This Baby Changed It All

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%207-10&version=NIV

Last night I went to a Christmas Eve service with my family. It was a sweet service - my sister Jana sang in the praise band, we sang Silent Night by candlelight and drove home through lightly falling snow flakes. Couldn't ask for much more - I'm content with my Christmas Eve experience. But what we celebrate should not merely leave us content - it should leave us forever changed. Indeed, as so aptly proclaimed in the Christmas Eve service, "This baby changed it all". This 'baby' is not to just be celebrated at Christmas. He is Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. He is worthy of or worship, our adoration, our highest praise. Why? Because when Christ comes in, we are forever changed.

How appropriate it is that today, as we celebrate Christ's birth, we study these particular chapters in the book of Hebrews. They give us an accurate understanding of how Christ Jesus, God became flesh, stepped down in the perfect example of humility forever changed our relationship with God, our hearts, our hopes, our eternity.

Christ brought to us what Hebrews describes as "a better hope by which we draw near to God" (7:19) Perhaps the best way to describe the what changed is that grace - in the form of Christ - entered into our relationship with our Holy God. In fact, Christ made it possible for each of us to be in direct relationship with God. We not longer need a High Priest who met ancestral requirements to approach God for us. We no longer are required to make daily sacrifices to atone for our sins - but rather through Christ who is a High Priest forever, we are now each called a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God (1 Peter 2: 9). Made holy through the atoning blood of Christ, we are able to enter the presence of God. Perhaps more amazing, he in fact invites us to approach his throne - with freedom and with confidence (Ephesians 3:12)!

I'm not sure we often stop to ponder how amazing that gift is to us. Imagine not being able to have the freedom to go directly to God with your prayers? Imagine not having the Spirit of God living inside of you to guide, direct, comfort, instruct. Through Christ we read that now the Spirit of God puts God's laws directly in our minds, writes them directly on our hearts - and we become a people who are allowed to know God in a personal love-relationship - and He calls us His. Our very lives and how we live each day - are changed because of God coming down not just to live among us, but to die so that we could be made holy and his Spirit could live within us.

I encourage your as your read today, to take note of how much changes when Christ comes in. If you've read the Old Testament with us, reflect back to the laws, the regulation, the sacrificial system, to how God spoke only through prophets of his choosing. Consider how very different your relationship with God is. It requires only faith. He speaks directly to your heart. He dwells within you until the time where we dwell forever in his presence.

I thank God, on this day when we celebrate his birth, for his love for me - and you - every day. That he draws near to us the minute we draw near to him. That he not only allows us, but encourages us, and even commands us to come to him with not just our needs but also our deepest desires. I worship not the Christ child this day, but my risen and victorious Lord who goes before me in battle, supplies all that I need, is a husband and provider, a daddy God, and faithful God who fulfills all of his promises. I pray that I always stand in awe and amazement about the way he loves me, the way he speaks to me, the way blesses me, and that this Holy God would delight in calling me daughter. I pray this also for you.

Blessings precious ones and Merry Christmas! I pray that you would see and know more of God this coming year than every before - that he would rock your faith in a way you never imagine. He is, after all, the God of exceedingly abundantly more. He is, after all, the God that came down and changed everything!

Today's post was submitted by Carol Bartels