Most of us have traditions we carry on year after year. Yesterday I shared one of mine. I listen to Christmas music while I wrap gifts. Well, I have another tradition I continue year after year. I’m not sure when I began this tradition, but I know it’s been decades I’ve been buying myself a Christmas gift. I wrap it and place it under the tree. The tag says, “To Michelle, From Michelle.” You’re probably wondering why I do this. Besides that it’s fun? On a serious note, I’ve come to believe there’s a deeper purpose behind my gift giving and receiving.
When I first learned of Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages and learned my primary love language is receiving gifts, I was appalled. My first reaction was “How shallow is that? I like receiving gifts? Ugh! I’m a self-centered gift monger!”
But as I’ve dug in and learned more about love over the years, I’ve come to learn something else. I often show my love for others by giving them gifts.
Giving gifts is important, but so is receiving gifts.
Receiving gifts also shows love.
But being able to receive a gift takes humility.
And there is one gift that’s so important to receive, we absolutely cannot receive it if we are not humble.
That gift is Jesus Himself.
While my gifts are here today and gone tomorrow, Jesus is the Everlasting Gift.
God, the Father, loves us so much He gave us His one and only Son Jesus. He’s giving us eternal, everlasting, never-ending life. All we have to do is receive God’s gift to us.
Have you ever been given a gift by someone and declined it? Can you imagine how appalled that person would be if you actually said to them, “Thanks for thinking of me, but no thanks. I don’t want your gift.”
That’s exactly what we do when we reject receiving the Heavenly Father’s gift of Jesus to us.
Friends, there is no greater gift than Jesus. God gives this gift because He loves us. No other gift can match this One.
Jesus is life.
There’s no other way to heaven than by receiving God’s gift of Jesus.
It’s like if you wanted to go to a show, but you needed a ticket to get in. I know that’s a very simple analogy, but I want to keep this simple.
Jesus is our ticket into heaven.
The vastness of God’s gift to us is not something we can truly comprehend in this world, but I know because I know because I know. Jesus is life. Jesus is the Everlasting Gift.
He truly is the Gift that keeps on giving.
Friends, my prayer and hope for you today is that you will receive the greatest gift ever: Jesus Himself. All you have to do is confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved and have the everlasting gift of life.
To some my annual tradition of buying myself a gift, wrapping it, and placing it under the tree to only receive it on Christmas morning and open it may seem silly and shallow. But I know it’s a reminder of the greatest gift that’s been given to me, and I choose to receive Him again and again. It’s just my way of saying on Christmas morning, “Yes, Jesus, I receive your gift.”
Jesus is the Everlasting Gift!
Christmas Eve Scripture
- 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 (John 3:16).
- Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6).
- “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20).
- But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12).
- If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).
- But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever (Daniel 7:18).
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