Silent Nights

Of all the classic Christmas carols, Silent Night is one of the most famous and for many people, their most favorite. It was composed in 1818 by Franz Gubar, but the lyrics were actually written by a young priest named Father Joseph Mohr, and little did they know when they composed this song in Austria in the early 1800s that it would weave its way over centuries into the very fabric of our deepest Christmas traditions. But what I want to show you today for just a few moments in a very unique message is that in many ways, the Christmas story isn't just about what happened on a single silent night, but also about what happened in over 400 years, 400 years of silent nights. Let me explain this to you. If you're familiar with the Bible, you'll know this. If not, let me just share it with you. The Bible is comprised of obviously two distinct parts. There is the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are 39 books in the Old Testament. There are 27 in the New Testament, and the Old Testament ends with the book of Malachi. It's a very short book. It's just four chapters long, and when you turn the page in the Bible, you will go from Malachi, the Old Testament, and just one chapter over, you are now introduced into Matthew,

which is the beginning of the New Testament and the introduction of the Christmas story and the birth of Jesus Christ. But between Malachi and Matthew in the Bible, there is this one small single page that separates Malachi and Matthew, and I want you to know that this very small single parchment of paper that separates Malachi and Matthew represents 400 years of silence. Of silent nights. 400 years of silent nights. So when Malachi begins to come to the end of his four-chapter book, the curtain begins to come to a close on the Old Testament, and throughout all of the Old Testament, you need to know this, God has been constantly speaking and interacting with his people, the people of Israel. He's been speaking through prophets. He's been speaking through leaders. He's been speaking through kings. He's been speaking through scribes. He's been speaking through the written word. He's been speaking through the spoken word. He has constantly been leading his people, guiding his people, drawing his people to him, and reaching people constantly throughout the Old Testament. But when Malachi writes the last words

of Malachi chapter four and begins to lay down his pen and the Old Testament comes to a close, God goes silent. Silent. For the next four centuries, there are no prophets from God. For the next four centuries, there are no words from God. For the next four centuries, there are no books from God. For the next four centuries, there is no scriptures written by God. For 400 years, nothing. And years ago, when I was called into ministry and began to study the Bible and study theology, and I learned about this gap in history, I began to wonder, where in the world did God go? I mean, what was he doing for 400 years? And then I thought maybe I kind of figured it out, and then later was corrected, but the Old Testament is full of this messy saga of the people of Israel loving God and honoring God one minute, and then they would turn their back on God and dishonor God the next. And so you see this constant rollercoaster relationship between the people of Israel and God. God would constantly love them, provide for them, protect them, and care for them, and they would go through a season where they would love God and honor God and worship God. And then a generation would backslide

and turn their hearts away from God, and they would worship idols and strange gods, and essentially, they would spit in the face of God, and there was this up-and-down relationship. They love me, they love me not, they love me, they love me not. And years ago, when I began to study the Bible, I thought, well, maybe those 400 years is just God getting sick of sinful humanity. Maybe it was just God getting sick of dealing with this up-and-down relationship, and finally walks off and for 400 years says, you know what, I'm sick of always loving you and you spitting on me. I'm sick of always giving you my best and you turning your back on me. I'm gonna leave it with you and see how you like being alone for a while. And then maybe after 400 years, God kind of gets over his anger. and slowly gets in a better mood and then decides to show back up and send his son to redeem humanity. I mean is that really the story of Christmas? God finally overs his bitterness towards humanity and then reluctantly sends his son to rescue us from our sin? No, not at all. That's not what was happening at all. But where did he go? What was he doing? Why all of these 400 years of silent nights? Ladies and gentlemen, it's a very important question because the answer gives us a critical clue as to what God not only did in those 400 years, but the answer gives us a clue into what God may be doing in your season of silent nights as well. Because every person in this room, including me, has had their own season of silent nights. In fact, some of you in this room may be going through

