It’s Christmas again and one can be lost in the euphoria of celebration and miss its essence.
Truth be told, many of us have not had a full grasp of the importance and the implications of Christ’s coming. We’ve celebrated Christmas all these years but the real question is whether the purpose of His birth has been accomplished in our lives.
What difference has Christ made? How is my faith in Christ different from someone who follows Muhammad or Buddha? What is the effect of the birth of Jesus Christ in my life? These are the real questions that we need to answer.
Of course, there is no crime in being excited and exhilarated. Hampers, cakes, Christmas tree, the different modifications of rice and chicken including nice clothes and shoes aren’t bad. What’s bad is do all these and miss the reason for the season.
The shepherds who became the first herald of Christ’s birth were not satisfied with the report of the angel.
The angel had told them,
“Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Luke 2:10-12
Imagine that Gabriel visited you this morning; I trust that you would have taken that as something big; you will count yourself fortunate.
The shepherds, however, were not content with the angelic news. They were not carried away by the carol the angels sang. They wanted more.
“So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us'”
(Luke 2:15NKJV).
They could have simply believed what they heard but they wanted to see. The desire to see, I believe, was not an expression of doubt but a passion to experience what they have been told.
These shepherds understood that seeing solidifies what you have heard. Seeing makes you a witness in a court of law. You cannot be a witness if all you knew was hearsay. Seeing transforms the event into your own experience.
Science students understand that no amount of what you are taught in class can be compared to what you see in the laboratory. The practical class gives meaning to the theory; makes the subject unforgettable.
The shepherds simply decided to go to the laboratory where Christ was born. They wanted to see. This is why I am challenging you too as we celebrate the birth of our Lord, “Let us now go… and SEE this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.”
It is time that what we have heard and read about Jesus become tangible realities in our lives. It is time to SEE what we have heard. It is time that the Word became flesh in our lives.
I know you’ve heard so many things about Him but let me quickly remind you of a few things that we all have heard about Him.
For example, we have heard that He saves from sin. Matthew 1:21 tells us that, “…and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Then it is not enough to hear it, we need to see the reality of this in our lives. The challenge is if indeed He saves from sin, let us now go and see whether He saves.
We should no longer be satisfied with a Saviour who only saves from sin in the news we read in the Bible or in what we are told by our pastor in the church while we are grappling with secret sins in our lives.
How can I claim that someone has delivered me from the power of sin yet I lie, steal, lust, fornicate, masturbate, cheat, etc.? That would be a paradox. My life would then be a grotesque caricature of what the Saviour has done. I ought to be living proof of the saving power of Jesus.
We have also heard that He heals illnesses and diseases. Let us then go and see if He indeed heals. Yes, He healed Peter’s mother-in-law of fever but has He healed yours?
We can go on and talk about so many things that we have heard about Him which unfortunately we cannot claim to have seen in reality.
Friends, it is time that we should no longer be satisfied with what we have heard, we must passionately seek to see the power of Christ revealed in our own lives. This season is not just for rice and chicken. You need to audit your faith. Evaluate your Christianity! Take stock!
The world is fed up of our weekly noise and massive monuments. They are looking for proofs. If He saves, then let’s see it. If He heals, show us. If He provides, what evidence do you have?
Our witness to the world has been so weak because there are no proofs. We simply go around gossiping the gospel. We have not confirmed in our own lives what we have heard.
The shepherds never told anyone what they heard but what they saw. They began to tell people after they saw Christ. You see, you cannot keep quiet if indeed you have a real experience of Christ.
The apostles were never satisfied with what they heard only, they saw. Peter said,
“We weren’t, you know, just wishing on a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes… We were there on the holy mountain with him. We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears. We couldn’t be surer of what we saw and heard—God’s glory, God’s voice. The prophetic Word was confirmed to us”
2 Peter 1:16-20 MSG.
John including Job said similar things. Check 1 John 1:1-3 and Job 42:5.
Seeing Christ manifested in our lives requires effort. We must pay the price. We must stand up like the shepherds and seek Him until we see Him. We must seek Him until what we see correlates with what we have heard.
Don’t forget that what we are seeking has already come to pass. It is done already. Jesus has paid the price and given us all we need for a successful life. Your experience can never invalidate what is already done. You have the responsibility to rather redefine your experiences by what Christ has done.
Friends, let us now go and see. Let us now proof to the world that He is alive like He was when He was on the earth. Make 2020 a year of proofs. Be the Bible the people around you will read.
Merry Christmas!
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