When all seems lost where do you go for encouragement and hope? I have many conversations with people who are so overwhelmed by the chaos that surrounds us every day. The season of Advent is a great time to slow down and observe God’s hand in our lives throughout this past year. Once we exhale it is not hard to see God’s grace and mercy in all our lives, and the blessings that He has given to us because of His love. We also see the “But God” moments in our lives that occurred where we may have thought all hope was lost in our life and the lives of others.
“But God. . .” moments occur when we may have run out of our own ideas and our options are limited in dealing with a hard situation – when our ability to remove ourselves from a tight spot is not possible. In these moments we pray hoping for God to move. Down the road, as we look back, after the storm we can see that in the “But God. . .” moments He did notice and He did move!
We see “But God,” moments all over the Old Testament: Abraham and Sarai (Genesis 20:3), Joseph (Acts 7:9-10), and David (I Samuel 23:14), just to name a few. We also see these moments in the New Testament:
Ephesians 2:4-5 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Romans 5:8 . . . but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul would not have been able to write these two verses to the people of God unless something extraordinary had happened, a “But God” moment in his life!
In the middle of a chaotic world a baby was born in Bethlehem who would change the world. The “word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14). Jesus is our hope (I Timothy 1:1), and as Paul writes to Titus, because of Christ’s resurrection, we are “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, . . . (Titus 2:13) Peter celebrates this hope when he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, . . .”
So in this season spend some time looking at how you respond to the baby who arrived in a manger in Bethlehem – Our Hope. Peter summed up the right response for all of us: prepare your “minds for action,” be levelheaded, and “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 1:13) Why? Because, “For unto us” a child is born!
Pastor Chuck