December. Christmas. Crowds. Spending a lot of money. The usual, right? This is what Christmas has become and it couldn’t be more distracting. Christmas is a time for us to remember, reflect, and worship because of God sending his one and only Son to us in the form of a baby who would grow into a man and eventually give his life on a cross for those who would believe in him (John 3:16). That is why we celebrate Christmas.
This week is a simple verse. Actually just one verse. I want you to spend as much time on this as you have with the passages in the past. Really study this and think about what it says. You are probably familiar with it, so that will cause you to read it very fast and glaze over it. Fight that urge and take your time. Do some research and bible study (remember to do so with the context in mind). This will be a rewarding exercise and I look forward to seeing what you learn through he week.
Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
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I look forward to discussing this verse with you on Sunday!!
Aaron Aiken 
Okay this is pathetic but HOW do I share this with my WordPress blog page??? I want to involve the folks there too in this great discussion…feel free to contact me and let me know, Aaron. I am still pretty new with WordPress. Thanks.
not pathetic at all! There are a few ways you could do it. 1) You could add my site as an RSS feed in your sidebar, 2) add my site to your blogroll, or, and this one is a little out of the box, 3) you could quote a part of the posts and add a link to the article to read the rest. Or, another option if you don’t want to have my content become a part of your site, is to wrtie a post about my site welcoming your readers to stop by and start or join a conversation.
Make sense?
I appreciate you wanting to share what I write!!
So many choices lol! I will figure out something and let you know what I do here. I will look forward to more of your content. God bless!
Sounds good, thanks!
So, this verse took some thought. As a new believer, I have not been familiar with the Birth of Jesus or the history (I know, shame .. tsk tsk). Ironically, when I read the book of Matthew, it was the verse I skipped over (tsk tsk, again). So, after I did some reading and really meditating on it, I realized that the verse reappeared in the book of Matthew, which is the first book in the NT.
I had to spend some time and really reflect on what it means and was confused at first at what the name “Immanuel” meant and why it was used. Which led me to do some studying on the meaning of the name. Thankfully, Matthew cleared that up for me.
My thoughts on the verse are as follows:
“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they
will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.”
I had to think of this in the perspective of what Immanuel
means in its context. God is with us. How powerful?
I think of us sometimes at believers walking around lost in
life and wondering “God, where are you?” And then stopping
and realizing that God is always with us and He will never leave
us.
“With us.” Think about that for a moment. There is hardly
a more central and absolute promise that God has made
to us. To think about what life would be without Him, well I
don’t really want to think about it, because I’ve been there.
If God wasn’t with us, we wouldn’t reap the benefits of His
divince presence, and that is summed up in words like
grace, mercy, love, and truth, which without Him, would have
no meaning.
Jesus was born, but He was also sent, and Immanuel
was one of His names. Immanuel: “with us [is] God.”
“God with us.” He turned our life upside down with His
truth but He also left peoople with the sense that they
had never been more close to Him than when they were with Him.
That gives us hope that we don’t have to stay lost. God
isn’t indifferent to our condition, whatever it is. And He came
to us in the most amazing way, by taking our flesh, our
humanity, everything we are, on to Himself.
Beautiful!
Julie. First, don’t feel the need to tsk tsk yourself for not being familiar with the birth of Jesus and this history…all of us should know more than we do and realize this at different points in our lives. Some earlier, some later, but it doesn’t matter. I’m glad to see that you did some study on Immanuel and understood why it was chosen and used…quite the concept! God taking on flesh is known as the incarnation, so if you hear that word, especially this time of year, you can rest assured that you know what it means (although the actual thought of God taking on flesh is hard for us to fully understand). Good job on this!!