the greatest season of your entire life. Everything is wonderful up and to the right, but there are many people that are gonna worship here today that I know, even though I don't know you personally, I know humanity, I know what's going on in the world. Some of you may be going through the darkest night of the soul of your entire life. Some of you may be in your own darkest season of silent nights that you have ever known in the history of your life. And you know what I'm talking about when I describe a silent night. It's those moments in life that I've encountered and that you've encountered when it doesn't matter what you do. It seems like nothing is moving. It seems like nothing is happening. It seems like nothing is shifting. And you pray and you pray and you pray and nothing. And you wait and you wait and you wait and nothing. And you read and you read and you read and nothing. And you keep waiting on this breakthrough to somehow come, but it just seems like it never does. And when you get in the darkness of a silent night, if you're like me, you begin to ask yourself questions that you never thought you would ask yourself. Maybe you don't say it out loud, but deep in the heart of your soul you begin to think things like this. Did I do something to tick God off? I mean, did I offend God in some way? Why is this happening in my life? Is God mad at me? Is God judging me for something I said or something that I did? Here's one. Does God even love me? Is this struggle and pain that I'm constantly dealing with ever going to come to an end? Will I ever gain the favor of God back? And will he ever show up in my life again? And so today I want to answer two very important questions that I think could change the way we see everything. And my prayer is that God would help us to find new hope this Christmas season, especially if you're watching this or you're in this room and you're going through the darkest season of silent nights in your life. I want to answer two questions for just a moment. I want to answer number one, what is God doing in the silence? And then number two, I want to answer what do we do when God seems silent in our life? And the first thing I want to do is put something in your heart and mind that I think is so critical for every one of us to remember if you find yourself in a season of

silent nights. I just kind of want to season your soul with this. I want to season your mind with this. I just want you to settle this in your heart. If you're taking screenshots, I want you to know that you must never think for a moment that just because God is silent, God is absent. Don't you ever allow yourself to believe for a moment, no matter how you feel, no matter how it looks, don't ever allow yourself to believe that just because God is silent that God is absent because nothing could be further from the truth. It's so important we do this by faith because this is our natural tendency. Our humanity can make us vulnerable to get resentful and even bitter and angry at God at times. Silent nights can lead us to believe that he's left us or he's forgotten us or maybe he's just loved somebody more than me right now and he's preferring them over me. And if we don't learn how to understand and respond correctly to these seasons, they have the potential to affect our lives and the way we see God forever. As you can imagine, over 30 years of ministry that I've been in, I've met people who were so bitter at God because they experienced a terrible loss or a terrible tragedy or they prayed and they prayed and God just didn't show up the way that they thought he was supposed to show up. And because of it, there's just this deep resentment that they have deep in their soul kind of towards God. But I want you to know the other side of silent nights. I want you to see the other side of this that I have learned in over 30 years of walking with the Lord. In those moments when God is silent, in those moments when God is silent, if we can just learn to trust and lean into the grace of God and keep believing in spite of what we just see and in spite of what we feel, I have discovered in my own walk with God that these actually... can be and will be some of the greatest moments of growth and spiritual strength and vitality that we may ever know in our entire lives. We grow stronger, we grow deeper, and we grow more prepared for a life of peace and a life of purpose.

And the reason the Christmas story is so important is because it's not some sweet little story that's sentimentally stuck high above any trouble or above any pain. To me, I think one of the beauties of the Christmas story, I think one of the powers of the Christmas story is that it's actually the story that leads up to the Christmas story because it communicates to us clearly that even when God is silent, he is not even close to being absent. What I'm suggesting to you is that the Christmas story doesn't really begin in Matthew chapter one. I would submit to you the real story behind the Christmas story is started in the end of Malachi, 400 years of silent nights, and then the ushering beginning of Jesus's 33-year reign on this earth where he is a suffering servant and goes to the cross and pays for the sin of all humanity. It doesn't start in Matthew one. I think it actually starts in the book of Malachi and then goes into something completely beautiful. It tells us that God has not abandoned us, but he is working behind the scenes to rearrange and prepare something that will bless our lives in an even greater way. And I wanna prove it to you this morning for just a few minutes. I told you it's gonna be a totally unique Christmas message,

but I really felt oddly directed by the Lord that I was supposed to share this today. And let me tell you what I know about God. What I know about God is that I've been doing this a long time and there are moments that sometimes God will send a word just for one person in the room. And you may be that one person today that needs this. And maybe the rest of you, everything's great, everything's fine, just sit back, relax. The Lord will speak to you. And I'm sure in his own way, but there may be that one person here that you are on the brink, you are on the edge. And today, you're just contemplating if you're even ready to continue on. I pray that you would open your heart and your mind and be receptive to the Holy Spirit because God knows you, knows where you are, and brought you here today. Because he cares about you and he wants you to know the hope that only he can give. So let me do this. I wanna prove to you that just because God is silent, he is not absent by taking you on a quick journey through history. I love history, I always have. I've been kind of a history nut. And I wanna do my best to show you the whole picture from Malachi to Matthew and the 400 years in between

