{"id":660,"date":"2020-12-14T00:44:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T00:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/?p=660"},"modified":"2020-12-13T23:46:15","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T23:46:15","slug":"advent-emmanuel-god-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/advent-emmanuel-god-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent \u2013 Emmanuel God with us \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Monday, December 14<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Advent \u2013 Emmanuel God with us \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,\u201d which translated means, \u201cGod with us.\u201d <strong>Matthew 1:23<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Today our Christmas carol is O Come, O Come Emmanuel<\/p>\n<p><em>Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Shall come to thee, O Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Throughout the Scriptures we read, time after time the Israelites found themselves separated from God. Far too often they were distracted by the things of this world instead of focusing on the keeper of this world, God. And each time God would deliver them, only to be separated from His chosen people again. This theme of scattering and returning continues as a constant theme in the Old Testament; the unfaithfulness of the Israelites and the faithfulness of God. Despite all the turning away God promised to remain faithful and fulfilled the promises He made to them.<\/p>\n<p>Isaiah 7:14 says, \u201cTherefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.\u201d The name Emmanuel translates \u201cGod with us.\u201d It\u2019s a remarkable promise that still remains true today \u2013 God is with us.<\/p>\n<p>No one could have expected a baby in a manger to be the start of God\u2019s perfect plan to be \u201cwith us.\u201d After all His birth came with so much confusion and impossibilities. And yet, that is exactly how God fulfilled His promise. In the midst of what seemed impossible. This day I\u2019d like to remind you that God is still with us. God the Creator of the Universe is with us.<\/p>\n<p>Are you waiting for God to come through on a promise He has made? Begin to rejoice! Do you feel a sense of loneliness or exile? Rejoice! Through Jesus the Christ, God has made Himself present to us. His faithfulness is greater than our failure. And His presence is all the reason we need to, once more, rejoice!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, December 14 Advent \u2013 Emmanuel God with us \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,\u201d which translated means, \u201cGod with us.\u201d Matthew 1:23 Today our Christmas carol is O Come, O Come Emmanuel Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. Throughout [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cornerstonecem.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}