Christmas: Hold Your Life Cheap

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

I want you to give yourself and everything you have –give it all away for the sake of the Gospel this Christmas season and every day of your life thereafter. I want you to completely surrender your fortunes, families, and lives this Holiday season for the sake of God. Give Him everything. Give Him –EVERYTHING! Did I just say ‘families?’ Yes- give Him your kids! Did I just ask you to lay down your life? Uh-huh -I want this Holiday season to be remembered as the year you committed a lifestyle suicide! Am I talking about that vacation fund you’ve been saving for three years to go to Italy? Yes. Am I talking about that new big screen TV you were hoping for? Yes. Am I talking about your entire lifestyle and the basic way you even budget your money? Absolutely. Am I referring to a complete reorientation of your life’s principles and priorities? Yup, and then some. Am I about to waffle at this point and indicate that it’s okay to have lavish vacations and big screen TVs as long as you ‘go to church and love Jesus’? No way! I’m being dead serious. Why do I make such a bold request? Because icy hearts are warmed by sacrificial generosity and loving giving. It is possible to excite a humble joyful heart that will turn to embrace the Father with love, and then turn to thank you as a brother or sister -if you are willing to give with a sacrificial generosity and loving heart. So know this: I’m about to ask you to give your life away. I want you to consider your life as cheap and easy to give to others. But before I make my request let me remind you about the reason for the season as I was reminded of it a few years ago in a Hospital ER:

Christmas is really about a Painful Execution as God’s Gift to You under the Christmas Tree

I was startled from my revere by the blood curdling groaning and gasping of a man in extreme agony. I had driven my brother to the E.R. to get stitches in his scalp (that’s another story). As I was sitting bored in the waiting room glancing reluctantly at the bad selection of reading material and thinking about my high school finals that would take place the next week, an ambulance pulled up and harried paramedics were wheeling the gurney through the sliding doors directly into trauma care. It was a graphic site to behold: the man was strapped to the gurney laying on his left side with a four foot steel rod pierced through the right side of his body. His right arm, twisted behind him, was also impaled on the sharpened metal. As I stared transfixed, a lady next to me whispered, “It must have been an industrial accident.” They wheeled past quickly and in an instant he was gone. The horrible image lingered.

Because it was the Christmas season and I had recently renewed my relationship and committed to walking afresh with God a few weeks prior, I couldn’t help but start imagining the horror of the cross in that ER waiting room. It was an amazing time of worship for me in that waiting room. Have you ever taken time to try and grasp the horror of Calvary? Have you ever lingered on the hill of Golgotha?

Can you smell the blood and the rancid odor of vomit? Can you hear groaning and crying? Can you hear laughter and mocking? Try to hear the sounds of the crucifixion. The nails would have been heavy and large, far heavier and larger than nails that are used in construction today. There may not have been a sharpened point at the tip of the nail. Do you hear the grunting of the soldier as the hammer swung home to the loud report of the nail’s ringing? Can you hear the squishing sounds of tissue tearing and blood squirting across an open palm? I thought of the man that had just wheeled past on the gurney. Lord, have mercy…

Can you imagine the rough grain of wood and bark? The idea of wood splinters digging deep into my backside always gives me pause… but only for a moment. Splinters were probably the least of His agonies as the flesh and muscle of his back was flayed from his body, spine, and ribs by the cat-tail whip-beating that He endured previously. Lord, have mercy…

My hand touched my brow as I tried to imagine the scraping of thorns into my head. I remembered my brother who was having stitches sewn into his head in the room next door. With Jesus they certainly didn’t gently place the razor-barbed thorns on his head. They would have lassoed that wreath of thorns around the back of his noggin and forcibly jerked them down his face. Perhaps they gave the thorns a quick clockwise yank rotating them deeper into His scalp to better secure them so they wouldn’t fall off as He gasped for breath on the cross. Lord, have mercy…

Poisonous carbon dioxide would trap in His lungs by the nature of the position in which He was suspended. The build of this poisonous gas in his lungs would result in a pounding migraine headache -if He didn’t have them already from the lack of sleep, the thorns driven into His skull, the loss of blood from the beatings, and the beard pulling that took place through the long night. As the intensity of the migraine grew, He would have been very sensitive to light and sounds. Ultimately, He would be choking to death. He must alleviate the choking. Heaving with all His might He would try to pull Himself up supporting His body weight on the hook of the nails driven into His hands and feet… just so He could exhale and take a fresh breath of air. The nails would pull on his nerve endings and flesh sending sharp stabbing pains up his arms and legs, causing the muscles in His neck to tense, exploding neurological sensory impulses into his skull as a terrible pain that would be felt just behind His eyes.

The tension in His neck would produce lactic acid in His muscles and cause Him to stiffen. It would have been hard and painful to swing His head around from side to side… Crows would have circled overhead surveying the situation, waiting until their victim was weak enough, then they would swoop in for an easy meal beginning with the softest tissues, probably the eyes.