in just the few moments that we have. So let's start right here. I told you, I believe Christmas story starts in Malachi. So when Malachi pens the final book of the Old Testament, he begins to write these words. Let me show it to you. Malachi chapter one, verses one and two. A prophecy. The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi, I have loved you, says the Lord. Now what's interesting is that when you read the Old Testament, all of the Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language. And when you read this particular scripture in the original Hebrew language, it carries with it a unique grammatical nuance. It carries with it a continual present tense. In other words, when you read it in the Hebrew, it literally translates this way. God says, I have loved you, I love you, and I will always love you. He looks at Israel and he says, Israel, I have loved you, I love you now, and I want you to know that I will always love you. Let me tell you why that's so important. It's so important because what God was saying to Israel is it's about to go dark. I'm about to go silent. There's gonna be a period of time that you're not gonna hear from me,

you're not gonna see me, you're not going to understand what I'm doing, and there's gonna be a temptation in your life to think that I'm angry with you or mad with you or I've given up on you or I've abandoned you, but nothing could be further from the truth. In the darkest moments of these next 400 years, when you are tempted to believe I've left you and abandoned you and I'm nowhere to be found, I want these words to ring in your soul, Israel, I have loved you, I love you now, and I will always love you, and I don't know who's here and I don't know what you're going through and maybe that's where you're at. You think God has abandoned you or mad at you or angry with you, and just because things in your life haven't transpired the way that you wanted them to, you feel abandoned and lonely. I know behind the shadow of a doubt that God has led you here today by his divine power, and if you don't hear anything else that I have to say today through the power and the prophetic word of the Holy Spirit, you need to understand no matter who you are or where you come from, God loves you. He's always loved you, and he will always love you. He loves you, He has loved you, and He will always love you. Now, you need to settle that.

You need to put that in your heart, no matter how you feel, no matter what it looks like, no matter what you sense. You, by faith, need to plug that in your heart and know the prophetic word of the Lord is true. God said, I want you to know that even when it gets quiet and dark, Israel, I have not left you or abandoned you. Not only am I thinking about you, but I am working for you. So what was He doing? If it's true that God's silence is not His absence, what was He doing for 400 years? Well, obviously, I don't have a Bible verse that I could give you. I wish there was. I wish I could take you back to the Bible here in this one little parchment of paper between Malachi and between Matthew. I wish that one little piece of paper just gave us a big scripture and a historical document that could tell us, oh, here's the verse, here's the chapter. This tells us clearly what God is doing. We don't have that in the Bible, but let me tell you what we do have. We do have recorded human history. And so I wanna take a moment and I wanna show you this and why it matters so much. All right, follow me. There were three major events that happened

over the course of these 400 years, and these three events are directly connected to us sitting in this church in Alachua in 2022 and hearing about this Christmas story and the message of a God who loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son. So stick with me and let me give you a brief but very important history lesson to answer the question, what was God doing in 400 years? Here we go. Just about the time the Old Testament is coming to an end, there was a major power shift happening in the world from Babylon to Persia. Maybe you've heard of those two empires. And around 360 BC, there was a leader that came to prominence out of Greece by the name of Philip of Macedon, and he was able to unify a large portion of Greece. But the real reason Philip of Macedon is important is because while you may not recognize his name, I am quite certain that you will recognize and have heard the name of his son. Philip had a son and named him Alexander. And Alexander would go on to become one of the greatest military strategists the world would ever know. He would grow and expand the empire to such a degree that he would forever be known in the annals of history by this infamous title, Alexander the Great. He takes on the Persian Empire, not only destroys it,

but it launches a string of military conquests and dominance unprecedented in world history. And just before Alexander dies at the age of 33, he makes this famous quote, I am sad because there are no more worlds left to conquer. But just before Alexander dies, he makes an interesting decision, and it is the first of the three major events that I wanna show you that happened in those 400 years. Alexander declared that he wanted every person and every nation within his controlled empire, which at this time is the known world, to speak a common language. He wants them to have a unified tongue. This had never been done in all of history. Everybody had their own tribes, their own tongue, their own native language. But for the first time in history, as Alexander has conquered the known world, he wanted everyone under his power and control to speak one common language so that when he would make decrees or when he would make declarations, everybody in the known world would immediately begin to understand and recognize what it is that their leader was saying. And that language was his native tongue, Koinon Greek. And in a moment, I'm gonna tell you why that matters. So that's the first major event. Everybody speaks a unified language.

