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December 22, 2008 - The Greatest Gift
This will be the last of our weekly devotionals until the New Year. We wish to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very MERRY CHRISTMAS AND PROPEROUS NEW YEAR.
We want to encourage you to read our Annual Report and Year-end Letter. God is moving us in a direction to launch several major strategic programs and studies this coming year. Please tell your pastor so we can help your church reach unsaved men and build a vibrant men’s ministry.
Please take a minute to read the following story. It will bless you and others.
The greatest gift – Eternal Life:
"The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”" John 4:1-14 (NIV)
Something to Make Me Happy
I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in a toy store and decided to look at Barbie dolls for my nieces.
A nicely dressed little girl was excitedly looking through the Barbie dolls as well, with a roll of money clamped tightly in her little hand.
When she came upon a Barbie she liked, she would turn and ask her father if she had enough money to buy it. He usually said "yes," but she would keep looking and keep going through their ritual of "Do I have enough?"
As she was looking, a little boy wandered in across the aisle and started sorting through the Pokemon toys.
He was dressed neatly, but in clothes that were obviously rather worn, and wearing a jacket that was probably a couple of sizes too small. He, too, had money in his hand, but it looked to be no more than five dollars or so, at the most.
He was with his father as well, and kept picking up the Pokemon video games. Each time he picked one up and looked at his father, his father shook his head, "no."
The little girl had apparently chosen her Barbie, a beautifully dressed, glamorous doll that would have been the envy of every little girl on the block.
However, she had stopped and was watching the interchange between the little boy and his father. Rather dejectedly, the boy had given up on the video games and had chosen what looked like a book of stickers instead. He and his father then started walking through another aisle of the store.
The little girl put her Barbie back on the shelf, and ran over to the Pokemon games. She excitedly picked up one that was lying on top of the other toys, and raced toward the check-out after speaking with her father.
I picked up my purchases and got in line behind them.
Then, much to the little girl's obvious delight, the little boy and his father got in line behind me.
After the toy was paid for and bagged, the little girl handed it back to the cashier and whispered something in her ear. The cashier smiled and put the package under the counter.
I paid for my purchases and was rearranging things in my purse when the little boy came up to the cashier. The cashier rang up his purchases and then said, "Congratulations, you are my hundredth customer today, and you win a prize!"
With that, she handed the little boy the Pokemon game, and he could only stare in disbelief.
It was, he said, exactly what he had wanted!
The little girl and her father had been standing at the doorway during all of this, and I saw the biggest, prettiest grin on that little girl that I have ever seen in my life. Then they walked out the door, and I followed, close behind them.
As I walked back to my car, in amazement over what I had just witnessed, I heard the father ask his daughter why she had done that. I'll never forget what she said to him.
"Daddy, didn't Nana and Paw Paw want me to buy something that would make me happy?"
He said, "Of course they did, Honey."
To which the little girl replied, "Well, I just did."
With that, she giggled and started skipping toward their car. Apparently, she had decided on the answer to her own question of, "Do I have enough?"
What would make us very happy?
We respectfully ask you to consider the following:
- Invite some people you know to join our Weekly Devotional email list.
- Please join us in prayer for Beth and Phil, friends of the ministry, as they recover from some very serious surgery.
- Pray and participate in one of our upcoming Iron Sharpens Iron events to be held in the East Bay Area, Richland, Washington, and Post Falls, Idaho.
- Pray for our board and staff to have God’s wisdom in doing more with less. Our Annual Fundraising Drive has been severely impacted by the recession.
Thank You!
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