Christmas Week Devotions

Merry Christmas!

Memory Verse:
'And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. '

Galatians 6:9

Day 1

Read Isaiah 42:1-9
I love the worship song “This is our God”.  I love it because of the simplicity and power behind singing those words as if they are a declaration to anyone listening.  Which is usually not a good thing, people listening to me while I sing, but you get my point.  I was also studying out the idea of the exclamation mark use in modern translations of the Bible, this morning.  I’m sure you know this, but there were no punctuation marks in the Bible, so, especially the original Hebrew, would not have had our idea of the exclamation mark that clearly changes the way you read something.  It is really hard to read verse 1 and not get the idea of an exclamation mark fitting well there.  Now it is a creative license that you take to do that, but come on…”Behold…!”  God is pretty proud of this presentation and the language bears it out even more.  

This is the time of the year that as a believer should be lived out with the assumption of exclamation marks.  This is the time of celebration of THE gift!  With the gift is the promise of all that is entailed in that truth.  This is not the gift that we unpack and the surprise and goodness is all in that moment, but this is the gift that marks the change of hope and the declaration of peace!  It is not a hidden truth that God is not interested in us knowing, in fact, this is the showing that God has declared it is coming long before Jesus came!  He is so interested in declaring the good news, He started declaring it hundreds of years before it happened!

What do you think that verses 3 and 4 mean?

Take a few minutes to break down verse 6 in light of your life.  How have you experienced this and how is this verse helpful for you today?

Verse 8 declares the Holiness of God by stating that His glory is given to no other idol.  Why is it important to understand that God does not share His glory with any other god or high idea?

How does this become part of your prayer?


Day 2

Read Isaiah 53:1-12
In case you were wondering, I am one of the top in my household when it comes to the grocery bag carry after a visit to the grocery store.  I would say easily top 2.  Now to be fair, I get a burst of adrenaline fueled by anger when I look back to see the kids carrying one bag while watching a video on their tablet, but still…
That is the thought that starts in my mind when I meditate on the idea of Jesus being the one that has “borne” our griefs, or shouldered them.  He has carried our sorrows.  Granted, the grocery carry is far inferior to the ideas that are being portrayed in these verses, but it does help me to get my mind where it should be worshipping. Sometimes I forget about what I am not carrying around all the time.  I know, it is not good to dwell on the past and to live in forgiveness, but it is also worth remembering that I have been handed forgiveness and have had shame taken from me, and in that, I don’t carry around a lot of what I could…or should. That is humbling and to realize this, I don’t have to dwell in the past and unpack everything that I left behind…but I am aware there is a lot back there and that He has borne it for me.

This passage covers a lot of the humble approach that Jesus took to save us from our sins.  What are some of the traits that you can relate to in this passage?

The idea of “righteousness” is the idea of right doing or goodness.  Verse 11 talks about this a lot and teaches some really important ideas about God’s righteousness and ours.  How are those idea explained here?

How does this become part of your prayer today?

Day 3

Read Matthew 1:18-25
(Today’s devotion written by Jenna Altom)

These verses are full of huge ideas! There’s the idea that Jesus was born to some pretty outstanding parents. His mom was Mary, who was found to be humble and chosen to be the mother of the Savior. The man who raised him was Joseph, who first chose to protect Mary from a public scandal when he found out she was pregnant with a child that he knew was not his child, and then the angel came to tell him that Mary was telling the truth… she was still a virgin and was pregnant with a Child from the Holy Spirit. Today our focus is the part of these verses that is repeated multiple times. In verse 18, “she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Verse 20, “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Verse 23, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” These Scriptures keep driving the point that Mary is a virgin and this child is unlike any other child because His Father is the one true God. All of this culminates when the angel gives Joseph the baby’s name…Immanuel, which means God with us. “Us” struggling humans who have worked so hard to get to God, but keep failing. “Us” who, when God looked down at us, instead of writing us off, He took compassion on us and desired to save us because He loves us so deeply. The importance of the virgin birth is foundational to our faith. Jesus’ mother is human, which made Jesus 100% human. Jesus’ Father is God, which makes Jesus 100% God. He was flesh and blood and the Savior of the world. He was physically able to be crushed by the world and He had the power to rise from the dead. This is a very deep Truth that I would encourage you to take a dive into through Scripture and see the beauty of God become man. Consider the humility and control it took for Jesus to remain in human form through all of His suffering while having all of the authority and power of God. Consider the self control it took to live in our human world as God. The amazing humility He took on draws me to Him. The Creator of the world walked in the life that I am walking in. He knows joy and He knows pain. He knows victory and He knows defeat. He knows health and He knows pain and sickness. He walked through it all so that He could know us and our experience better. He was God in human form and walked through it all flawlessly so that He could die as the ultimate sacrifice for mankind.

