Thought For Today – December 13
Christmas Time!
It is only a few more days before
Christmas. This is the time for the giving and receiving of gifts.
Who is the most important person on your Christmas list?
We celebrate the advent of the
Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas time – but do we really? Where are
our thoughts, and where is our mind and heart focused, really? At
Christmas time? We ought to be celebrating the birth of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ but I wonder if he is at the top of our Christmas
giving and receiving list, or at the middle, or at the end, or is he
really there at all?
As we gather around our family
and friends to celebrate this most festive of occasions, the first
gift that ought to be received with gratitude and thanksgiving is
God's love gift to us, the Lord Jesus Christ. Open this gift first .
Give him gratitude and praise him first for his gift of love.
At Christmas time “God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
John 3:16. At Christmas time God offered us the opportunity to
become his adopted children by grace through faith. “As many as
received him to them gave he the power ( or authority ) to become
the sons of God.” At Christmas time he made it possible for us as
children of God to become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus
Christ. At Christmastime, God gave gifts unto men “wherefore he
saith when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave
gifts unto men Ephesians 4; 8 At Christmas time God provided for our
salvation.
Salvation is a big
package,containing many things. It first of all contains forgiveness
of sins, freedom from guilt, justification with God. It includes
peace and joy and all the fruits of the Spirit. It contains
everlasting eternal life. It guarantees an all expense paid trip to
heaven and the right to walk on streets of gold. It guarantees that
there is a ma nsion prepared and waiting for us in heaven. Jesus
said -”I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come
again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be
also.” John 14. The package of our salvation contains abundant
life here on earth, protection from danger, healing of mind soul and
body and a guaranteed audience with the King of kings and Lord of
Lords. It contains all the provisions available to us in the 23rd
Psalm. It all happened at Christmas, and what a Christmas gift it
is! Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift, the Lord Jesus
Christ. As we gather to receive and exchange gifts from family and
friends lets open first God's Gift to us that Christ died for us,the
Godly for the ungodly, the Righteous for the unrighteous
Lets covenant with ourselves and
with each other that we will not receive any gift from anyone else
this Christmas time until we have received with gratitude in our
hearts, the treasure that was given to us at Christmas time. No
matter how abject the poverty, or how small the bank account, or how
few the gifts under the tree, no one has a right to say that they
received nothing for Christmas. God gave us everything he had at
Christmas time. Lets covennt with ourselves that we will not offer
to anyone else our meager trinkets or gifts until we have
rededicated our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and offered our selves
to him in loving gratitude and service.
“I beseech you therefore,
brethren by the mercies ofGod, that ye present your bodies, a living
sacrifice, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service”
Romans 12: 1. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you Matthew
6: 33.
Every gift that we present to
someone else should not be given with the attitude of seeing how much
the recipient of our gift will be pleased with us for having given
them a gift. Instead, every gift that we present to someone else
ought to be a symbol of the gift that was offered to us by Christ
coming into the world and shedding his blood for us. If opportunity
presents itself, we ought to first offer to everyone on our gift
list, God's plan of salvation. Our first gift ought to be presented
to the Lord JesusChrist in gratitude for his gift to us. We ought
to present to him our bodies as a living sacrifice which is our
reasonable service. We ought to present to him our complete love and
loyality to love the lord with all our heart, with all our
mind,with all our soul. We ought to keep our mind clean and our
thoughts pure, and our bodies, the temple of God clean so that it may
be God's dwelling place and his headquarters here on earth.
If the Lord Jesus Christ is not on
the top of our gift receiving and giving list, then we are not
celebrating the coming of the Lord into the world, instead we will
be celebrating some pagan festival of lustful seeking vain glory and
the esteem of men.
How sad it is that in this so
called Christian countryof ours,we are told that in order to be
politically correct we must exclude the name and idea of Christ from
Christmas and celebrate a pagan holiday instead. This is utter
blasphemy. May God have mercy on our souls and on our nation for
this gross sin.
Posted by - Telehelp Publications
www.mybiblesbooksandgifts.com
www.telehelppublications.com
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