Without doubt, as I have said before, my favourite Christmas carol is “O Holy Night”. There are many reasons this is so, but this one reason I share in this final BLOG for 2022, I have never preached or written about before.
I heard this carol recently on the radio and, once again, the words triggered a deep, emotional response of praise and worship to God. There is one line in this carol that stands out to me more than all of the others …
“O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
'Til He appears and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees; O hear the Angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born
O night, O Holy night, O night divine!”
That line, “‘til He appears and the soul felt its worth” sums up, for me, so much of the experience of God’s love for me. It perfectly captures the moment of my conversion experience where I experienced the Father’s love for me for the very first time. On that cold August night in 1968 my whole life changed – forever. I heard the preacher preaching that night, as I sat there in church next to my mother and grandfather. An hour beforehand I had been brutally beaten by my father for some misbehaviour that I cannot recall … and I was still bleeding as a result, and quietly weeping in the sad lostness of despair.
Right towards the end of his message, Ps Les Dewberry was concluding with an explanation of Psalm 27:10 …
Psalms 27:10 (KJV+)
“Though my father and my mother might forsake me,
the LORD will always take me up.”
Those words awakened something deep within me. My soul stirred and I suddenly became very aware of God’s presence. My heart was beating so loudly I felt sure someone would hear it. I quietly prayed to the Father, that if He would be so kind as to take me up to Himself this very night, that I would give Him everything I am and might ever become – whatever that could mean for a twelve-year old – and that I would do my absolute best to serve Him all my days wanting nothing else in return … Lord, please take me up! There was an instantaneous response! God’s presence was immediately inside my being, His love was breathtaking in its power and sheer purity – it overwhelmed me, welcomed me, wanted me …
And my soul suddenly felt its worth …
… and with that came a tremendous assurance of whose I was, and that has never left me.
Where others had rejected me, mocked me, told me I was useless and just plain dumb (no one knew then that I had dyslexia), that I would never amount to anything; my heavenly Father took me up and received me as I was … and, for the very first time, my soul felt its worth. I was so precious to God that He paid for my redemption with the blood of Jesus – and my soul knew it. KNEW IT! This was not some theological calculation, it was truth sublime – and I experienced it. My soul felt its worth, its value in the eyes of my Creator, its preciousness to my heavenly Father. Love is not love until it is experienced. And when I experienced the Father’s love that night, my soul knew what it was, it gasped at its lavish richness and what that meant for God, my Father, as well as for me …
And so, when, in later years, I have sung “O Holy Night”, this one line recalls the magnificence of that life-changing experience fifty-five years ago, and again and again I make the same vow, that I will give Him everything I am and might become … and do my absolute best to serve Him all my days wanting nothing else in return.”
Galatians 4:4-7 (NIV)
“But when the set time [kairos moment] had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are His sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." 7 So you are no longer a slave, but God's child; and since you are His child, God has made you also an heir.”
May God’s pure, rich love be revealed to you in experience in fresh new ways this Christmas as we come and adore Him, Christ, the Lord.
Think on these things …
Ps Milton