It really didn’t matter what He did. He could hang helplessly and allow poison to build in His lungs resulting in choking, throbbing body aches, shooting pains in his arms and legs, migraine pain, and tension. Or He could pull up and exhale, an action resulting in exploding migraine pain and wracked torture sensations all over His body. What lovely options He had to choose from. Lord, have mercy…

Of course, He did have options. He did have a choice. He chose the nails. He chose the thorns. He chose the beatings. He chose the cross. He chose to be executed. He was rightfully executed. When I say rightfully, I don’t mean that He did anything wrong to deserve execution. I say rightfully because He endured the just punishment of rebellion and endured the legal sentence necessary for sin. He paid the price so that all those who are truly guilty are now set free. Lord, have mercy…

And He did. He had mercy on me and you. God’s gift to us under the Christmas tree was a Painful Execution just waiting to happen. This is the meaning of Christmas. A man died for you. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! What makes Christmas so merry?

Merry Christmas… Christ’s divine omniscience was aware of all of this suffering and agony from birth. His birth. The moment that a baby cried out in a cold and dark manger is that moment that we all celebrate as we wish each other a Merry Christmas. As we think about a baby in a manger, we probably don’t stop to consider the God-child living with a powerful God-ordained destiny. As the child grew into the stature of an adult man, the God side of Him would already know while the man side of Him would shudder in anticipation. The God-Man would spend His entire human life looking forward to this cataclysmic moment. That was why He was born. God could send any number of prophets to teach us the things that Christ taught us. God could have used any number of people to work the miracles that Jesus worked. But only His Son could die for us. Only God could make us right with Him. Being right with God means we now get to truly live like never before.

Christmas is about life and living. We were all dead, but now we get to live! Now we are called back from the grave. As I ponder the life of Christ, I’ve concluded that living is giving. To truly live is to freely give. Free giving is true living.

What does it mean to Give?

With these thoughts always on the horizon Jesus would teach some amazing truths: love your enemy, love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek, forgive as you have been freely forgiven, glorify your Father in Heaven.

He also taught this: give. He said specifically, “Give, and it will be given back to you.” In order to clarify Himself, He further elaborated: “For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” Many today twist this teaching into an idea of wealth and prosperity in this lifetime. The Messiah who gave us this teaching never knew wealth and prosperity. He taught the virtue of sacrificial giving as He approached a horrible tortured death –not a luxurious lifestyle. 

And that’s the meaning of Christmas and life: giving. When we understood what He gave for us it is hard to justify our stingy hearts before Him. We are most like Him when we are giving. We are most like Him when we are generous. We are most like Him when we voluntarily and sacrificially give ourselves away for the sake of the Gospel. It is hard to be a Christian if you do not desire to give. It is impossible to know Christ and to join with Him as His disciple if you are not willing to sacrifice. To be a Christian means that based on God’s gift of forgiveness and redemption you are also willing to freely give: willing to grant forgivness, willing to freely offer grace, willing to be kind, willing to be friendly, willing to turn the other cheek, and willing to give of our meager possessions.

Here’s the truth: giving shows love, and when giving is done sacrificially it shows a confident trust in the One who provides all things. When you give forgiveness you show trust in the cross. When you give friendship you show belief in the eternal love of the Cross. When you demonstrate kindness you show agreement with the kindness of the cross. When you

At Bridge Church, I hope and pray that we will be a people that are giving, sacrificial, and generous with everything that we have and with everything that we are knowing the heart of the One who gives it to us. I pray that our church trust God with our entire lives. Rather than saving and spending our money for ourselves, I pray that we would radically give it away and entrust ourselves to the care and provision of the Father. Rather than spending lavishly on toys, I hope that our church would remember the many less fortunate who have never heard the gospel and never met the Father. I hope and pray that every member of our church family would prayerfully calculate how much they could do without so that they could give to the cause of advancing God’s kingdom, and take an active role as members of God’s family in directing those funds to those parts of the World that are desperately hurting to know the Father and to begin a relationship with Him. I dream of a day where we can give away half (50%) of our church budget for advancing the Kingdom all around Canada and the world. I dream of the day when the average church member asks me, “How much do you think I should keep for myself,” instead of, “How much do I have to give?”

Giving Breaks an Icy Heart’s Idolatry

You want to know the real reason we should give? It breaks our heart’s cold death grip on our trust in our money and our trust in ourselves. But sacrificial giving also shows the watching world that we place no value on self-reliance, and this is truly shocking to the watching world that knows nothing except self-reliance and independence. Sacrificial giving blows the watching world’s paradigm out of the water. Sacrificial giving demonstrates a love and trust in God that defies any logical or reasoned explanation. It defies the natural order of survival of the fittest. It is breath-taking to behold.

Sacrificial Giving is the meaning of the cross. It’s the meaning of Christmas. Only as we approach the cross in similarity to Christ –and that means total surrender of self and dying for something greater than ourselves- can we hope to win the hearts and minds of the masses. This thinking shouldn’t just touch our money. This thinking of dying-to-self-for-something-greater-than-ourselves should impact every aspect of our life. But it should also touch the way that we spend our money.

A lot of different attempts have been made and will continue to be made to explain away the significance of Christ and the Cross. But the Cross still stands. There are still many who behold the wonder of God’s Christmas gift to voluntarily take on the body of a man and willingly die, and they follow His example and give their lives up sacrificially for the opportunity to stand before kings, governors, judges, and executioners. They gladly trade their lives for opportunities to share the gospel. Having encountered the risen Christ in all His glory, they hold their lives cheaply. They hold the lives of others who do not know Him as extremely valuable and precious. And they make their trade based on that understanding. I hope and pray that Bridge Church would hold itself cheap.