The Trilogy of the Holidays!

The God of Christianity reveals Himself very specifically to the world as the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is why some of God’s greatest revelations about His creation are displayed in three’s. For example humans, the crown of God’s creation, are also triune beings. We consist of spirit, soul and body. Our triune design separates us from every living creature on the planet. It is the main reason we have the greatest capacity to create. We, as human beings, are the ones crafted to be the most like our Creator.

During the most wonderful time of the year, we celebrate three important holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Understanding the significance of these holidays, and why we celebrate them, is vital to knowing God. The God of the Lord Jesus Christ is the reason for the season! Let me further explain through my own personal 2010 holiday experience.

After a month of feasting on great food and desserts during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday, I am entering the New Year with a full belly and an expectant heart. Why am I so expectant? Am I expectant because I think the economy is going to turn around, and as a result, allow the multitudes to experience new prosperity? No! Am I expectant because I think the war against those who want to do evil to others is going to end? No! Am I expectant because I think our government is going to unify and solve all of our nation’s social ills? No! Am I expectant because I think nothing negative is going to happen in 2011? No way!

I am expectant for one reason and one reason only: I know my God is good!

I have spent more time than usual over the holiday season thinking about the goodness of God, and praying about what He wants to do in the future. It all began with the Thanksgiving holiday. As I thought about the goodness of God during this holiday, I could not stop thanking Him for the kindness he has demonstrated to me over the years. I am thankful for: life, salvation, health, my family, my church, my job, my friends, food, house, clothes, etc. I could go on and on listing the things I am thankful for in my life.

Instead, I will write about what makes me the most thankful. I am most thankful that my gesture of gratitude is not a random one. In other words, it is a very specific, personal and intimate expression of thanks to the God of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The modern Thanksgiving holiday traces its origins from a 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. This was continued in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance, and later as a civil tradition. Who were these Plymouth settlers giving thanks to? You got it…the God of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! It was not a fortuitous celebration of gratitude.

When thankfulness is not haphazard, it manifests in a very specific expression—giving. Thanksgiving, the first in the holiday season, prepares our heart to celebrate the Christmas holiday with a gratitude of giving.

Why do we give gifts on Christmas? We give because God in His love first gave to us. He gave us the greatest gift ever given to mankind. John 3:16 says, “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.” A good gift displays three (there’s that word again) things to the recipient: (1) it demonstrates value, (2) it is a personal investment, and (3) it meets a specific need. God gave the life (demonstrated value) of His Son Jesus Christ to save us (personal investment) from our sins (specific need), and give us eternal life (good gift).

The amazing story of Christmas is that God came in flesh (the Incarnation) to live and dwell among us. We can know Him (very definitively and intimately) through His Son Jesus Christ. This God is not only good; He is personal and relational. I think it is best summed up in the Christmas Song, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”:

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Knowing and giving thanks to the Christ of Christmas is important because He is the only One who has the power to make all things new. That is why on New Year’s Eve we make resolutions in hopes that our lives and circumstances will change for the better. Newness, like the concept of liberty, is a thought that is emphasized in the Bible. In fact, it is the central purpose of Christ’s ministry. He is the Lord our God who makes all things new. Most of us don’t live up to our resolutions because we try to do them in our own strength. We need God’s help to embrace the new and make the necessary life changes.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Thanksgiving to God prepares us to celebrate the gift of Christ and opens our hearts to receive the new things God wants to do in our lives! I thank Christ that the new has come!

My faith in Jesus Christ and His goodness is why I enter 2011 with great expectation!

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Happy New Year!

What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Part 2)

I can't believe Christmas is less than one week away! As you prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, I want to give you some more things to think about from Jerry Newcombe and Dr. James Kennedy's book: What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which is tiny in and of itself; but, when fully grown, it provides shade and a resting place for many birds. This parable certainly applies to an individual who embraces Christ; it also applies to Christianity and the world.

This blog will continue to focus on Christ’s impact on the world using excerpts from the book.

1. Christianity: The Growth of a Mustard Seed

Christianity’s roots were small and humble—an itinerant rabbi preached and did miracles for three and a half years around the countryside of subjugated Israel. And today there are more than 2.1 billion professing believers in Him found in most of the nations on earth! There are tens of millions today who make it their life’s aim to serve Him alone.

Emperors and governors were the men with power in Christ’s day. But now their bodies rot in their sepulchers, and their souls await the Final Judgment. They have no followers today. No one worships them. No one serves them or awaits their bidding.

Not so with Jesus! Napoleon, who was well accustomed to political power, said that it would be amazing if a Roman emperor could rule from the grave, and yet that is what Jesus has been doing. (We would disagree with him, though, in that Jesus is not dead; He’s alive.) Napoleon said; “I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel…nations pass away, thrones crumble, but the Church remains.”

