One of my favorite songs on Kinship Radio is currently “For God Is With Us” by For King and Country.
There’s a certain grandeur to the music and, at first blush, the lyrics seem very Christmas-like:
“No room for a king
No celebration and no ceremony
In that little town no, nobody would think
This is the story of the coming glory”
In the third stanza, there’s a beautifully poetic line about heaven and earth being face-to-face and the world is forever changed.
Given the title, I’m waiting and anticipating the name “Immanuel” (God With Us) to come up, but it never does.
Instead, the lyrics swirl together the crucifixion and the resurrection with the incarnation.
And then,
Can you feel your heart begin to race?
Can you see the tide begin to change?
With all of our futures rearranged
The world will never be the same
Indeed, the world has never been the same since Jesus came as a baby, lived, preached, died, and rose again.
It does make the heart race that God Himself would step down into this troubled, messed-up, broken apart world.
And all because God chose to be with us.
No, wait –He didn’t just choose to be with us, He planned it from the creation of the universe. From before time began, He knew He would step into this world that we try to claim as our own and show us, really show us what love truly is.
And in that moment, when past and present and future roared that the King was here amongst us, it was an event of such eternal magnitude that…
Well, …that even eternity would be changed.
And as I pondered all of this, (because great art is able to make one ponder) it occurred to me that the time when God was with us in the flesh –those 30 years or so– was an amazingly brief period of time in the eternal kingdom of the eternal God, but He had decided that He would not be just with us for that short time, but in us for all eternity.
John 14:16-17
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.” (NLT)
God in us.
Romans 8:10-11
“And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” (NLT)
Ephesians 1:13-14
And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. (NLT)
The guarantee, the seal on the New Covenant written in the blood of Jesus, is the Holy Spirit –God Himself living in us.
He is indeed to be worshipped and glorified.
And it is that Spirit that we share, that makes us one family, one kin, with the same Father and the same eternal inheritance that multiplies and grows every time another soul is brought into that kingdom by the power of His own Holy Spirit.
LORD, in your mercy, please pour out your Holy Spirit on the people of the United States of America, that we would be a people of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, to the glory and honor of the name of Jesus! AMEN!
Today’s Praise
Acts 1:8
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (ESV)