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God’s Christmas Present To You!
Have you ever looked at the stars on a dark clear night? I love to look at the stars on dark nights when camping up in Colorado. When I see all those bright stars at night, I can't help but know there is a God who created this beautiful universe.
The Bible tells us that God created the world and God created you and me. Do you know the story of Christmas? It is a beautiful love story about God who loves mankind so much that He sends His son Jesus down to earth to be born as a baby. Jesus is destined to grow up to be a perfect sinless human and then die a horrible death to pay for the sins of all mankind.
See God is perfect. People who obey God perfectly get to go to heaven when they die. People who do not obey God all the time have to die and go to hell as punishment for the bad things they have done. The Bible says, unfortunately no one is perfect, so we all deserve to go to hell when we die.
But God loves humans and would like all of us to go to heaven. Because God is so loving, He decided that His Son Jesus, who lived up in heaven with God, could come down to earth and take all the punishment for all the bad things we have done.
But God must find some way for Jesus to be born on earth. That is where Christmas comes in. See, God picked Mary a beautiful virgin girl, and God supernaturally made Mary get pregnant with God's child who God said should be named “Jesus”. And Christmas is the day we celebrate the day “Jesus” was born. Jesus was God's Christmas present to the world!
God allowed Jesus to become a human baby, born from the virgin Mary, and grow up to be a man and live a perfect life that pleased God. Since Jesus was perfect, He could die and go to hell for us, instead of us having to go to hell.
That is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus grew up and at age 30 he started doing miracles and telling people about God's grace and God's mercy. Then at age 33 He was murdered by the legalistic religious elite because they said He was blaspheming God because He said He was God. So they killed Him in the traditional way they killed criminals in those days – on a cross. So Jesus died and for three days He was in hell paying for our sins. But then after the third day He came back from hell and came back alive and about 500 witnesses saw him and testified that He was alive. All this is recorded in the New Testament.
All you have to do to accept God's Christmas gift to you is to believe that Jesus is God's son and that Jesus died for your sins. I hope you will accept God's Christmas gift to you this Christmas!
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