Here's the second. Many years after the death of Alexander, there was another superpower that emerged on the world stage. I know you heard of this one, the Roman Empire. Now, the Romans did a lot, but there were two major things they did of vital importance to our message today. First, they created a military peace program. Follow me. It was called Pax Romana. It was sort of a government-enforced security system that allowed people to travel more safely to farther places without fear of attack. If you watch movies or you study any history, what you've seen on movies is pretty accurate. Back then, it was a dangerous, dangerous world. And so people would build cities. And then when they would build cities, they would fortify those cities with large walls. And many people never, ever breached the walls of their city. There would be many people in this day that would live, be born, and die in the walls of those city because it was so dangerous to travel the world outside of those walls. And so they were just these cities that were dotted all over the map and nobody ever traveled much.

But the Roman Empire wanted to encourage commerce. They wanted to encourage free trade. They wanted to encourage economic empowerment. And so they instituted a security. Agreement that basically said you can leave your city travel and do business in another city and the Roman government will ensure that you will Be safe while you travel. That's a big deal Here's the second thing that happened because they encouraged greater trade and commerce They spent vast and I mean vast vast amounts of time vast amounts of money vast amounts of manpower To dramatically expand and improve the road systems all over the known world I've been to that part of the Middle East and there are road systems everywhere that are still Usable to this day that the Roman Empire built they took these 400 years and they vastly expanded the transportation So let me recap. All right in 400 years. Here's three major things that happened in history There was a common language that all people spoke a more secure and safer way to travel was instituted and a vastly expanded Transportation system was created. I cannot overstate to you I cannot overstate to you the importance of these three things as to the question What was God doing in the period of silent nights? Let me do it this way My wife and I love New York. We've been going every Christmas for about 18 years We were just there two weeks ago We love to go to Broadway shows and take it in especially during Christmas time And if you've ever been to New York or you've been to a Broadway show You kind of know how it works somewhere in between the show when you're taking in a Broadway show. There is something called Intermission halfway through the play. They essentially call a timeout the curtain goes down You go out into the lobby you go to the restroom get something to drink or get some popcorn And when you come back the curtain rises again lights come on and it is the start of act 2 scene 2 But while you were out in the lobby getting popcorn or getting something to drink There was a host of people working behind the curtain behind the curtain. They were rearranging the stage. They were moving things around They were setting up new props. They were moving lights They were preparing everything for act 2 so when you come back in and sit down the curtain rises and now Everything looks Completely different the stage is set and now you are ready for the rest of the story

Ladies and gentlemen, this is exactly what happened in those 400 years of silent nights This is precisely what God was doing in those 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament While everyone thought God was gone. He was simply working behind the scenes Rearranging the world stage to be perfectly positioned to be able to spread the message of Jesus Christ to the entire world Once his son came into this earth and died for all of humanity So when the curtain rises in Matthew 1 and act 2 now, you have a world that looks Dramatically different than it did at the end of Malachi now for the first time in history There is a world that speaks a common language It is much safer to travel and it's mapped and laid out so that the prophets apostles Missionaries and preachers are able to go much farther and much faster because of a vastly expanded road system Now what difference does all of this make? Well, let me just break it down for you I told you earlier that the 39 books of the Old Testament were written in a certain language right Hebrew Well the 27 of the New Testament Guess what language they're written in coin, I Greek surprise surprise Surprise, why why was it coin? I agree because it was the language that everybody understood in other words when the prophets and and the apostles Began to write their epistles and then began to tell the story of Jesus Christ now Everyone could easily understand it Everyone could easily and immediately get the message because of the decision of Alexander the Great Alexander thought he was making the decision for his own influence But now we know that what the Bible said is absolutely true in Proverbs chapter 21 in verse 1 The king's heart is like a channel of water in the hand of God He turns it and directs it whatever way that he chooses It means that God leveraged even Alexander and that God leverages and positions the influence of sometimes even selfish leaders to accomplish his will And his purpose and when the missionaries and apostles of Jesus began to take the message of Christ out from Jerusalem to travel farther They did it under a Roman security agreement and a new road system so that it could go farther faster farther faster

