Daily Dose of the Word of God - Beyond Sunday Ep. 68

Jeff Klein, Pastor of Outreach

Transcript

Jeff Klein 0:12 

Welcome to Elmhurst CRC's Daily Dose in the Word of God. It's Monday, December 16 and this is Jeff Klein reminding you to take your faith Beyond Sunday and your following of Jesus with you into the week.

Jeff Klein 0:25 

Years ago in my church plant, we used to do a Christmas angel tree at the local elementary school (the public elementary school). This school was full of students and families who had come from all over the world, and many of them didn't have the resources to purchase Christmas gifts. But obviously, arriving in America, it seemed like they were really left out of the Christmas celebration because they couldn't provide these gifts. And so we would hang ornaments all over the tree and families from the community would pick up these ornaments and purchase gifts for the kids, and we'd help deliver those those gifts. Our church heavily participated in this and we would often assign families in order to make sure they had the gifts that they needed for their kids and for themselves for Christmas. We were reflecting the week after we delivered all these gifts and a guy who had delivered gifts to a family went on a rant about how he was super excited because he had given this family a great Christmas. I remember sitting there thinking to myself: "really, that's the definition of a great Christmas? Lots of presents under the tree, lots of gift cards, lots of wrapped stuff, lots of things - that's the definition of great Christmas?"

Jeff Klein 1:38 

I thought to myself, "Wow. What if this family never knows the Jesus who came on Christmas years ago for them? What if they never know the reason Christmas even exists, or why we even give these gifts? Are they still going to have a great Christmas? What if they don't know that for years and years and years to come?" And it got me thinking about how we're really good at giving gifts and jumping into the cultural tradition of Christmas. But how good are we at giving the gift of telling people the truth about Jesus? Maybe this year we should think about pray about one person, one family that we can go and share with what Christmas is really all about. Let's see if we can take that on. Maybe you can make a list of some people to begin to pray about and maybe God will open the way for you to share with them the story of that first Christmas.

Jeff Klein 2:40  

Let's pray. Jesus, help us to redefine what a great Christmas is. Help us to bring this amazing message that you came, that you love us enough to come and deal with our sin problem here on earth. Jesus, help us to share that story with somebody this Christmas who doesn't know it. In your name we pray, Amen.