December 18

What are you going to give Jesus for Christmas this year?

A strange transversal takes place on Christmas day. We usually give gifts to the birthday person when we attend their party. But on Christmas day we have developed the tradition of giving gifts to everyone attending the party except for the real birthday person, who is Jesus. I would like to suggest you reverse that tradition and give Jesus a gift this year. So what could you possibly give the “Man who has everything?” This gift comes from our reading today of the book of Titus. It is found in Titus 2:11-14.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

A wonderful gift you could give him is a holy life, a life that says “No” to sin and “Yes” to holiness and upright living. Having the right approach to godliness is the key. You and I both know that we don’t just decide one day to be godly and in a few minutes this takes place because of our efforts. We have all failed in our human attempt to live a righteous life. It isn’t difficult to live a holy life; it is impossible to live one. We can only do this with God’s power filling our hearts.
That is why godliness must have the proper motivation from the very start. There are two motivations given in these verses. The first is the grace of God. We don’t become godly to earn God’s approval; we become godly because we already have God’s approval. His grace and salvation are what inspire us to want to do this. When we think of what Jesus went through because he loves us, his incarnation, his suffering, his death, all of these motivate us. He gave his all for us. How can we give anything less than our all for him?
Secondly, his appearing motivates us to live godly lives. We believe that he is coming again and just like there is excitement in children when the relatives come over for Christmas dinner, so we have excitement with the thought that Jesus is coming again. We want to be ready and waiting for him, so we clean the house and put on our best clothes.
The best gift you can give Jesus this Christmas is yourself.

We have 13 more days till we end the journey!!