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The Gift: How to Keep Christmas Happy | Sailing into Heaven

A New Beginning / Greg Laurie
The Truth Network Radio
December 19, 2024 3:00 am

The Gift: How to Keep Christmas Happy | Sailing into Heaven

A New Beginning / Greg Laurie

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December 19, 2024 3:00 am

Imagine giving a lavish gift to your loved ones this Christmas. Let’s say a luxurious cruise in some faraway corner of the world. Unbelievable beauty, no stress, no payment due at the end of it all. Well today on A NEW BEGINNING, Pastor Greg Laurie points out the gift that literally helps us sail into heaven. Unbelievable beauty, no stress, no payment due. It’s a gift we can receive and it’s a gift we can share with others any time of the year.

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A New Beginning is the daily half-hour program hosted by Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Southern California. For over 30 years, Pastor Greg and Harvest Ministries have endeavored to know God and make Him known through media and large-scale evangelism. This podcast is supported by the generosity of our Harvest Partners.

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Pastor Greg Laurie recommends a great film about the 40th President of the United States. We have a movie that's going to tell you the story of this man who changed the world. Ronald Reagan was a man who believed in Jesus Christ.

You're going to be inspired by it in this brand-new film starring Dennis Quaid. It's called Reagan, and it's our gift to you for your gift of any size. Available on DVD and digital download at harvest.org. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, may your days be merry and bright. How do we bring that kind of joyfulness to the holiday?

Pastor Greg Laurie. If you want to have a happy Christmas, understand this simple biblical principle from Jesus when he says, it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. And one of the greatest joys we can have is sharing the gospel. And I want all of you to experience that blessing. Imagine giving a lavish gift to your loved ones this Christmas.

Let's say a luxurious cruise in some faraway corner of the world. Unbelievable beauty, no stress, no payment due at the end of it all. Well, today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out the gift that literally helps us sail into heaven.

Unbelievable beauty, no stress, no payment due. It's a gift we can receive, and it's a gift we can share with others any time of the year. What is the worst Christmas gift you ever received? I read an article in the paper where people talked about the worst gifts they'd ever been given. One person said, my sister gave me a bracelet which was already mine and had been gone for a while. A woman named Julie said she received a toilet seat for Christmas. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a new toilet seat, right? Another girl said, I received a sweater that someone had worn, stained, and re-gifted.

Okay, nice. Another person said they received a used spatula, another one slipper. Maybe they'll get the other slipper next Christmas. And here's the thing that can happen this time of the year is we re-gift. We re-gift. How many of you have ever re-gifted, which means you received a gift and then you gave that same gift to someone else? You've done it. Admit it. I've done it.

I think most of us have done it. Okay, here's the key to re-gifting. If you're re-gifting, make sure that you don't re-gift back to the person who gave you the gift in the first place.

That's a very awkward moment. Another thing about re-gifting, coming to the fruitcake. How many of you like fruitcake? Come on, seriously, you do not. Do you really like it? I think there's one fruitcake on the face of the earth. No, really. Have you ever seen two fruitcakes side by side?

No, you have not because there's one. And it was made sometime in the 50s and we just keep re-circulating it year after year. We just keep re-gifting it again and again. I was thinking about the worst Christmas gift I ever received and maybe it was on a Christmas morning I asked my mom to get me a Schwinn Stingray bicycle. Do you know what the Schwinn Stingray bicycle is? And this one had what is called a banana seat. It had the little handlebars that were raised up and this one's really cool. It had a stick shift. A stick shift bicycle. And I wanted it in blue. I made it very clear. I took my mom down to a store called See Schwinn Bicycle.

This is the one I want. So Christmas Eve I heard some noise in the front room like something was being assembled. I came out that morning all excited to see my Schwinn Stingray and instead it was some weird red bicycle that they had bought in a drugstore the night before. They may have been drinking as they assembled it.

It was fairly rickety and it had red tires which quickly faded to pink in the sun. Maybe that was the worst gift I ever received. I heard Chuck Swindoll talking about how he told his parents that he wanted a basketball for Christmas. And so like a lot of the little kids he was searching around the house seeing if he could find what they got him. And he found a round package with a big bow on it. He was excited. He was getting his basketball. Christmas morning he quickly tore the paper away and it was a world globe. Not a basketball.

