How To Give Gifts This Christmas

“Let all bitterness…be put away from you” (Ephesians 4:31).

   Bitterness is often called righteous indignation. It demands one’s rights. It is a dark, debilitating, deadening disease. It will kill you and it will kill others.

     Many of us, as James Mallory says, have an “emotional hall of injustice,” and we like to visit it often. We like to polish the statues of those who hurt us. We like to  mull over all of those incidents where we were treated unfairly and unjustly. We don’t say it but many times we are really upset at God.

      This must be rejected. By the act of the will, a child of God must turn from this great sin. We need to turn to God and confess it is a reality in our lives. When you go to God in prayer take those who are on your hit list, those who make you angry and bitter, take those things which have come into your life, and allow the God of glory to teach you through it. You will see yourself and you will see God.

“And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, except we two were in the house” (I Kings 3:18).

Two women who were harlots each gave birth to a child. Each slept that night in the same room and yet one woke up the morning after to discover the child next to her was dead and he was not hers. The other woman switched the baby at death.

The case was brought before Solomon. What would he do? He said, “Bring me a sword” (I Ki 3.24). What does this mean? The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other” (I Ki 3:25). The woman whose the living child was hers said, “O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it.”

Two lessons we can learn. In every circumstance always use and wield the Word of God. It is a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). If we want to be effective cutting through this world and the words of others, let these words be upon your lips and may the Word of God be in your hand, “Bring me the sword.”

The second lesson to draw from the true event described for us: Don’t allow division. A man or woman of God will not be identified with division in a marriage, a family, or a church body, for division leads either quickly or eventually to one thing: death. Don’t be a part of tolerating division unless it is for righteousness. May we be surrendered to God’s Word as Solomon and committed to unity as this mother was.

“Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

In earlier days the Bible was maligned by even the religious establishment.  The church itself was against the translation of the Bible into languages of the people.  There were some who wanted the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, for themselves, for their own personal reading.  This evoked bitter and awesome persecution.  This privilege was denied the people for hundreds of years.  Martin Luther was a grown man when he said, “I have never seen a Bible,” and he had been in church all the days of his life.

John Wycliffe translated the Bible into the language of the people.  He wanted it to be possible for anyone who wanted to know the Word to have it.  He said, “I’m going to make it possible that a plowman will know more of the Word of God than the priest himself, than the king himself.”  John Wycliffe died before men could burn him and try him.  But even after his death they exhumed and publicly burned his body, then cast his body as ashes upon the River Swift.  If anyone was found with a Wycliffe Bible , the Bible was hung around his neck and he was publicly hanged and burned.

What the English inquisitors did not realize was that when they burned the body of Wycliffe and scattered his ashes on the River Swift, that river flowed into the Avon, and Avon flowed into the sea, and the sea loved the shores of the continents of the world, including the new land of America.  Wherever the sea carried the ashes of John Wycliffe, there God scattered the truth of the Word of the Living Lord.  Isn’t that glorious?  Over the whole face of the earth the Word of God has traveled.  That’s God!

“If, then, I do what I will not do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:16-17).

When you’re saved, God doesn’t fix you to where you can’t sin anymore but where you can’t sin and enjoy it. Romans 7:14 says, “…I am carnal, sold under sin.” Romans 7:18 says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…” Romans 7:21 again, “I find then a law, that evil is present with me…” Then in Romans 7:24 says, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

We are free from the penalty of sin but we are not free from the presence of sin that causes temptation. We are free from the power of sin but we are not free from the possibility of sin which can cause failure.

We, who have been born of the Spirit of God, born from above, still have that principle of indwelling sin. The more mature we become in the Lord the more we see that we are sinners before God. Sin is no longer your Sovereign but sin still produces a stain upon the soul and it is your adversary. We do not become better, for in Christ we are positioned righteous, but we do run to Christ, turn to Christ, depend upon Christ, knowing our sinfulness but knowing His Saving Power over sin.