Due to limited internet access, I could not post during the Christmas and New Year holiday season as I spent the holiday in Haiti. Despite not being able to post I was thinking of many of you, and I hope that you all had a very blessed Christmas.
There have been so many predictions concerning this December and New Year, yet God looks upon us and gives us another chance to realize that he is God and is in control of his own world. He is longsuffering and wants all to come to Him.
This year I counted it a great privilege to visit home and celebrate Christmas with family and friends. Even two nights before I returned home, I had been thinking about a creative way to make this Christmas and New Year Christ-focused for my brothers and family. All over the world people celebrate Christmas, but they never fully grasp the meaning or the purpose of Christmas. As I was thinking about Christmas today, I thought of restoration. This is when the God-man would take the initiative himself to call man to live and to find their purpose in life. Man’s purpose is to have a relationship with the triune God and “enjoy Him forever”.
It was heavy on my heart to help my people to understand the Christmas season as a holy season to celebrate God’s love for humanity and to remember to make Christ the focal point opening our hearts to God to reveal the true meaning of this holy season as we celebrate it.
It was great to be back to Haiti for this purpose. Just as by God’s grace I found the true meaning of Christmas, I was excited to help my fellow brothers and sisters find this true meaning. Whoever celebrates Christmas for the true meaning of it finds himself focusing on the life of Christ. It was in a time like this when God fully revealed his fullness in the personhood of Christ Jesus. Man has searched for ages to find someone to worship that is God, but we are so depraved that we cannot find that true God on our own. Therefore, God in his love came to us by making himself like us in order to reach us without falling into our depravity so that he may remain qualified to save us from our depravity. Because of this, I taught a series for three days entitle “the reasons Christ came to die” to the children in my village.
Moreover, I mark this New Year as a year of many changes: theologically, morally, and relationally. As a young Christian, one of the doctrines I struggle the most with is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. The problem is, I have a background where I often believe certain things happen because I work or believe in them. Now, as a young theologian, I realize scripture alone is not the only resource that teaches about God’s sovereignty, but even in my life, when I examine it, I can clearly see God’s sovereignty at work. Scripture teaches us how God sovereignly saved us as sinners.
It was my desire to teach my brothers and sisters how God chose to save them. I was able to point them to Isaiah 53:3-10 to help them see the reason and purpose that Christ came to die. Furthermore, I was able to explain who was responsible for Christ’s death. It helped them to appreciate the gracious work of God in their lives. Many of them could not understand why Christ came to die for them, especially when they are undeserved of it. So with God’s help, they were able to see that it was because of God’s love, justice, and grace that Jesus chose to died for them. He takes our punishment upon him. He took upon himself the punishment that was ours (Romans 3:25). It was so interesting to see how many of them were shocked to understand how God’s justice has so much to do with us and ultimately caused Christ to die. It is also a blessing for us to see that his love for us does not want to see us remain in death, but by the death of his son, he defeated the power of death for us. Now by his death, Christ accomplishes all we could not accomplish for ourselves. He pleases the Father, he obeyed the father completely, he suffered for us, and he finally accomplished all that the Law demanded of us. Now, in him, we can say we are saved, justified, and sons and daughters of the father.