"You know Him!!"  The audio from the streaming sermon echoed through the room.  It's title was "Magnifying the Holy Spirit", and the preacher kept saying over and over again, "You know Him. You know God!"

Dumbfounded, I thought, "You're right. I know Him".  Why do I often I forget that?

The sermon was recorded in September and never mentions the nativity, but isn't this what Christmas is all about? Knowing Him. Knowing a Messiah that loved us enough to become Emmanuel God with us. Who loved us enough to live a model human life and then sacrifice himself on a cross for us. Who loved us enough to leave the Earth so that He could give us His Holy Spirit and His Church could continue His incarnational ministry? 

This Christmas, I am reminded that I know Him, that I have seen His love, and my responsibility and privilege is to make Him known by sharing His love during my time in this crazy world. 

" Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. "1 John 4: 7-16.