Week 4 Christmas Challenge, Awestruck & Awesome.Sample

(NLT): “13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” ”

If Day 3 episode wasn’t enough—angel of the Lord, glory of the Lord brighter than the sun shining around them—this one angel is joined by, “a vast host of others—the armies of heaven!” 

Is it reasonable to suggest that we’re talking literally millions of times as glorious (in that the vast armies of heaven might include millions of angels!)? 

What were they doing? ‘Praising God’! Good example for us to follow.

And there were ‘saying’ (not ‘singing’ as we conventionally imagine it).

“Glory to God!” 

“Peace… to those with whom God is pleased.” You can read your name into that: “Peace to _____ with whom God is pleased.” Declare it out loud, so the angels and demons and neighbors can hear!

This whole advent, this incarnation is the ultimate expression of God’s pleasure with us in that Jesus Christ, ‘Lord Yahweh’ as we noted in Day 3, has come for us. Through history God has gone to extreme lengths to demonstrate His love for us and His intense desire to be reconciled with us. And finally, this baby born in a feeding trough died on a cross for our sins—and then rose triumphantly back to life again on the third day, conquering sin and death and defeating the devil!—to seal the reconciliation. All of this underlines His great pleasure in us. 

He isn’t angry at you. He loves you. And He wants to share His pleasure with you. However, it is impossible to share that pleasure if our posture is opposed to Him. So, whatever you may have against God, whether selfishness or pride or idolatry, or maybe resentment or bitterness or envy, or possibly blame for hurt you have suffered, get rid of it (repenting or forgiving others as the case may be) and ask for God’s forgiveness and cleansing, so that there is nothing in the way of you experiencing God’s great pleasure with Him over you.

If you haven’t formalized things with Jesus yet, if you’re more of a traditional ‘holiday’ celebrant, but are awestruck by Luke 1 and Luke 2, you may find yourselves in a situation like the shepherds. You’re figuring, ‘let’s head to the source (Bethlehem), let’s experience it for ourselves (‘see this thing that has happened’). Amen! Now’s the time- today is the day of salvation! If you’ve repented of your sins (as in the previous paragraph), all that’s left is to trust Jesus. And you can ‘activate’ that by accepting His invitation into His life when He says in chapter 1 of another Gospel (Mark 1:17), ‘Come, follow Me.’

Even greater than this is the Divine pattern of going ‘out of the way’ to include people who feel excluded. Can you think of people who might not have heard the Good News the way it really is? Who feel excluded by religion or society but who God might want to send you to proclaim the radically inclusive message of God’s love? Reach out to them—you might just be their angelic messenger.