I spent this last Christmas in Argentina, and it was quite a different experience for me. I didn’t see as many Christmas trees and lights everywhere from the beginning of December, which although it was not usual for me, I was happy to see that there wasn’t as much work to do for Christmas. I also didn’t have to avoid the plethora of people on the streets and in the stores. Maybe there was busyness in the places I didn’t go, but thankfully I didn’t experience the bumping and pushing which I usually try to stay away from in the Christmas season. However, I did hear that just as in so many other parts of the world there is fighting over the perfect Christmas gift for loved ones. This always makes me sad as so many don’t realize there is already the Good and Perfect Gift, Jesus, who came down from the Father of lights who never changes. We only have to accept Jesus as our Savior and our Light in this dark world. But many don’t. I was sad to see that the church had very little people attending the Christmas service as I heard they were with family. Many people forsook spending time in church with the family of Christ to celebrate His birth as they put their families first and made no room for Jesus just like in Bethlehem, the House of Bread, which could not house the Bread of Life for His birth. Spending time with family is not a bad thing, but I think about what Jesus said.
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26
These words that Jesus said seem so harsh as many of us love our families and want to spend time with them. And this is important because God has given us our families as a major ministry, and we are shaped into His image by those who are close to us as they sometimes can be great sandpaper rubbing off our rough edges and God may also use familial relationships to prune us to become more fruitful. Nevertheless, God wants us to love Him more than we do the family He created us in. We have a tendency to love God’s creation more than we do Him and they can be a great distraction from keeping Him in focus. The truth is if we love God with all our strength, our heart, or soul and our mind, then we will love those who He has put in our lives correctly. Jesus said even more about our family.
So He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 18:29-30
We need to make sure we realize that when we follow Jesus, it comes with a cost even to our families. Making room for Him in our lives may mean that those we love and activities we like doing, including church work may have to be repositioned. We may spend a lot of time praying for people and counselling them and doing church ministries, but these make us so busy that we do not have time to spend in God’s presence and to hear His voice. And we might hear what we do not want to when the Lord tells us He does not know us after we have done all the work we thought we were doing for Him. Our love grows cold for God when we are not in His presence and not making room for Him in our lives. If we love God, we will want to spend time with Him and also to obey Him no matter the consequences.
Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. Psalm 100:2
It is important to serve the Lord with joy and also to be joyful in His presence. And we must serve Him how He would like and not how we think we should which may be dictated by our culture. I recognize that Jamaica has a church culture and in Argentina there seems to be a culture which revolves more around the family. But we must be careful that our culture doesn’t take us away from our Christ. Unfortunately, church and family can fill our lives so much that we have no room for Christ and just because we are in church doesn’t mean that we are in Christ. The devil doesn’t care if we are busy with church work as long as we are not in God’s presence because we gain power in God’s presence and true knowledge of Him which changes our perspective on life. One of the best presents to give God is to be in His presence and in turn, He will show us how to be present for others. He will give us a heart to love everyone that goes beyond our blood families so that we bring more people into the family of God which is redeemed by the blood of Jesus. We will make room for the lonely, the foreigner, the downhearted, the poor, and the vulnerable and make them a part of His family as we continue to make room for Jesus.
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