Come thou long expected Jesus

Merry Christmas !!! Blessing and goodwill to all. 

Just thought to share something that came to me while reading about the Birth of Christ this morning. 

I wanted to quickly share a I thought I had about the birth of Christ,  Luke 2:7 says 
"And she gave birth to her Son, her Firstborn; and she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room or place for them in the inn."

In most nativity plays you see, there are always inn keepers who say " sorry there is no room in the inn", but this is never stated in the Bible. That aside, the point I wanted to make it is, that as the Saviour of the world was about to be born there was no room anywhere for him to enter, and this made me think of Revelation 3:20  'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he [will eat] with Me' 

When the Saviour of the world was about to be born, Joseph stood knocking looking for room but no one received them for they did not know who what about to be birthed into this world, and we see here at the end of the Bible, that Christ says he is standing and waiting for us to receive Him. 

My mind then went to the wise men who were travelling they were seeking what they had been hoping for, this was faith in action, they had studied the stars and the words of the prophets and were now seeking " the Child born King of the Jews" (Matthew 2:2)
And  we see in Matthew 7 that if you seek you shall find, the wise men could have given up on their Journey when it got hard travelling in the desert but the kept going till the found Jesus (not in the manger,  have a look look at Matthew 2:11) 

So... this Christmas time, take another look at the story of the birth of our Saviour, and as you read think about, what are you seeking after in your life; is it your Christmas gift and possessions, a Husband, Mum's home cooking etc. Whatever it is where does seeking after Christ come on that list. Christ was born to bring salvation to heal the broken, helpless and the poor, we should be seeking after the heart of God. 

Think about how far have you let Christ into your heart, is He knocking at the door and you are just a little scared to let him into your life or into all areas of your life, don't be afraid because Christ comes with love and as the hymn, O little town of Bethlehem states; "Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. 

However you celebrate the birth of Christ I hope you have fun and enjoy this festive time of year :)  Merry Christmas

These walls I've built

As humans we create ways to cope with life and for the most part it is through create the person we want other to see us as and this often means that we build up walls to stop people seeing whats really in our hearts and what we are really about.

Like Shakespeare said  "All the world's a stage and we are all mere actors", To some extent this is true as on a day to day basis you have a routine that builds you up to face the world such as never leaving the house without your make-up being on. Also when you enter different sphere of life you alter your behave , for example how you speak at work may not be how you talk when you are out with your friends or when you are at church.

In general we tend to compartmentalise our lives in to section, so in a way putting everything in to box so we keep order. and there is nothing wrong with order but sometimes orders blocks us from having the relationships we should or from reaching the dreams we had.

A very popular example I have seen time and time again, is when I person gets hurt in one relationship, they take that hurt into the next relationship but they build up a little wall around their heart to stop them getting hurt again. But they still get hurt and that wall gets higher and higher. Until they can't love or show emotions any more.

the problems with walls you build yourself is that once you build all four sides than how do you get out, you can't run through them, can't climb over them and the cement has dried so you can't just tear them down

we say people label us and people fence us into boxes; but we do it to ourselves, because we don't want to be hurt any more.
Well the truth is we have to start by looking at ourselves and asking the harder questions of why we have closed ourselves of from others. And I know this can hurt, I have personally been through this but when you let Jesus in, He will be with you and help you break down those walls.

A video that sums up what I have been saying: