Seeing People Like God Does, Means What???

It is so easy to get wrapped up (he.he.he..) in the idea of Christmas and purchasing the "right" gift for everyone on your list.  It is also easy to focus on your "wish list" and make sure everyone who says their getting you something gets a copy of your list.

 

Though I know you want to give and receive gifts, what about the gift that lasts eternally?  Isn't the greatest gift, the free gift of eternal life with Jesus?  Sure it is (come on, you KNOW it is)!

 

On Thanksgiving Day, some TV station was playing the movie, "Return to Me."  It is a romantic love story about the ultimate gift of life to someone who is dying.  Minnie Driver plays the sickly gal who is in need of a new heart.  Her original heart is sick and, unless replaced with a healthy heart, our sweet Minnie will die.  Cut over to David Duchovny.  He is the happily married guy who's wife has just died in a car accident...but had that donor thing on her driver's license...and so, her healthy heart is carried off to the next recipient on the heart transplant list.  Who happens to me Minnie!  Well, I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you...but it is cute, funny and all romantical! =D

 

Everyone in the world who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus Christ is in serious need of a heart transplant too!  Those without Christ are walking around with dead hearts.

 

Why not tell your dead-hearted friends the best gift of all?

 

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. (Romans 5:6-9)

 

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

 

The following Planet Wisdom devotional makes a good point about how different our viewpoint would be if we could go back in time and talk to people about an impending disaster.

 

The fact is, we know death (or the rapture) is the imminent event waiting to happen to each one of us.  This should give you a sense of urgency to share the "Good News", the Gospel with everyone.  What better free gift to tell your freinds, family, everyone about?

 

Don't get me wrong...it is great to send and receive gifts at Christmas.  However, those gifts will evaporate and become meaningless for all who either spend eternity with Christ or eternally separated from God in hell.

PlanetWisdom.com Devotionals

Time Travel Vacation Posted: 11 Dec 2008 04:08 PM CST "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer." (2 Corinthians 5:16) Imagine taking a vacation on a luxury cruise ship. I'll go with you. What do you think we'd be thinking about, mostly? I think I'd be thinking about relaxing and figuring out how to make sure I did all the fun things on the boat before the trip was over. I would be nice to people, sure, but this trip would be for me and my friends. Now I'll ruin the dream. Imagine, instead, we went back in time to walk around on the luxury cruise ship Titanic the night before it sank. Even if I knew the time machine was taking us home before the iceberg hit, my head would be in a wildly different place. I'd wonder about the fate of every person I saw. I'd want to warn them or help or something. That's what Paul is kind of talking about in this verse. His awareness that this life is almost over for everyone — and that the next life is the one we're made for — changed the way he looked at people. He couldn't spend his life just serving himself any more. And He couldn't pretend that Jesus didn't matter. Faith in Jesus was the urgent need of every single person he met. Think: How many people in our lives do we think of as merely background? How many do we really look as as people made by God to be with Him forever? How can that attitude change our response to those who treat us unkindly? Pray: Ask God to help not to think of people from a worldly point of view but to look at everyone from His perspective. Do: Jot down a rough estimate of how many living human beings you saw or e-mailed or texted or talked to yesterday? How many of them would you guess are "in Christ." Visit PlanetWisdom.com for more great resources!