The immense step from the Babe at Bethlehem to the living, reigning triumphant Lord Jesus, returning to earth for His own people - that is the glorious truth proclaimed throughout Scripture. As the bells ring out the joys of Christmas, may we also be alert for the final trumpet that will announce His return, when we shall always be with Him.
If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn't have to keep coming to church, would they.
Faith is walking by faith, not by what you feel. You are not always going to feel that Jesus loves you or that God is good, but you know He is. It is the up and down of the journey.
In the Lord Jesus Christ we see most clearly the union of prayer and life, the harmony and continual interpenetration of the two spheres of life - communion with God and the work on earth.
Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.
What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
Each one could be a Jesus mild,
Each one has been a little child,
A little child with laughing look,
A lovely white unwritten book;
A book that God will take, my friend,
As each goes out at journey's end.
"None is good, save One, that is, God", as the Lord Jesus bath said. The rest are only tools in His hands. "Gloria in Excelsis", "Glory unto God in the highest", and unto men that deserve, but not to such an undeserving one like me. Here "the servant is not worthy of the hire"; and a Fakir, especially, has no right to any praise whatsoever, for would you praise your servant for simply doing his duty?
The greatest gift a church can receive is to have a group of families who take their responsibilitie s with such Christian seriousness that they are willing to completely alter their lifestyle to raise up disciples for Jesus Christ.
If you go forward in the spirit of the original apostles and followers of Jesus Christ, trusting not in man but in the living God, he will enable you to pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan, and that work by which he is pleased will prosper in your hands.
I am a nonbeliever myself. But I think there's so much about religion that is not factual in nature as to why people engage with it and what it means to them. You can debunk why you think there's no physical evidence for God and why the story of Jesus didn't really happen that way and stuff like that all the live-long day, and it's not going to make a difference to what role religion has in people's lives and how they feel about it and how it makes their lives better or worse.
As for myself, I do not believe that such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is proper not to oppose them.