How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publishers peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!  Isaiah 52:7

Our best Christmases happen with family. While the immediate family comes first, our church family runs a close second when it comes to finding our real purpose and power for living in kingdom of God on Earth. God created and instituted the immediate family before He did the local church family, yet both are to have Jesus Christ as the head, and both are built on love.

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.  Ephesians 2:19

What holds any house together is love, whether that be your house, our house or God's house. Christmas is about sharing the joy of God's holding us and everything else in His Almighty, Holy Hands. The overflow of His gracious powerful love for us causes us to want to hold tighter to those He has placed around us. Christmas is the time of the year for getting a tighter grip on God and others.

Love is expressed in many ways. The birth of the Lord Jesus Christ shows that God loves us so much that He would supply all we need a Savior! The love from above is only overshadowed by the cross of Calvary, but even there the strongest love of God is exposed as unconditional and unending, for He died for us when we were sinners and He only had to do it once!

Going to church, worshipping with church is not a prerequisite to going to Heaven, but it is a sweet privilege to express our appreciation for God's love. This can easily be taken for granted and we should ever be on guard to prevent our love for God and for others to fade and falter. Coals in the fireplace will die out quickly when separated from the hearth, but when they are raked and stoked back into the center of flames, the fire catches up and burns again and makes the house warmer.

Celebrating Christmas with the church family brings us all closer to God and therefore closer to each other. In a way, it's how the flame of love is toked up when the coals were before scattered and only dying embers. Our Heavenly Father knew what we would be against regarding our relationship to Him and each other. So He sent us just what we needed to deal with it all. God calls it love, we call it Christmas!

And because iniquity shall abound, the one of many shall was cold.  Matthew 24:12

Mountain Love

Mluntains occupy the highest elevations on Earth. The church occupies the highest elevation in God's spiritual kingdom. Jesus Christ is the head of the church and it doesn[t get any higher than that. Yet, the Highest came from the lowliest: a manger and a stable in Bethlehem. The lowliest in human occupations, the shepherds, were the first to know and the highest created beings, the angels, sang the first Christmas carol.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.  Luke 2:14

"Go Tell It On The Mountain" is an African-American spiritual song that originated presumably from enslaved people. The song is a Christmas carol that tells the story of Jesus' birth but has also been adopted to proclaim good news to the lowest from the highest. The title itself evokes a sense of proclaiming good news, sort of like a watchman proclaiming from a high place. The message from the mountain is the proclamation of the highest love to the lowest sinners. This song can be sung solo on the tractor or in the shower, but it sounds best and does more when it's sung in the church by the people that God loves and who love God.

When the redeemed gather together you can expect two things:  good food and good singing. Fellowship and worship are the evident overflow of God's mountainous love. And God's love is a lot like the mountains in that the closer you get to it, the bigger it gets. Another way to say this is, the more we know God, the more we love God. God sent His only begotten Son to Earth at Christmas not only to save us, but also so we could get to know Him better and love Him more.

Mountains stand out! It's hard to hide a mountain! The love of God that came down at Christmas should not be kept a secret. Secret things belong to God, not us. Christmas is the time of the year to put away pretensions, love each other just the way they are, and to clear our closets of the things we don't want anyone to know about which have spilled our affections in all the wrong places.

 Manger Love

The best kind of love is homemade love. Christmas should be a marker on our life road to remind us that this world is not our home. Heaven issue! So really, the love of God is a gift packaged as a baby boy delivered in a cow trough in a stable in Bethlehem. God's love then, came from the very place we are going. The reason that "There's no place like home" is because that's where love is bred and raised.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.  James 1:17

Christmas though can be real tough for some, especially those who have lost their loved ones through death or addictions, or contact because of separation. Homemade love is the best kind of love, but it's also the kind that hurts the most. Grief is the price we pay for love. The babe in Bethlehem's manger was not a bouncing baby boy but a man of sorrows and was acquainted with grief. The celebration and acknowledgement of our Savior's birth at Christmas is the only real cure for grief. The pain that love creates is real and the empty chair at the table is no fitment of the imagination. But disappointment is diluted when we see Jesus and realize He also sees us and knows our deepest sorrows. Even the wisemen who followed a star found a stable instead. Their implied disappointment was hardly noticed though because they gave the Christ child the best they had. And that's all we should do this Christmas and every day, for the Lord gave us the best He had. The precious Son of God would go from the manager to the cross to conquer our greatest enemy, death. Manger love means a lot because it assures us that we will see our loved ones again and Christmas should remind us all of that most wonderfully.

Message Love

A message is a unit of communication that conveys information from a sender to a receiver. Christmastime evokes God as the sender and His people as receivers. The message is clear. God loves you! God did not text or email this message. He could have written it in the sky but instead He sent a baby. When our families are blessed with babies, lives are changed forever and it's love that makes the difference, even when diapers need changing Just think how awful this would be as cold as a home without love. Thankfully, that's not the way it is. The message is clear, God loves us and He means it so much He sent Himself in human form. 

The incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ is more than theological. It is a profound statement of God's unconditional and unending love. Christmas should absolutely settle any doubts that God loves us whether anyone else does or not. What is great about Christmas though is that not only do we embrace the reality of God's love to us, no matter how unworthy we may feel about ourselves, but we also have the opportunity to share His love and ours with others. Don't be surprised to find out that more people love you than you even imagined this Christmas. The best way to express your love for someone is to leave a message. God did, a clear one too!

Merry Christmas!

Brother Randy

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  John 3:16