Christmas Encouragement for MomsSample

Baby Jesus ~ The Gift of Love

Often we refer to love as a feeling, a strong affection with an attachment to pleasure, a touchy-feely thing, something you can fall in and out of. However, our Creator, the Author, personifies a distinctly better, more awesome kind of love! How can we explain it? God’s agape love is spelled out for us in 1 Corinthians 13 (MSG). Take some time to meditate on this:

“It never gives up. Cares more for others than for self. Doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always 'me first,' doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, keeps going to the end.”

Oh, how selfless and humble; This is the character of Jesus, so perfect and unconditional, beyond any other good human example of love we have ever encountered! This description shows us who He is and why He came as a baby. God’s awesome love spurred into action! He gave what we could never deserve, so life-changing sent directly to us from His own heart! “God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death,” (1 John 4:9 TLB).

Mama, God loved you first. Let His love change you! He sent you a lifeline before you were ever born! His salvation came into our world straight from His heart. A baby, His Son, perfect in every way—in body, soul, and spirit. Perfect love embodied this child.

Because Jesus came, we (those who believe) now dwell in Him, and He dwells in us through His Spirit (1 John 4:13). His Word says as He is, so are we here, right now in this world. We become love as we abide in the Vine, and this proves we are His children. Others can experience the agape love of the Father through us, which is also why He came!

I encourage you to bask in His love; give yourself permission to receive this beautiful gift today. It takes effort to accept His love, His grace, His mercy (beautiful gifts we don’t deserve), but they are as important to take in as the air we breathe. We cannot breathe out without breathing in. We need God’s oxygen (love), or we die. When our capacity to take in becomes less than our giving out, we burn out.

Take time to:

• sit • rest • remember • receive • fill up

Baby Jesus, a gift of love sent from the Father. Let’s turn the hearts inside our homes heavenward this Christmas season. As we bask in His goodness, let’s kneel down, true worship, and adore the God who loves us! Then let’s give others what we have received. This is the testimony of Jesus at work in our lives, proof He resides in us!

Love,

Mari Jo Mast and the Help Club for Moms Team

“For twenty centuries, there have been untold numbers of men and women who have been so grasped by the child who was born, so caught up in the message he taught and the life he lived, that they have found themselves profoundly changed by their relationship with him.” ~ Frederick Buechner