Enthusiasm

Gratitude is the Believers’ Emblem!

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Christmas is the time of the year where most people become enthusiastic; very busy cooking, decorating the house and shopping for the perfect gifts. Unfortunately few people stop to find out the true meaning of the season. Imagine the joy of giving a very exclusive gift to a loved one. Regrettably that person does not even bother to show any gratitude; worst, she even pays no attention to the gift. How would you feel? Wouldn’t your emotions be disturbed? Of course they would. Ingratitude is a terrible disease, it reveals egotism.  Two thousand years ago God gave the most extraordinary gift possible, a gift that cost Him a lot. We read “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life”. (John 3:16) But regrettably people don’t even care about the gift. Christmas is more than parties, family getting together, riding snow machines, exchanging gifts, etc. The real Christmas story is the story of God becoming a human being in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Why was Christmas necessary? Simply because we needed a Savior!                                                                                                       Why do we celebrate Christmas each year?                                                                                                                                                  Out of gratitude for what God did for us! He provided a way—the only Way—for us to spend eternity with Him. He provided a gift, His only Son to take our punishment for our sins. “But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Some folks ask Jesus “What does God want us to do?” Jesus responded, “God wants to do something for you so that you believe in the one whom he has sent.” (John 6:28–29) The best gift you could give God is to believe that Christ was sent by God for you. This Christmas will you pay attention to the gift God send you?

Moral Enthusiasm.

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At what level would you evaluate your level of moral enthusiasm?

What words describe it best: “Inward fire” or “Chronic spiritual lassitude”? It has to fall between those two poles.  The Scripture says “Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Eph. 5:18). Tozer penned “When the Spirit presents Christ to our inner vision it has an exhilarating effect on the soul, much as wine has on the body.” A good New Testament illustration would be the two from Emmaus, after meeting the Lord Jesus they mention that they felt an “inward fire”.

Dante, on his imaginary journey through hell, came upon a group of lost souls who sighed and moaned continually as they whirled about aimlessly in the dusky air. Virgil, his guide, explained that these were the “wretched people,” the “nearly soulless,” who while they lived on earth had not moral energy enough to be either good or evil. They had earned neither praise nor blame. And with them and sharing in their punishment were those angels who would take sides neither with God nor Satan. The doom of all of the weak and irresolute crew was to be suspended forever between a hell that despised them and a heaven that would not receive their defiled presence. Not even their names were to be mentioned again in heaven or earth or hell. “Look,” said the guide, “and pass on.”[1]

Jesus told about the church of Laodicea: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.” Let Him heat up your heart today! I need to add that Dante Divine Comedy is only a piece of literature, it is not inspire like the Bible. In Hebrews 9:27 God says that “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”

[1] Aiden Wilson Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer Book One (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007), 141.