"Jesus Christ is given"

"Fear Not, for Behold, I bring you Good Tidings of Great Joy"

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2: 10,11).

Fear is the predominant feeling which one meets with everywhere. Fear of tomorrow has become the dominant feature of men's lives today.

Economists may forecast! Once-thri­ving nations are deep in recession and the number of the unemployed is clim­bing everywhere. There is real suffering as well as much "imagined" suffering. There is real want as well as curtail­ment of some luxuries to some which they simply feel they cannot accept.

The newspaper has little good news. It is a miserable catalogue of calami­ties, dismal breakdowns, short-fallen crops, failure of harvest and endless political chaos. If a man lays down his newspaper these days without reading about some of the new catastrophes on the horizon, it would be a most wel­come thing.

We claim to live in civilized days, but the barbarism of today, the hatred between nations, the long list of mas­sacres, hostages taken, summary executions without adequate trial- all speak of a savage, uncivilized behaviour of which few ages have been guilty on such a large scale.

Man's inhumanity to man should make us weep or sob. There are millions today who cannot even travel outside their own countries because walls and barricades have been put out, depriving them of that free­dom to choose which God has given them.

In the midst of this chaos comes to us these good tidings of the Saviour's coming into this sinful world. The an­gel announces the glorious tidings to the shepherds in the middle of the night. "Fear not: ... I bring you good ti­dings of great joy ..." (Luke 2:10). Yes, Christ brings us great joy.

I recall how heavy my heart was and how miserable I was in my un­cleanness and sin. That night when the Lord Jesus met me and rolled away the heavy burden of sin from my heart, what a thrill it was! It seemed like as if I was floating on air. I could not help but sing from sheer happi­ness. From that day to this, there is a deep undercurrent of joy which gives me new strength from day to day in the midst of my incessant travels, sleep­less nights and ever-increasing labours.

The Saviour says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). The Lord wants to lift the dark cloud of our sorrows and fill our hearts with joy.

It is amazing that even amongst those who claim to be good Christians one hears endless complaints, unfair criticism and even evil speaking. In­stead of good news you can get an earful of bad news if you sit ten or fifteen minutes amongst them. I want to tell you that you have missed the point of Christian deliverance altogeth­er. Why that gloomy outlook? Why those negative fears? Has not the Deliverer come? Or is He in the grave like other prophets? No, our Saviour is an undying, risen Saviour. He lives now making intercession on our behalf.

In many people an active trust in God which the Bible calls "faith" is so badly lacking. They sit with a shroud around them with the live expectation that the skies are going to collapse around them.

Dear reader, you need the Christmas message. You are darkening your hori­zons, weakening your body and des­troying your usefulness by letting love­lessness, impurity and negative fear overwhelm you. The Saviour has come to lift you, to love you, to cause you to rise above the clouds of fear and guilt.

Let the "joy of the Lord" be our strength!

-Joshua Daniel

"Christmas memories"

"The Christ of Christmas"

"And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds" (Luke 2:16-18).

These shepherds had to leave their flocks in the middle of the night. It was a sacrifice to leave their flocks to seek Christ. After all, the flocks were their most important possession. The flocks needed to be watched. But these men chose to seek Christ instead. They had a mission.

Today people are fitful and unsettled. They have no mission in life. If you have a mission, if you have a heavenly purpose in life, then it does not matter if you have just one, or two, or three people to help you. You do not need a great congregation to accomplish a divinely appointed mission. In fact, the larger the congregation, the greater the confusion, quarrelling and division that is often present.

These shepherds had a mission and a midnight hour in which to accomplish it. The shepherds had to get up and move in order to accomplish the divinely appointed task, in order to see Christ.

When the angel had departed, what did the shepherds say? "Let's wait 'til morning. We must care for our flocks." If you take this attitude, then your whole life is going to be characterized by inaction. I have never believed in waiting for tomorrow; I have believed in seizing the opportunity of today. The Bible is full of "today". Take the matter of conversion. If we put off our conversion, if we put off the obedience that God requires of us, we will waste our entire life. Today is our God-given opportunity! Go to the Cross, bring your nature to the Cross and say, "Lord, it must be done now!"

When I gave my life to the Lord Jesus, it was entirely given. If sports stood in the way, then sports were put aside. If girls stood in the way, they went. If anything else intruded upon my communion with Jesus, then I immediately excluded them from my life. Nothing could deflect me from my mission. The mission was to be a simple disciple of Jesus-nothing could deflect me.

But Christians today have no sense of urgency. They have no mission in life. They feel they can just linger, dither, procrastinate, and postpone tasks and opportunities until life is wasted and over.

If eternity is important, then we should immediately obey the revelation, which the eternal God gives to us, "Let us go now and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord has revealed to us" (verse 15). Did the shepherds doubt the vision of the angels, saying: "Weren't we dreaming?" No. They believed God and acted accordingly. The Bible teaches us that "Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness." he acted on his belief. When God told Abraham something, he acted in faith.

So the shepherds acted in faith. Please remember that obedience to God's revelation requires faith.