Globes don't bounce as well as basketballs. Well I want to talk to you about the gift. First of all I want to talk to you about the gift that God has given to us. Then I want to talk about the gift that we can give back to God.

And thirdly I want to talk about the gift that we give to each other. So let's start with the gift God has given to us. Now this gift is not under your Christmas tree. This gift cannot be purchased with money. In fact if you're a Christian you already carry this gift in your heart.

And if you don't have this gift I'm going to tell you how to receive it in a few moments. I'm talking about the gift of Christmas which is the gift of eternal life. God has given to every Christian the gift of eternal life. Romans 6 23 says the gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ. That's the greatest gift you have. This is truly the gift that keeps on giving. The gift of eternal life. So that's the gift God has given to us. When we have this gift that God has given us we can give it to others. You can re-gift. In fact you should re-gift. The greatest gift you can share in this Christmas season is the gift of eternal life.

And people need to see it and hear it. And this is how you can have a happy Christmas. Because for some Christmas is not a happy time. Some people find themselves depressed in the Christmas season.

Maybe I'm talking to someone that feels down and depressed right now. According to the National Institute of Health Christmas is the time of year that people experience a high incidence of depression. Hospital and police forces report high incidences of suicide and attempted suicide in the holiday time. One North American survey reported that 45 percent of respondents dreaded Christmas.

Why is that? Well for some it's sad because maybe they don't have a home to celebrate in. Their parents are divorced or they themselves have broken up with their husband or wife or they lost a loved one. And that loved one was with them last Christmas. And they're not with them this Christmas.

Or something else is going on. Or maybe it's because they're expecting Christmas to make them happy. Christmas cannot make you happy. Only Christ can make you happy. So we have to kind of keep our focus.

It's right. It's not presents under a tree. It's his presence in our life. That's the message of Christmas. You will call his name Emmanuel which means God is with us.

You're not alone. So you find your joy and your happiness in Christ himself. But if you want to have a happy Christmas understand this simple biblical principle from Jesus. When he says it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. And the word blessed is interchangeable with the word happy. So allow me to paraphrase that. Jesus speaking. It's more happy making to give than it is to receive. That's counterintuitive. Oh no it's much better to receive.

No actually it isn't. You will be happier giving than you will be receiving. And the greatest gift we can give is our love and the gospel itself. So I have a 10 step solution for depression. If you find yourself depressed 10 steps to be free from depression.

You might want to write these down. Step number one. Do something for someone else who has greater needs than you. Write that down. Do something for someone else who has greater needs than you. Step number two.

Repeat step number one nine more times. Now I know that's oversimplified and I know there's a such thing as clinical depression. I'm not really dealing with that. But I'm just talking about when you get down to the dumps and you wonder what's wrong.

Maybe you need to get your eyes off of yourself and ask yourself the question. How can I do something for someone else? It's a well-documented fact that volunteering elevates mood in most people. And this phenomena has actually been dubbed the helpers high. The helpers high. It's been assessed biologically in brain imaging studies that you will receive a release of endorphins in your life that bring a sense of well-being when you do something for someone else. The helpers high.

That's amazing. I've heard of the runners high. I've never experienced the runners high. Is there an eaters high? I think I've had that.

How about the helpers high? You know what I'm talking about. When you do something for someone else. It can be a simple gesture. Holding the door open for someone. It can be giving a meal to someone.

Helping out someone else. And this is why I encourage you all to get involved in serving because it will be a blessing and a joy to you. You know if you only come to church and it's all about you and this is what I need and this is what I want.

You're gonna have something less than what you should be experiencing in church. A mark of maturity in your spiritual life is when you say I've received now I want to give back. I want to find a place where I can serve others. You know when you walk into this church and you're warmly greeted by someone and someone shows you to your seat or they help you park your car or they're ministering to your children while you're here or the other things that folks do.

