A very surprising gift

Last night we had our annual Community Carols by Candlelight event with the theme - 'The most surprising gift of them all'. It was a more than a success - it was in itself a very surprising gift by God to a little church that has been labouring to bring the Gospel to Central South East London for nearly 5 years now. Perhaps you can remember our surprise last year when 120 people showed up. It was double the amount we expected back then. Well, this year we were completely surprised when we didn't only have to add a couple of extra chairs, we had to add every chair we could fit into the room! After that people had to stand by the sides, others on the floor, others outside! Our guesstimate is that between 250-300 people showed up!

It's only this morning that it struck me that God applied the theme of the sermon on us as a church. You see, we are all reluctant to accept Christianity as a gift based relationship and constantly try to push it back to a work based religion. We might even actively resist Jesus Christ as the gift from God, afraid that we might need to reciprocate it in a equally generous way. The way that God gets his people to take his gift in Christ is by overwhelming, even surprising them with Christ as the gift that gives them more than they ever imagined.

Bible
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.John 3:16

Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot begin to express how thankful we are that you gave yourself to us - being born in a stable only to grow up to be killed on the cross for our sin. There you perished so that we will never die - giving to us the life we don't deserve! Thank you and amen.

Warm Regards
Kruger