They will call him Immanuel, which means God is with us. (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23)I have been loving the concept of "Immanuel" this Advent Season. What a perplexing, amazing, mind-blowing, and comforting idea and Truth!! God with us!
God with us in the waiting. God with us in the pain. God with us in the tired moments and the moments of pleasure. God with us in the mundane and the fun! God is with us.
God is with you... today.
God is with me.
I want to know and understand His Presence, His Thoughts, His Heart more...
As I have been enjoying and thinking on the concept of Immanuel, His Presence with us, I have been blessed by reading the thoughts of others...
I have said it before---one of the reasons I write is because I read. Words touch me and move me. The words of others sometimes make concrete the very ideas, concepts and streaming thoughts that swirl in my heart and mind.
So, today, I offer you a few pieces of bread from the tables of others. ...from the places I have feasted this week. Read with me and taste the beauty of God's Truth in these words.
From old-friends and family:
"God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of the New Testament religion" ~A. W. Tozer
"To sense the presence of God in the Bible, one must learn to be present to God in the Bible. Presence is not a concept, but a situation. To understand love it is not enough to read tales about it. Presence is not disclosed to those who are unattached and try to judge, to those who sense the story, not the pathos; the idea, not the realness of God. The Bible is the frontier of the spirit where we must move and live in order to discover and to explore. It is open to him who gives himself to it, who lives with it intimately." ~Abraham Heschel
"God is not real to most of us because of our consciousness. He is closer to our minds every moment than our own thoughts. He is nearer to our hearts than our own feelings. He is more intimate with our wills than our most vigorous decisions. If we are not aware of him, it is not because he is not with us. It is, in part, because our consciousness is so under the sway of other interests that it cannot turn to him with the loving attention which might soon discern him." ~Albert Edward Day
"From the first moment of your spiritual life until you are ushered into glory, the language of Christ to you will be, "Come, come unto me." As a mother puts out her finger to her little child and woos it to walk by saying, "Come," even so does Jesus. He will always be ahead of you, bidding you follow him as the soldier follows his captain. He will always go before you to pave your way, and clear your path, and you shall hear his animating voice calling after him all through life." ~Charles Spurgeon
"He was not terrified. One believing like him in the perfect Love, the perfect Presence, and the perfect Will of a Father of men, as a fact of facts, fears nothing." ~George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie
"O Holy Spirit of God, visit now this soul of mine, and tarry within it until eventide. Inspire all my thoughts. Pervade all my imaginations. Suggest all my decisions. Lodge in my will's most inward citadel and order all my doings. Be with me in my silence and in my speech, in my haste and in my leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and the weariness of the evening; and give me grace at all times to rejoice in thy mysterious companionship." ~John Baillie
Reposted from 12/16/2011