These are volunteers. These are people that are doing this because they love it and they want to and you know what they're blessed. There's a blessing in it and I want all of you to experience that blessing because there's the helpers high. So you could say to someone hey you want to come to church with me this Sunday and get high. Well what kind of church is that?

It's a bible teaching church and it's a helpers high come and be a part of it. So this is something that sometimes we miss out on and one of the greatest joys we can have is sharing the gospel. Psalm 126 says those who go weeping carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy carrying their sheaves with them. So it all comes down to this gift that God has given to us.

We must fully appreciate it. The gift we give back to God which is our privilege and then the gift that we give to other people. This is where you will find the happiness and joy of Christmas but just in life in general because again as Jesus said it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. We love to hear stories of how lives have been changed through Pastor Greg's teaching like this one. I was just listening to the pastor this morning talking about I can do all things through Christ with strength in me which is crazy. You cannot say that about anything else and I was a drug addict for 10 plus years and I prayed many days for God to help me and get me through this and it wasn't my timing it was God's timing and it was perfect and I'm almost two years old and two years sober today and I got baptized July 14th. You can do all things through Christ and He will strengthen you.

I believe that if you're in trouble and you need help and you honestly cry and pray after God and ask Jesus to come into your heart you will change for the better. You'll be content. You'll love life. You'll love God.

You'll love your friends. Have a good day. God bless you.

Love you. Do you have a story to share? If so why not call us and give us all the details. Here's the number 1-866-871-1144.

It's a special number for this purpose 866-871-1144. Well today Pastor Greg is talking about the gift God makes available to us during this Christmas season and all year round and how we can share that gift with others. 15 years ago our son Christopher died in a tragic automobile accident. It was the worst moment of our life. We were devastated and we entered into a time of deep grief and we mourned for a long time and I had people say to me and my wife Kathy and our son Jonathan just take a vacation and get away from it all.

We actually tried that. We wanted a vacation and you can't get away from grief. You can't get away from pain. I want to tell you what helped me in that time because this is very important.

No thing helped me. What I needed was God and one of the things that really encouraged us and lifted us in that difficult time was just coming to church. Well Greg you're a pastor.

Yeah I'm still a Christian too. I needed to hear the Word of God. I needed to worship the Lord and in the immediate aftermath of our son going to heaven we had some guest speakers and we would come to church and we would worship God and it was so helpful to us. And I'll tell you another thing that helped us. It was helping others. When we were down the road maybe six months or a year and then we heard of somebody else losing a loved one specifically a child we were able to minister to them because when you lose a child you feel as though your world just ended literally.

Okay I'm just telling you how it really is. And you don't know how you're going to survive such a thing. I don't care how long you've been a Christian but when you talk to somebody else who's come through it they can really help you. Like let's say that you got cancer and you're a cancer survivor and and you've come through on the other end and thankfully to God and then you found out somebody else just found out they got cancer. They feel like their world just ended. The doctor told them they have cancer and you walk into their life and say let me tell you how Jesus was with me and how he helped me through this.

You have a unique quality to minister to that person in a capacity that nobody else has you see. So here's the deal. We're all going to have pain in life. We're all going to have setbacks in life.

We're all going to experience things that don't make sense to us. So here's my word of advice. Don't waste your pain. Use it as a tool.

Use it as a tool to help other people. As Paul said we comfort with the same comfort that we've been comforted with. Because when you preach to hurting people you'll never lack for an audience. And we live in a world full of hurting people.

Oh we don't know the back story. We don't know why they're so agitated. Why they're so upset. They're hurting and they need hope and they need help and most of all they need Jesus. And that's the greatest gift we can share with people in this holiday season. To tell them there's hope and a relationship with God and tell them about the gift. The gift of eternal life that God has offered to them. For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. What greater gift could God Almighty give to you and to me than his own son? What greater sacrifice could a father make than to offer to you his son?

And that's exactly what God did. So what I need to do is receive the gift. When I give a gift to my wife I'll say I got you this. You go oh thank you and she'll set it down.

And go back to doing what she was doing. Open the gift. Open it now. You give me a gift. I'm opening it the second you give it to me. In fact men and women receive gifts very differently.

