too, enjoy. It’s my obligation to make this sacrifice for my own freedom, just as much as for yours. We all benefit from what he and his comrades are doing right now, and what many will continue to do in years to come.
You, too, have stories of a similar struggle to maintain a façade of happiness and joy at each Christmas season.
I’ve been overwhelmed with emotions and as a result, frustrated with extreme tiredness. I’ve been worried that I am over-stretching myself and might have an emotional breakdown at the worst possible moment. I throw myself into projects, and while everyone tells me “you do too much,” those projects are the only thing holding me together right now.
Truth: I Am A Testimony
Amid the chaos of my mind, I decided to Examine my Christmas Traditions with this 20-min message, to make sense of what is happening inside and to be sure I’m not doing this to myself, and what I’ve realized this year is that keeping Jesus at the center is the work. Every pressure I sense at every turn, every song on the radio, every decoration, is not an obligation to forcefully “be happy” at the birth of my King. It’s ok for me to admit that I’m not particularly ecstatic this year, and, while family is not the reason for Christmas, it’s ok to be sad and to spend some time alone with my thoughts, doing my projects.
Not to avoid every celebration or tradition, but have a good cry before attending the Christmas Eve service, and to cry during the service, wishing my husband were holding my hand and making memories with me. I don’t need to be burdened with sadness and crying every minute, but it’s alright to let it out, too. Jesus loves me like I love my husband, so even in my tears He is still honored, He is still adored.
Because I want to celebrate His birth with My Love (my hubby), and that’s not wrong, that’s ok, more than ok. It’s why He came in the first place, so that we could serve Him together, and our hearts longing to be together is simply another reflection of the wonderfulness of Jesus. He has knit us so close that we ache when we’re apart, and that is our testimony to Him.
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Stumbling across a Miracle of Christmas audio (I have lots of alone time with my husband deployed), I thought it would be simply another version of the well-known Christmas story: an angel appeared to a virgin (Mary), she became pregnant without sleeping with her soon-to-be husband, and they have the baby in a dirty stable because no inns had any room for them. While those highlights are true, I am so refreshed at having found new nuggets of truth in a very old, very familiar, story. And it’s not simply a story, it’s history.
Jesus really is part-human and part-divine
Do you ever wonder how Jesus could be “fully God, yet fully man”? I’ve heard this said so many times, and it’s almost a cliché in some groups. But, how is that possible?
This question often remains unanswered, and while not a difficult topic, is critical to my core beliefs as I label myself a Christian. If I can’t explain this concept, I can’t explain why I believe anything else about my life.
After listening to this, I better understand how Jesus could be both human and God at the same time; how the Holy Spirit inseminated Mary in an incredible way. It’s not dark and weird like so many movie rituals we see where women are chained and violated mercilessly against their will. The Bible uses the words “overshadow” and “come upon” (The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you – Luke 1:35).
I’m an animal person, so this analogy resonated with me – if you’re not, you might Google and read a little more about it. When horses are bred, it’s called “cover” – the stallion “covers” the mare. The idea here is similar. The word overshadow literally means “to cast shade or a shadow on, which leaves a natural result” (ref: BibleHub). It really was a supernatural insemination, not in the way we understand it. Mary’s egg was used, so Jesus would be fully man, but she was inseminated by God’s Holy Spirit, so Jesus would also be fully God.
Why is the virgin birth so critical?
It is paramount that Jesus be born with God as His Father, because that’s the only way He would be born sinless. If Joseph or any human had been his father, he would have been born with the original sin that came down through the man Adam. It is essential to our Christian faith that Jesus be born without sin, without being a slave to the devil, otherwise His death and resurrection would not be sufficient to deliver us from sin and eternal death. This would be why the devil kept tempting Jesus His whole life to try and get him to sin – who was in every sense tempted like we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15 MSG). At His crucifixion, He was spotless and blameless, so a true and adequate sacrifice to pay for the sins of the world.
Know what you believe
In this Christmas story, I’m learning the importance of Mary first believing what she was told by the angel and then becoming so full of joy that she rejoices –
“And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.
And Mary said, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord.'”
– What you believe matters, what I believe matters! I know this to some degree – I mean, sure, what I believe affects my faith and life’s doctrine, but even more, what I believe spurs my emotions and feelings. When my emotions betray me, it signals a weakness in what I believe. I’ve said this to myself a few times to really let that sink in. Sometimes I struggle with my own situation of trying for years to have a baby, and wondering, “do I really have faith for God to give me miracle children or not?” This simple concept has made it easier for me to understand where my faith really is. Yes, I do have days where I am sad, but overall, I’m not too worried about it. Maybe there are other areas of my life where this “tell” would be helpful in indicating to me what I really believe. I’d love some comments on this if you have any that come to mind for your own life.
