This is a Christmas message of encouragement to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

That notion describes a very big God - in fact, a HUGE God, a God who can do anything, who can command ANYTHING, no matter how hard it may be for one of His children to wrap their mind around or accept it. If you are a Bible believing Christian - regardless of denominational affiliation - THIS is the God in whom you believe, upon whom you try to base your own words and actions, and upon whom you pin all of your hopes through the sacrifice of His son, Jesus Christ, upon the rugged cross.

And yet, some surveys show that many, many solid and believing Christians have trouble coping with the idea of a virgin birth. I confess that even I struggle with this one sometimes. It is so completely counter intuitive for us accept the idea. Why is that? We believe it as little children quite easily. Some of these same studies show that this difficulty in belief actually is tied to age. The older we are, the easier it is to accept the idea that God would choose a 15 year old, unmarried Jewish girl from the small nation of Israel, subject to Roman occupation, to be the mother of His human incarnation; and at the same time, the harder it is for us to believe that He accomplished this through a virgin birth. After all, God performs lots of other miracles through seemingly biological, or at least explainable, means. Who can deny that any baby is a miracle, even if it is not wanted? He cures cancer through the miracles of modern medicine. He gives a lonely soldier the gift of wishing his family a merry Christmas from the other side of the planet, in real time, through the miracle of the microchip. So why is it that we struggle with the idea of a virgin birth?

This is my answer for those of you who struggle with this, and also my encouragement to you, my brothers and sisters, as we celebrate that approximately 2,000 years ago, God gave us his son, born to an unknown teenaged girl, in a manger, in the straw, surrounded by the humble animals, in the bumptious province of Galilee, in a minor but troublesome corner of the Roman empire.

For a God that could create the universe, a miracle so huge, vast, and beyond our comprehension, placing a piece of Himself in the form of a new human life into a virgin womb would be a piece of cake. There is no doubt that God COULD have done it. Our struggle is with the question “Did he?” And this is where faith begins.

Faith is something we choose. You have already chosen to believe that God is THE creator. You have already chosen to believe that He performed all the miracles of the Old Testament. You have already chosen to believe His prophesies. You have already chosen to accept His direction for your lives. And you have already chosen to believe that He sent His son, Jesus Christ, to this world in order to secure our salvation.

Now, CHOOSE to believe that Christ was born of a virgin birth. I promise you a very special Christmas if you will just break down that one little barrier to allowing God to BE God in your lives. Give Him the FULL credit for the miracle of Christmas, and bask in the warmth of His majesty. It could change your life.