Farther and faster and because of those three events it got out of the first century and did not die in Palestine and it began to go to all four corners of the world and even made its way to a little bitty town in North Florida called Alachua So that we can stand here today and even know and hear the name of Jesus Christ, so that we could even be here today and know the story of redemption and rescue and the cross. All of that was possible because of these three major events. When you read the Bible, it's interesting that there came a time that even Paul, as he wrote the 13 epistles, he began to understand. Now, when he looked back in retrospect, he sees what God was doing and he writes about it. In Galatians chapter 4, watch this. Paul said, But when the set time had fully come. But when the set time had fully come. There was a time that God had set and everything else had to be done. And he did all of this stuff. And while he was doing all this stuff, there came a day when the time had fully come and everything was complete. When that happened, Paul said, God sent his son. Then God sent his son. Born to a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption and sonship. Paul said, oh, now we know. Now we understand. Now we get it.

Now we can look back and know that just because God was silent, he was anything but absent. He was working, he was moving, he was rearranging. He was getting the world ready for the greatest message that the world would ever hear. The message of Jesus Christ. Paul said, now we know. It wasn't random. It wasn't random. We thought he was just gone. We thought he was just mad. We thought he was just abandoning his duty to us. We thought he had just left us alone. Now we know that there were things that had to be done over here so that it could be ready for Jesus Christ to do what only Jesus could do. Listen, I got good news for you. I got such good news for you. If you're here and you are in a season of silent nights and it's dark and you're weary and you're downtrodden and you're sitting in this room because somebody invited you and this is just kind of your last ditch effort, you're just sitting here thinking, man, it's Christmas and I don't even feel it, man. I don't even feel Christmas. I don't wanna be here, but I just felt like something compelled me

or somebody invited me and I just said yes to appease them because they've been inviting me forever and it's as silent and as dark in your life right now. I want you to know the best news you could hear today that what I just described to you about God is a pattern with him. It's a pattern with him. It's how he does it. Now you and I can know what God is doing in our lives in these seasons of silent nights when it seems like God isn't moving in your life, when it seems like God isn't listening to your prayers, when it seems like God isn't working on your behalf. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am submitting to you that God is actually doing his best work in us and for us when it seems like he's doing nothing at all. I've lived it. I ain't telling you something I read in no book. I'm telling you something that I have lived in my life. Now I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew you and knew your story and I wish God gave me a word and I could just tell you, hey, look, look, hold on. Let me tell you how everything's gonna change. Let me tell you how God's gonna show up. I can't do that and neither can you and neither can anybody around you no matter how much they love you. But what I can tell you is this,

that God has an incredible track record throughout all of history and that when you deal with our God, you are dealing with a God that can be trusted, that he loves you, that he has always loved you and that he will always love you, that he loves you, that he has loved you and that he will always love you regardless of how you feel in this moment. But I said I was gonna answer two questions. What is God doing in the silence? Now we know a lot more about it but here's maybe the most important question. What do I do when I'm in a season of silent nights because maybe I'm speaking right to you and you're like, bro, there's no way. There's no way that he could have known what's going on in my life. I don't but God does and God brought you here and sent you here because here's the greatest question. What do I do when it's so silent? Well, let me give you this takeaway if you're taking screenshots. What I'm telling you is that when you sense God's silence and you feel his absence, you just have to keep trusting his presence. When you sense God's silence and you feel his absence, you have to keep trusting his presence. There's gonna be things you're not gonna understand. There's gonna be moments that it's gonna feel dark