Have you ever noticed that? You give a gift to a woman and and she will carefully undo the ribbon. Excuse me. First she'll read the card. She'll actually read it. And she might even be visibly moved by what she reads. She's reading it. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Then she undoes the ribbon. I'm going to save this for later. To do what with? I'm saving it. I'll save this paper. Okay.

Nice. You give a gift to a man. He'll open the card. You think he's reading it. He's not reading it. He could care less about your card.

The only reason he opened it was in hopes he would find either money or a gift card in there. So he'll go uh-huh. Wow. Thanks. Okay. And then he'll tear the paper away because he wants to get what is in the box.

Right. I don't care how you open the gift. Open carefully. Politely.

Or tear it open. Just take the gift and open it and enjoy it. Listen to this in closing. This gift that God offers us we either accept it or we reject it.

There's no neutral ground. God says I've given you the gift of eternal life. I offer to you at no charge. Would you like it? You either say yes thank you very much or no I don't want it.

You say well now Greg I'm not comfortable with either one of those responses. I would say let me think about it. Really. So let's say that I took everything that I had and liquidated it and bought you this amazing gift that cannot be returned and I offered it to you. I got this for you because I love you. And you said let me think about it.

Seriously. I just offered you this incredible gift and you're saying let me think about it. Can you see how that would be insulting to me. So God says I've given you the ultimate gift. My son died on the cross. He was beaten and tortured for your sin but I want you to have the gift of eternal life. Oh well nice. Let me think about it.

What? That is a rejection. Jesus said you're either for me or against me. Have you received this gift yet? Do you know that when you die you will go to heaven? Is Christ living in your heart? If not he can come in right now. Jesus says behold I stand at the door and I knock and if you hear my voice and open the door I will come in. In a moment we're going to pray and I'm going to give you an opportunity to receive the gift.

It's up to you. Only you can receive it. Someone else cannot receive it for you.

You cannot receive it for someone else. You yourself. Let's say Lord I want you to come into my life. I want you to forgive me of my sin.

I want this relationship with you. If you want Jesus in your life. If you want to receive the gift you can do it right here right now. Pray this with me. You could even pray it out loud if you like.

Pray these words. Lord Jesus I know that I'm a sinner but I know that you're the Savior. Born in that manger in Bethlehem. Crucified on a cross.

Risen from the dead. Come into my life Jesus. I choose to follow you from this moment forward. I receive your gift of eternal life and I thank you for it. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Pastor Greg Laurie praying an important prayer with those making a change today in their relationship with the Lord. If you've just prayed with Pastor Greg we want to help you get started in your relationship with God. We'd like to send you his new Believer's Bible it's full of special helps for those who are just beginning their walk with the Lord. Just ask for the new Believer's Bible when you call 1-800-821-3300.

We'll send it free of charge again call 1-800-821-3300 or go online to harvest.org and click know God. You know Pastor Greg we hear from people all the time who tell us how these daily studies have impacted their lives. So many have found the Lord and been encouraged through this teaching.

That's right. And we hope our listeners might pray about making an investment so these studies can continue. Yeah it's really true Dave you know and even a little bit helps. You know people need to hear the gospel so badly they need to hear the teaching of the word of God.

It changes everything because it changes us. And I'm so passionate about it and I'm called to do it and I'm thankful for it but I can't do it alone. So I'm going to ask folks that are listening if you think more people need to hear the gospel. If you believe more people need to hear the teaching of the word of God then perfectly consider investing in Harvest Ministries and maybe even become a Harvest partner. Which means you're someone who stands with us every month in your faithful giving and that opens up a lot of new opportunities for us so thanks for that. Yeah that's right and we really are thankful for your partnership. You can reach us anytime day or night at 1-800-821-3300. That's 1-800-821-3300. Or write A New Beginning Box 4000 Riverside, CA 92514 or just go online to harvest.org. Well next time Pastor Greg has good encouragement for when it seems like God's timing is permanently stuck on pause. More from our Christmas series. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher, Greg Lord.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-12-19 05:41:46 / 2024-12-19 05:50:42 / 9

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