Emmanuel

“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” Lamentations 3:22-24 NKJV

Have you ever considered that while it is day, the sun is always shining? The sun is always there. Just like God is always there. No matter the storms of life, He is with us. He is so much closer than the sun. We tend to compare God to what we see around us. In school we learned that the sun is thousands of millions of miles away. It would take light years to get there. So we take this mind set and attribute it to God, especially when we are going through hard times. So, we think God is in heaven, heaven is in the sky, and therefore, God must be that far away as well, right? No, He is not a far away, aloof and absentee kind of God. He is that friend that sticks closer than a brother. The old hymn says, “For Jesus is my portion. A constant friend is He.” God desired to be so close to us that He allowed His son to come down from heaven to be sacrificed to make a way to bring humanity-you, me, us-closer to Him. He gave Him the name Emmanuel, meaning, “God with us.” Then, He gave the gift of Himself again, the gift of the Holy Spirit to live inside of us constantly. Not occasionally when God is in the mood to chat but He’s constantly there. We may not see Him and we feel there is no physical evidence like goose bumps, our stomachs churning or the sound of angels singing, so we doubt He is really with us.
Ironically, we don’t doubt the rising of the sun. Even if it rains non-stop or is cloudy for weeks, do we deny the fact that the sun is present? No. We just wait in expectance for the storms to pass knowing that the sun will shine. All the more so that by faith, when we recognize and receive the fact that God is ever near, we automatically tap into the warmth of the Son. “Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” Therefore, even if the sun is shining on the other side of the world, and all we may have is a little moonlight at midnight, we are left with the assurance that the morning will still come. We hope for revival. We hope for restoration. We hope for Him to open the windows of heaven to pour out blessings that we don’t have room to receive. And we hope for His manifested glory. Though, we may not see that which we hope for, we can be assured that it is there. When we desire to see His face, that hope, that desire, that longing, in itself, is proof that we will see Him. Therefore, if we desire God’s presence, it is proof that He desires our presence too and He is already near. He is just waiting for us to invite Him in by faith.
Paul said that “the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” Therefore, I am grateful that my Lord is not subject to a cycle or routine like the sun. He can take a cloud and ride right into the middle of my midnight hour. He is everywhere, all the time. So I don’t have to wait for Him to finish shining in my brother’s life before He comes to shine in mine.
Brothers and sisters, we need to stop relying on the temporal to confirm the eternal. Romans 8:24 says, “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?” The Word says “These signs shall follow them that believe,” not them that believe shall follow signs. When you embrace the truth that He is Emmanuel, “God with us,” you will take authority and command the sun to shine, the rain to pour, windows to open and doors to close. As children we grew up knowing the sun comes up every morning. Before we even knew one scripture, we were confident that His mercies are new every morning and His compassions fail not. We trusted in His great faithfulness before we ever heard the promise. Therefore, as children of God, we have also grown up spiritually and we’ve seen the consistency of God. And it is that same simple, child-like faith that we need to use to stand on His word that He will never leave us nor forsake us in our times of testing and trouble.