2. Jesus Christ is the only One who can save souls.

The salvation of souls is the primary goal of the spread of Christianity. All the other benefits we have talked about in this series are basically just by-products of what Christianity has often brought when applied to daily living. We must never forget that all of these benefits to mankind have their origins in the Christian faith.

When Jesus Christ took upon Himself the form of man, He imbued mankind with a dignity and inherent value that had never been dreamed of before. Whatever Jesus touched or whatever He did transformed that aspect of human life. Many people will read about the innumerable small incidents in the life of Christ while never dreaming that those casually mentioned “little” things were to transform the history of humankind.

3. Even under intense scrutiny, Christianity has always shined as a bright light to the nations.

Both Friederich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler wished that Christ had never been born. Others share this sentiment. For example, Charles Lam Markmann, who wrote a favorable book on the history of the ACLU, entitled The Noblest Cry, said: “If the otherwise admirably civilized pagans of Greece and their Roman successors had had the wit to laugh Judaism into desuetude, the world would have been spared the 2000-year sickness of Christendom.” Interestingly, people living under Nazi oppression, under Stalin’s terror, under Mao’s cultural revolution, and the reign of the Khmer Rouge were all spared “the 2000-year sickness of Christendom”! Horrific incidents were the result!

Stalin and Mao both tried to destroy Christianity in their respective domains. In the process, they slaughtered tens of millions of professing Christians, but they utterly failed in their ultimate objective. Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, Robert Ingersoll, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Madalyn Murray O’Hare, Phil Donahue, the ACLU, and other leading anti-Christians have tried in vain to do away with Christianity. From transforming the value of human life to transforming individual lives, the positive impact of Jesus Christ is felt around the globe. The overwhelming impact of Christ’s life on planet earth has been positive, not negative.

Thank you God for sending your Son Jesus Christ to planet earth!

Merry Christmas!

What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

During this Christmas season, I have been taking some extra time to ponder the question: What if Jesus had never been born? To help me answer this question, I am currently reading the book by Dr. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe: What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? It is an excellent book and I highly recommend that you read it.

I am confident that three things will happen to you while reading this book. First, you will have a greater appreciation for who Jesus Christ is in human history. Second, you will be better equipped to defend your faith in Jesus Christ. Lastly, you will be inspired to boldly declare the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For the rest of this blog, I am going to share excerpts from the book. I hope this will motivate you to purchase the book and read it as quickly as possible. I hope you enjoy!

What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

We live in an age in which only one prejudice is tolerated—anti-Christian bigotry. Today, the only group you can hold up to public mockery is Christians. Attacks on the church and Christianity are common. As Pat Buchanan once put it, “Christian-bashing is a popular indoor sport.”

But the truth is this: Had Jesus never been born, this world would be far more miserable than it is. In fact, many of man’s noblest and kindest deeds find their motivation in love for Jesus Christ; and some of our greatest accomplishments also have their origin in service rendered to the humble Carpenter of Nazareth.

Listed below are three thoughts about the impact of Jesus on the world:

1. Jesus Christ is the greatest man who has ever lived.

Some people have made transformational changes in one department of human learning or in one aspect of human life, and their names are enshrined in the annals of human history. But Jesus Christ, the greatest man who ever lived, has changed virtually every aspect of human life—and most people don’t know it. The greatest tragedy of the Christmas holiday each year is not so much its commercialization (gross as that is), but its trivialization. How tragic it is that people have forgotten Him to whom they owe so very much.

2. Everything Jesus Christ touched He transformed.

Jesus says in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.” Everything that Jesus Christ touched, He utterly transformed. He touched time when He was born into this world; He had a birthday and that birthday utterly altered the way we measure time. Now, the whole world counts time as Before Christ (B.C.) and A.D. Unfortunately, in most cases, our illiterate generation today doesn’t even know that A.D. means Anno Domini, “In the year of the Lord.”

It’s ironic that the most vitriolic atheist writing a propagandistic letter to a friend must acknowledge Christ when he dates that letter. The atheistic Soviet Union was forced in it constitution to acknowledge that it came into existence in 1917, in the “year of our Lord.” When you see row after row of books at the library, every one of them—even if it contains anti-Christian diatribes—has a reference to Jesus Christ because of the date.

3. Jesus’ Church has impacted people in a positive manner more than any other institution on earth.

Despite its humble origins, the Church has made more changes on earth for the good than any other movement or force in history. To get an overview of some of the positive contributions Christianity has made through the centuries, here are a few highlights:

• Capitalism and free-enterprise.
• Universities, which also began during the Middle Ages. In addition, most of the world’s greatest universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes.
• Hospitals, which essentially began during the Middle Ages.
• Civil liberties.
• The abolition of slavery.
• Modern science.
• The elevation of women.
• Higher standards of justice.
• The elevation of the common man.
• High regard for human life.
• The preservation of ethical standards in regards to sexual conduct in relationships.
• The eternal salvation of countless souls.