I highly recommend the 43 min play on this message. There’s even more that I learned from listening to this (1.5 times!), but it’s too much to write. Be blessed this year, no matter what Christmas holds for you.
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We’re running out of time to understand the end times and book of Revelation!
How We Teach Biblical End Times
I really enjoy this straight-forward, simple approach to Revelation. This last and final book in the modern Bible always seemed to me to be so full of mystery and hard to understand, with teachings everywhere that all contradict each other, trying to answer the question, “what does it all really mean??”. When God said “x”, what was He really trying to say?
Taking this book one chapter, one verse at a time, helps us not to try and “boil the ocean,” so to speak. In this deep-dive study, we cross-reference Revelation with other Scriptures like the book of Daniel – another “end times” book. This helps us not to take any concept out of context – “By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.” (2 Cor. 13:1)
Revelation is often misunderstood, or people throw up their hands and say “I don’t get it!” I like the analogy of Revelation to a car manual in 500 A.D.: Would people have been interested then in a car manual or understood it? Of course not. They could easily have read the manual, but without yet having cars invented, they wouldn’t be able to get a whole lot out of it.
Once cars were invented, that book would then make A LOT of sense! THAT is how this works, and one of the most significant signs that we are in the end times is that when we study Revelation, we are understanding it more and more as time goes on (Go to Lesson 1 for Scripture that proves this). I know that’s true for me – I read and think, I just heard something similar in the news the other day!
End Times lesson structure
For purposes of this study, we’ve divided Revelation into 3 sections:
- Rev. 1: Revealing to John of the Person of the Lord Jesus
- Rev. 2-3: Letters to the Seven Churches
- Rev 4-22: Vision of Heaven / The Future
Important Nuggets I Learned (within the first 15 minutes!)
One really important phrase in the very first verse of Rev. 1: “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ,” not the revelation of John. This hit me as a new idea! I’ve always studied Revelation previously in the context of John’s exile on the Isle of Patmos. While his location is stated in the Bible, we don’t actually know why he was there or exactly when this was written, but we do know that it’s not his revelation.
An Encouraging Note
Did you know you are blessed simply from reading the book of Revelation? Yep! Check out Rev 1:3: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it.” (ESV). I see that those who “hear” are also blessed, so take a listen now!
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Ronnie, Michelle, and Katie Smith
Greetings,
I feel impressed to share with you what God has shown me regarding this time in our nation, and His thoughts on how we should handle this. I pray you may be strengthened and encouraged as I was! See below:
We are receiving constant new information through the media, cell phone recordings, and Facebook. We then are being asked to make judgments on what we SEE and what we HEAR.
We must remember as Christians what God says. He says we are not to be moved by what we see and what we hear, but we are to be moved only by the Word of God. (2 Corinthians 5:7)
I ask you, Is what you are seeing and hearing – reading and watching – making you afraid and discouraged, or building up your faith & confidence in the Lord?
We need to purpose to spend as much or more time reading the Word and talking with God as we do on media. When those feelings of fear or outrage surface, turn it off and renew your mind with His Word.
Now is the time to take up the weapons of our warfare that are not carnal but spiritual to the pulling down of strongholds.
Luke 18:1, “and He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not faint.”
Are you seeing things from God’s perspective or from the news/videos/reports?
Think about the Disciples:
– Jesus dies, the man they gave up their lives and careers for.
– Fellow disciple Judas commits suicide.
– Disciples are scattered, back to their old jobs, leaving the ministry for a time.
They were discouraged and dismayed, exactly what God tells us not to be:
“Be strong and of a good courage…Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right or to the left, that thou may prosper (be successful) whithersoever thou goest… have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid (terrified), neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest… only be strong and of a good courage.” (Joshua 1:6,7,9,18)
Remember David: He returned home to find his town burned and all the families taken prisoners. His men wept and were ready to stone him, but David ENCOURAGED HIMSELF IN THE LORD (1 Samuel 30:1-8).
Victor Rockhill Ministries is a great resource to access messages and Bible Studies concerning issues and wisdom for handling them. Listen to these for more Bible-wisdom:
The Lord brought this wisdom to mind and it has strengthened me. My prayer is it will lift you up and strengthen you too!
Love in Jesus,
Joan Shallenberger
