December 21, 2010 God is Your God

Full of Praise

Day 36: Luke 2:20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

THE ANGELS told the shepherds to go and see the Christ child. They described the scene in some detail. Then the shepherds went to the manger and saw the scene the Angels described.
The shepherds returned to the fields in high spirits. They saw the Savior, and they praised God for the wonder he had done. That’s what happens when God breaks into the darkness, bids his people to go to the Light, and they go. There are no people on this earth who praise God more passionately than those God rescues from great darkness.
A young man I know has experienced a powerful transformation in his life as God rescued him from drugs, alcohol and other addictions. He knows he had nothing to do with the rescue. He was in the emergency room with an overdose of drugs, near death, and God stepped in to say, “I love you.” For a time he sought God, then old habits came back.
Again, homeless, cold and without hope, he saw the light on in a church. He walked in, and God held out his hand again and said, “I love you.” as the church took him in and got him to the place he needed to be to heal and rest and begin anew.
And his love for Jesus has grown to great proportions. He will tell you and anyone he meets, “I love my Jesus.” And he lives his life in joy when he’s close to his Lord, and is sorrowful when he disobeys. His life is full of praise to the God of love who rescued him.
We all need that attitude. We all have sinned—we are separated from God when we live outside of his love. But if he’s spoken to you, told you, “I love you.” You are his, and he is yours. Yes, the God of Heaven and earth, the Everlasting Father is yours.


Pause and Consider: God is your God. Jesus is his gift to you.

The Devil Deceives
Read Revelation 13

Rev 13:1 Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; on each of its horns there was a crown, and on each of its heads there was a name that was insulting to God.

“THE BEAST from the sea and the beast from the land form a kind of evil trinity. Satan claims to be God; the antichrist is the false Christ of Satan; and the beast from the earth performs the function of an unholy spirit.
The antichrist persuades the world to worship the devil. He has a fatal wound but lives, in a monstrous imitation of the resurrected Christ of God. The second beast seeks to persuade the world to worship the antichrist by his witness in word and deed, as the Holy Spirit witnesses to God’s Christ. And through the mark of the beast (itself a parody of the seal of God) he creates a devilish imitation of the church of Christ. So John depicts the world as divided between followers of the Truth and followers of the Lie.”
And then there is the “name that was insulting to God”. Who is that? “Despite the many possibilities that the number 666 yields, it is virtually certain that the individual thereby indicated was known in all the churches addressed by John, and probably far wider. The name Nero Caesar transliterated into Hebrew from Greek yields the number 666.”
Nero pointed to himself as a god to worship. In John’s day he was the devil’s false Christ and great persecution came in his rule. Again, God shows John that for a time, in his providence, he will allow persecution on his church and his people. And he also shows he is victorious.


Pause and Consider: how vital it is to know the truth.