So what is God's revelation to us? Here is the Word of God before us, saying "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." The Word of God is plain and clear-are we doing it? It says "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people"-you are the priest, the communicator, the one who can pray, the person who should cry to God for your country. Do you act on this?

Let us learn from the simplicity that we see in these shepherds- "The Lord has revealed this to us, let us see this Saviour. Let us go now." To us supposedly intellectual people, we feel that inaction is a part of our superior intellect. We have lost that simplicity. We have become proud. It is pride that makes us so isolated and self-sufficient. We like to appear like anybody else except a disciple of Jesus. If you are not ready to deal with this pride, you will never fulfil God's mission for your life.

Look at the shepherds: "And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds" (verses 16-18).

Do you have this sense of wonder and amazement in your response to Christ? Many people have taken the wonder out of the Word of God. They have taken the wonder out of the Gospel and replaced it with sighs, grumbling, unbelief and inaction.

Let us be careful we do not project a different kind of Jesus. When the shepherds saw the Lord, they were filled with the wonder of the Gospel. To this day, God never allows the Gospel to become a second-hand revelation. When you share Jesus He reveals Himself to people! Jesus speaks to people. He works in people today. When you share Christ with others, the wonder of Christ's revelation will be yours to see. The modern, educated mind, with its scepticism and unbelief, tends to diminish the wonder of the Gospel. We wonder at a man going to the moon, but somehow Jesus Christ is stale.

It is time for us to amend our ways and humble ourselves. If the Creator humbled Himself for you and me, sending Jesus in the form of a servant, we ought to humble ourselves. My dear people, at this Christmas-time, let us be simple and real. The world has moved away from the Christ of Christmas. His manger is unattended. People view His miraculous coming as myth or ancient story. People feel that Christmas is a time to drink and dance-what for? "Because I love myself, I do not love the Saviour, I do not want to please the Saviour on His birthday." There is no birthday celebration in the whole world like the birthday of Jesus. If you go to a birthday party, you greet the person whose birthday it is. But many don't want Christ at His own birthday! O what a tragedy! What a total perversion of Christmas!

Worshipping Jesus-that is Christmas. Bringing joy to the heart of Jesus. By every means possible, let us bring joy to the heart of Jesus.

-Joshua Daniel

"Picking apples"

During the first twenty years of our married life we lived in four different houses. They were nice enough places, but not one had much of a garden. So it was a real joy to move into our fifth house, which not only had a nice garden, but also three mature apple trees. 

The first autumn saw a magnificent crop of apples and we were determined to save as many as possible. So after they were picked, we wrapped each one separately in newspaper and stacked them on wooden trays in the garage as we wanted to use them during the Christmas season. We looked forward with anticipation to apples all the winter. But by Christmas they were all rotten.

I spoke to a farmer friend about this and he said it was because I had picked them too soon. I protested that they looked ripe. Yes, he said, but did they come easily? He explained that the right time to pick apples is when they come away from the branch easily into your hand. "If you have to tug, leave them," he said. "They are not ready for picking and will go rotten."

That was good advice on picking apples, but it is also good advice on dealing with the souls of men and women. How often in our churches have we been overjoyed to see people make profession of faith, but within a short time it is obvious that they are not saved and soon they stop attending church. This is so dishonouring to God. Also it is a cause of deep disappointment and frustration for us Christians, and it very often makes those who made the profession very hardened against the gospel. They say, "I was saved-and it does not work."

It is a very real problem. The modern "invitation system" aggravates it, but even in churches who do not use this system and where more care is taken in dealing with souls, it still happens. Why is this so?

Often, like me with the apples, it is ignorance coupled with enthusiasm. We are so eager to see souls saved that we ignore basic biblical principles. As a consequence of this, we hurry souls to a decision before they are ready. How can we know when the right time has arrived to pick spiritual fruit?

Firstly, we must always remember that a true conversion is not the result of human decision but a work of the Holy Spirit. There are evidences of this divine work. We read in Acts 11:23 that at Antioch Barnabas saw the evidence of the grace of God. The prime evidence is always conviction of sin, which will lead to repentance. There can be no salvation without this. Conviction will vary in degree from one person to another, but it must be there.

In past generations Christians used to make a distinction between a soul awakened and a soul saved. By "awakened" they meant that the Holy Spirit was beginning to deal with the person. Conviction was coming and a longing for pardon was being created. But this was not yet conversion. Perhaps we today ought again to make this distinction and not try to hasten the work, which the Holy Spirit is beginning.

This does not mean that we sit back and do nothing. If you see souls that God is awakening, then pray for them. Help and advise, but let the Holy Spirit do His own peculiar work. When they are ripe, they will come easily and no pressure will be needed.

There are no rotten apples in a harvest that is reaped by the Holy Spirit of God.

-Selected

"Reality Check"

"But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light ... the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).

About Us

This newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen's Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the US, UK, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Australia and is supported by unsolicited sacrificial gifts of young people. For a free subscription or for other enquiries, please contact any of the addresses below.

This Fellowship is an inter-denominational missionary and prayer group working for revival in churches and amongst students in several countries. We invite every layperson to become God's ally in changing his or her corner of the world. We train people in evangelistic work and to be self-supporting missionaries.

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