From Pastor John Collins:
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” Matthew 6:24-25 (NKJV).
Black Friday is here and before you run out and break the
bank, overload the credit cards and spend hard earned cash that you should not,
please rethink this holiday season!!
One of the hardest lessons to learn in life is restraint.
When to restrain yourself from acting, from speaking and from reacting in a
manner that is expected from you. Just because the world, especially the United
States has come to drive buying in excess to please our loved ones in some kind
of celebration for the birth of Jesus Christ for some and just an excuse to
shop for others does not mean that you need to buy into the nonsense.
Jesus Christ was NOT born on December 25th. Although you may
believe that you are celebrating Him when your family opens its gifts on that
cold December morning, I promise you that Jesus would rather you not go into debt,
not struggle to pay your bills in order to buy those presents and He would
rather you not buy those gifts and would rather you restrain yourself from the
manic need to “show your love” through material means.
Jesus is about love, salvation, hope and eternal bliss.
Don’t make this year the same as all of the rest instead choose to make this
year a new tradition that includes all of the love and faith that you can
summon with all of the joyous celebration that you can endure without partaking
of the “Christmas Traditions” that celebrate materialism and not God.
And for those of you who have small children, please learn
restraint. Christmas is not about filling up the space under the tree. If you
do buy gifts, restrain yourself and limit your purchases. One gift is lovely
and if opened with Jesus on your mind and not yourself, then that is a pure and
true rejoicing in Him and not the excuse to give and receive. We should never
think of Christmas as if it were OUR BIRTHDAY and therefore our right to receive
gifts and the same goes for our children. It is not their birthdays. This
holiday season, learn to restrain yourself.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV).
