WE ARE ALL BEGGARS

We are all beggars in need of bread. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray. You may prefer, “We are all hungry, in need of bread.” Such a phrase certainly has more dignity than the word beggar. Who wants to be called a beggar? After all, didn’t you create the ground in which the seed was sown? No? Well at least you made the seed, right? You didn’t? What about the sun? Did you provide the heat during the day? Or the rain – did you send the clouds? No? Then exactly what did you do?

You harvested food you didn’t make from an earth you didn’t create. Let me see if I have this straight. Had God not done his part, you would have no food. Hmmm…perhaps we best return to the word beggar. We are all beggars, in need of bread.

Devotion by Max Lucado | The Almighty Jehovah | https://thealmightyJehovah.com

What Gabriel Never Expected

Prior to Bethlehem God gave us his messengers, his teachers, his words. But in the manger God gave us himself. Extraordinary, don’t you think? I imagine even Gabriel scratched his head at the idea of “God with us.” Gabriel surely was not one to question his God-given missions. When God sent, Gabriel went.

And when word got out that God was to become a human, Gabriel was no doubt enthused. He could envision the moment: The Messiah in a blazing chariot. The King descending on a fiery cloud. An explosion of light from which the Messiah would emerge. What he never expected, however, was a slip of paper with a Nazarene address. “God will become a baby,” it read. “Tell the mother to name the child Jesus. And tell her not to be afraid.”

Gods With Us Promise

Jesus understands you. He’s faced hunger, sorrow, and death and wants to face them with you. The Bible says Jesus “understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

If Jesus understands our weaknesses, then so does God. Jesus was God in human form. He was God with us. That’s why Jesus is called Immanuel. Immanu means “with us.” El refers to Elohim, or God. So Immanuel is not an “above-us God” or a “somewhere-in-the-neighborhood God.” He came as the “with-us God.” All of us.

“I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Search for restrictions on the promise, and you’ll find none. There’s no withholding tax on God’s “with us” promise. God is with us. What great news!

WE ARE ALL BEGGARS