|
JOHN 3:16 (NKJV) |
DAY 1 |
For God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
THE NEWBORN KING
——————————————————————————————————————
Since I grew up in a non-Christian family, I didn’t celebrate Christmas as a child. But once when I was young, my siblings and I, together with a few neighborhood kids, decided to have a Christmas gift exchange. I don’t know where we got the idea—maybe from all the TV shows we’d been watching. We put our names into a bag, and each of us picked the name of someone to buy a present for. We decided we liked this tradition.
We didn’t yet realize the perfect gift had been given to us 2,000 years ago by God our Creator. Charles Wesley captured this in his hymn “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” He wrote of Jesus, “Light and life to all He brings, / Risen with healing in His wings.”
The Bible tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (JOHN 3:16 NKJV). Why did God give us his Son, and what does that mean for us? As Wesley wrote, “Born to raise
the sons of earth, / Born to give them second birth.”
As a teenager, I heard about Jesus—the one born to give us “second birth”—and believed in Him as my Savior. Christmas is special to me now because I understand its meaning—it’s a celebration of God’s perfect gift, Jesus Christ. God isn’t a mystical force out there; He’s a personal God who extends His love to people of all nations and socioeconomic classes. And this personal God expressed His love for me by dying for me. “Glory to the newborn King!”
POH FANG CHIA
What Christmas traditions do you celebrate?
How might they remind you of Jesus’ birth?
Dear God, thank You for showing us that to love is to give.
———————————————————————————————————————————————-
TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | JOHN 3:16–21
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him
18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.
19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.
20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.
21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.
|
|
|
|