This story is so much more than the Nativity we see every year. Miracles were taking place in every tiny detail. It was the beginning of thousands of years of prophecies being fulfilled as Jesus was on a mission to save us all. Jesus’ walk to the cross began with this virgin birth. God dwelling with man. Immanuel.

If you would like to take a deeper dive in this idea of God becoming man, read Philippians 2:6-8 and Galatians 4:4-7.

What do these verses make you feel?

How does it change your day to know that God knows from experience what you face in your daily life?

Day 4

Read Luke 2:1-20
In the church that I grew up in, it was a tradition for the Christmas program to happen every year.  That was a program the choir sang as a cantata (if you are familiar with that word!).  There were also parts for the kids and other things as well.  Every single year I remember this one part that would happen to end the program that day.  There was a man there that taught me so much just with his knowledge.  When he heard that I was going to Bible College, for some reason he locked on to me and was always sharing books and wanting to discuss things in the Bible.  I guess he thought that I automatically became a Bible scholar when I signed up for Bible College.  But for Christmas, he would recite this section of scripture.  That was his job. Every single year. And why?  Because, he did it from memory!  Since it was from memory, it was different than just reading it year after year, he put the emphasis where it needed to be and expressed the story in a much different way, much like if he was telling it all for the first time.  

When I read it now, I hear it in his voice.  I remember it as a kid sitting in church trying to figure out how this man could memorize this much Bible.  If you were to tell me to explain to you the Christmas story, this is the one I would be thinking through, because it stuck in my mind.  I hope this year this story hasn’t become commonplace and redundant.  I hope that the repetition hasn’t taken the wonder and awe out of the story.  I know you have heard it over and over again, but try to hear it for the first time.  Try to hear it like you used to hear it.  
When do you remember hearing the Christmas story for the first time?

How is hearing it now different from hearing it when you were a child?

Take a minute and sit in silence and prayer with the thoughts of this story.  What is God showing you right now?

How does this become part of your prayer today?

Day 5

Read John 1:1-18
John’s gospel is so different!  It is my favorite, mainly because there was a movie that came out years ago called The Gospel of John, and it was one of the first real professional displays of the Bible as a movie.  I have watched it so many times and can vividly remember scenes in the movie.  It’s the old experience of seeing something played out versus reading it.  There is just something different.  John is one of the gospels that does not really tell the story of Jesus’ birth.  He chooses a different way of talking about it, and I figured since Christmas has passed, maybe we should look at his account and see how he opens the story of Jesus up.  

John tells the story by using three words we are all familiar with: life, light, and word. There are all words that we have spent significant amounts of time talking about and looking at in the Bible, so I am certain you are familiar with the biblical ideas at least to some extent.  

Remember, life is more than a heartbeat and breath, and it is designed and given by God.  How do you want God to use and teach you the idea of “life” from his perspective in this New Year?

The light is revealing and helpful for seeing what is hidden in darkness.  How do you hope to discover the biblical idea of “light” in the New Year and what does Jesus have to do with this?

The word of God is crucial for life and light.  This is a theme that will cause you to spend a long time in many places in the Bible.  How do you hope to grow in hearing and paying attention to the word of God in the New Year?

How does this become your prayer today?


No Comments


Devotions

Archive

Categories

Tags

no tags