This is Why He Came: Your Story of Salvation and Transformation
by Dr. Michael Whiting, DBU Staff
From the little town of Bethlehem to the villages of Samaria, across the expanses of the continents of Europe and Asia, over the wide blue ocean to the Americas, and all over Africa, our devotionals this Advent season have literally taken us around the globe to encounter real-life stories of men and women transformed by the advent of Jesus Christ. The lives we’ve learned about are just a few examples of the millions who have been touched by the hope of the Gospel passed down through the ages since the first coming of Jesus.
The lives we have learned about this season serve as a witness that God is truly no respecter of persons but desires that people from every nation call upon His Name (Acts 10:34-35). We have also seen how faith in Christ has transformed the world in redemptive ways, a faith that not only received the promise of a bright future and glorious inheritance in heaven beyond death or in the Kingdom to come at Christ’s return, but also a Spirit-empowered faith that renewed the world and brought His Kingdom to earth in the here and now – through boldly preaching the Gospel, in advocating for social justice, and by serving the least of these with sacrificial love.
Needless to say, we could add your own story among these and how the advent of Jesus Christ long ago in Bethlehem has transformed your life, the people He has placed along your path to witness to you and nurture the faith growing in you, and the big and small ways in which He has and is using you for the work of His Kingdom both now and for eternity.
Our world is being shaken by many troubles, but let us take heart and rejoice this Advent season that the mission of God that moved forward with the birth of Jesus is still being accomplished centuries later.
Read carefully the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:19-22 as he witnessed just the beginnings of the Gospel reaching the ends of the earth:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
The good news of Advent is your story, too. May your life, in both word and deed, advance His great work of salvation and transformation.
This is why He came.