Building a Place

As we enter into this Christmas season, it helps to remember what this season is about. It’s not the advertisements to buy, buy, buy and all the movies about a Santa Claus who only gives to those who deserve it. Boy we humans cancerous screw up a good thing can’t we!

Christmas is SUPPOSED to be based upon a Savior Who gave up His place in the glorious realm of the Kingdom of Heaven and humbled Himself to the point of lowering His status so much so as to enter into the womb of a woman and take on our humanity. Then....for the first time ever....He had to experience all the pain, hunger, heartache and evil that this world dishes out. What was He doing? Building a place for humans to be lifted up on a much higher plane of existence in this life and beyond. Jesus literally built a place for us to become something that we can never be without Him!

In the “Christmas story” in the 2nd chapter of Luke is stated that WHERE Jesus came, was a direct result of where there was no room for Him elsewhere and where ROOM WAS FOUND. This is still accurate for us today. Jesus will come and manifest Himself anywhere room is made for Him. Then, as a person opens themselves up to Him, a relationship with Him begins, and the more a person builds room in their life for the King, His Kingship overflows into all places where room is made.

One of many such incidents that comes to mind is a time when having money for just the bare necessities seemed so far away. I remember us driving 45 minutes away to a church where God’s Spirit actually could move. We only had enough gas to get there and only $10 for gas to get us back home again, but we were hungry for God, and we went.

During the service God moved on our hearts to give our last $10 in the offering that Sunday night. I was SO SCARED to do it. But with a shaky heart...we let go of the only way we had to get back home! With a newborn baby and absolutely no money and our car on fumes, we just made ourselves extremely vulnerable. But we had “made room” for Jesus to manifest Himself to us. What happened next, 28 years later, is still awesome to me and a reminder of the awesome character of God! After the service ended, a young man who we didn’t even know, walked up to us and said that the Lord suddenly put our faces before him and said that we had just given our last $10 and we had no money and no way to get home. God then told him to give us the $100 he had in his wallet....which he did! You can imagine the awesome wonder and the great confidence that this gave us as to God’s supreme

trustworthiness!! In becoming obedient and vulnerable to Him, we had made room...we built a place for God....and He CAME and filled it!

This Christmas and beyond....start building places in your life for God....you simply cannot know Him any other way!! And at the risk of using a quote from an already over quoted line in a movie, here goes...”Build it, and HE will come”!