Devotions this week based on the Message: “Believe the NEED for Christmas!”
How many of you remember what you got last year for Christmas?
How about five years ago?
If you do, either you have a good memory or the gift was really fun and significant!
For most of us, Christmas presents don’t really stick in our minds. Their excitement fades. Their use diminishes. Perhaps many gifts have been given to Goodwill or thrown out. They just don’t last.
Yet, we spend a lot of time searching for gifts to give and we anticipate with great joy the gifts we will receive…even though they are temporary.
I’m the same. What we can see, touch, and experience today is what we focus on. We are earthly people and easily focus on the temporary.
That’s why God’s Spirit works so hard to get us to focus on the eternal.
Yesterday we saw how we need Christmas to see God’s glory…today, Christmas is a way God uses to focus on that which is eternal.
Isaiah was given insight to share to compare that which is human to that which is of God. Humans bloom and fade like the flowers. The Word of God lasts forever.
6 A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)
A secular Christmas does nothing but focus on the temporary…cookies, presents, and parties. The TRUTH of Christmas celebrates the eternal stepping into the temporal.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
We need Christmas to connect with that which is eternal, our relationship with Jesus Christ. The eternal, Son of God stepped into our temporal world so that our time in this world would end in eternity with him.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Christmas has a lot of temporal traditions…don’t let them overshadow the eternal reality! I bet when you make the eternal gift of Jesus the center of your Christmas celebration, you will never forget what you got last year for Christmas…because it will always be the same: A Savior born for you!
Apply: What can you do this Christmas to make sure the eternal significance of Christmas is real for you and your family this year?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for stepping into the temporal world to provide for me what was necessary to spend an eternity with you. AMEN!