and everything's gonna be quiet and nothing is gonna be moving and it's gonna be easy for you to conclude that God's not there or he's not listening or he's not working but the Christmas story, behind the Christmas story tells us something completely different. Just because he's silent doesn't mean he's absent. One of the most vivid moments in my life where God showed me this was about six years ago. Longer than that, 10 years ago, 11 years ago. But you're sitting in a building, many of you may be new to Canvas, and this is all you've ever known. You walk in, there's 61,000 square foot of facility here, we own 10 acres of property. 900 seat auditorium, it's beautiful, everything's fantastic. You walk in, sit down, we flip on light switches, and we just start having church. Baby, it ain't always been like that. And for eight years, the first eight years of the life of this church, we were portable. You say, what does that mean? Just what it sounds like. We were camping out for four different locations. We would have to come in at 6 a.m., and we would tear everything out, and set up chairs, and run the sound equipment, and hang screens, and run everything, put out the chairs, have church,

and then before we got to go home and eat, we would put up everything. Eight years we were portable. It was hard, it was difficult, it was dark, it was discouraging, and what made it worse is that one day, we felt like we had a breakthrough, and so we bought 15 acres of property just outside of Alachua, and I remember standing up and telling the people, to great rejoicing, our days of portable church are over, whoo-hoo-hoo! And the next year, we were still portable. And the next year, we were still portable. And the next year, we were still portable. And the next year, we were still portable. And for five years, nothing happened on that piece of property, and I had some conversations with God that I'm embarrassed to tell you about. I wish, I'd love to stand here and be real spiritual. I'd love to stand here and say, oh, your pastor, he stuck it out, oh, I'd never lost faith! I stood there like a champ, and trusted God, even when it didn't look like there was anything to trust, but that's just not the truth. I remember going down the road, and I just had had it, man. I'm crying, I'm mad, and I said to God, don't you judge me now. I said, God, I left everything I loved, and I had a cushy deal, and I'd done my job, and you called me here, I did everything. I pushed my family over the edge,

I sold everything I had, I came down here and followed you, I did what you asked me to do, I held up my end of the bargain, and you ain't holding up yours. We're fighting, and we're scrapping for every moment, and we're surviving, and I don't know why you're not doing what you said you were gonna do. You know what I love about God? He just lets you vent, he lets you complain, because he's such a loving, heavenly Father, he doesn't take that personal. God could have just went, pssh, shut up. But he just loved me through it. And he knew I was tired. And he knew I wanted to give up. And he knew I was weak, and I was just having a moment. And he knew that it was a season of silent nights. And somehow through all of it, I always remember somehow the voice of the Lord saying, Mark, I have loved you. I love you, and I will always love you. And I remember one of my mentors saying something to me when I was complaining to him one day and saying, man, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired. And I remember him saying, man, I don't know if this is gonna work. I don't know if I got anything left in me, man. I don't know if I can do this anymore. And I'll never forget one of my mentors saying something to me.

He said, Mark, let me ask you a question. If you were convinced that God was still with you, what would you do? And I said, man, I don't wanna hear that. And he said, man, if you're convinced God is still with you, what would you do? And I said, man, I'd just get up and go to work the next day. He said, dude, just do that. Just do that. So I did. Now we sit in a room. Now we sit in a facility. Now we understand in retrospect. See, now we know. Now we know that in those five years of silent nights that God's silence was not his absence. Now we look back and know there was a man in Brooklyn, New York that God was dealing with his heart. There was a man in Tallahassee, God was dealing with his heart. There were things that had to happen in this facility that God was setting it up and rearranging the stage and moving lights and setting the props up. And though the curtain was dark and deep and dismal, when the curtain came up. In 48 hours, God revealed what he'd been doing behind the curtains all along. And here we are to this day. And when the curtain came up, I said, oh, he wasn't doing nothing.

When the curtain came up, I went, holy smoke. There is no way that we could have ever made this happen. It was God moving and working and strategizing and doing what only God can do. And listen, he's not just doing it for me or for this church. I'm telling you, he's doing it in your life. I'm telling you, he's doing it in your life. And I feel it, man. Some of you in this room, you're like, bro, I don't know if I can take another step. Well, let me just speak to you. God says, I have loved you. God, I love you and I will always love you. And whether you know it or believe it, God's silence is not his absence. He knows right where you are. And he knows exactly what is going on in your life. And even though you may feel alone, the great promise of Christmas is this. For a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son. And they will call him Emmanuel. God is with us. You may not feel like he's with you, but he is. You may not feel like he is working for you, but he is. You may not sense that he loves you, but he does. And the word of the Lord says to you, I have loved you. And I love you now. And I will always love you. And if you don't do anything this Christmas but grab that promise and bring it into your soul, it could change everything about your future.