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VISITED BY GOD

Luke1:68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,   because He has visited and redeemed His people.”

Luke 1:74-75 “We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness    for as long as we live.”

These are the prophetic Words spoken by the Priest Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, on the day of John’s circumcision, the day the baby was named, “John.”

The prophetic Word was focused on the fact that God had fulfilled His promise to Israel and the whole of humanity, for the Messiah had been sent. God was visiting His people in Person, the second Person of the Eternal Trinity had become flesh and was growing in the womb of a young Hebrew virgin named Mary, who was living in Nazareth at the time.

Zachariah was declaring something so profound, so needful to be heard and embraced in faith and hope. When God visits His people, things change. That is how it always is when God visits His people to take up His residence among them. Life does not remain the same as it once was.

Slaves in Egypt were liberated and an exodus from death into a land of promise took place. God gave His Holy Law to a mob of Hebrews and others who were to become a people, a nation defined by God’s Word, God’s ways, and God’s power. They were to be different from the nations around them as different as the Law of God defined “different.” Israel’s life was no longer to orbit around pleasure, power, position, prestige, or possessions but was meant to orbit around the God who had called them out of death and into a radically different life made whole by the One who was giving that new life to them as a gift.

When the Word became flesh and made His home among us, God visited us to redeem us from the bondage and slavery of sin and death. Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, to dismantle the structures of sin that were embedded in and endemic to all human institutions. Apart from a living relationship with the Lord God, the best humanity can do stumble in the dark. Jesus Christ did not come to establish a new religion on the earth, but to restore humanity to God by grace, through faith leading to repentance, forgiveness, and life transformation.

What God, by His visitation, will give to everyone who will believe Him imHim is a brand-new life, a new way of living, Eternal life. Being rescued from our enemies, seen and unseen, we have been given a life that can be lived. It is THE life of perfect freedom, serving God without fear in holiness and righteousness all our days. To live a life marked by wholeness, meaning and purpose; to live a life defined by goodness that overflows in blessing to everyone around us, THAT is the deepest hunger of the human heart, whether one recognizes it or not. That Life is a gift that can be given only by God Himself, and received as the gift it is, by faith because of God’s grace.

He is ready to visit you today by the Holy Spirit to make all this a reality in you. He alone can set your life free, forgive all your sin, heal your brokenness, and make you new. He is calling you.

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