Merry Christmas fellow brothers and sisters in Christ! What a joyful experience to have this opportunity to serve the Lord on His birthday!
What is Christmas to you? I remembered last year when I was measuring my happiness in the amount of money and number of gifts I will receive. Back then, my source of joy is purely on the temporary things like material things, money, and even the affection from a special someone. However, hearing this message made me realize that I was a totally different person back when I haven’t met Jesus and that I have already received the BEST gift ever – and that is my salvation. Truly, what a joy to be reminded of the right path where I am today. Through Ptr. Jess’ message, we were reminded that God wants us to be happy not in our own way – but in His own way and we must fix our joy in the source and that is Jesus.
God wanted us to not fear (Luke 2:10-11) because we can never experience the joy if we succumb to fear. Even though God already impressed to our hearts that He must be our only source of joy (Psalm 16:11), we still live in fear; These fears are, as we know it, brought by life uncertainties, peer rejection, a death of a loved one, money, and more. Only to realize that the root cause of our fears is because of not believing that Jesus must be our sole source of joy – what could be a greater source of joy than being saved because we are loved? I appreciated everything Ptr. Jess shared on how Christmas is our Assurance of our Salvation. I realized that this message was very timely to the special occasion to remind us of the real reason for the season – and that is Jesus!
Christmas is our assurance of FORGIVENESS as we are reminded of how God’s plan of saving us began. Christmas has been planned all along and God sent us His only son to save us because our greatest need is forgiveness from the sin that took us away from Him. God’s promises are bound to come true but they also take time. It was in the fullness of time when Jesus was born in flesh to save us, as it was carefully planned out by God’s intentional love for us. Having said that, it also proves that Christmas is the assurance of God’s GRACE and LOVE. God’s plan was so intentional that every person identified in the Bible who were in Jesus’ genealogy was carefully chosen and picked out. God chose sinners and ungodly women to show His grace and love as they bore down lineage to Jesus, our Savior.
This message completely changed my view to Christmas and that our fitting response to God’s unconditional love for us is TO OBEY and BE JOYFUL! Joyfully obeying God’s Will proves that we believe in Him. Trusting God’s plans and promises will cast away our fears and can help us focus our joy on Him. The sooner we obey God, the sooner we can experience true joy.
Are you joyfully obeying God?
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