Faith | He found the one thing that was missing at Christmas

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday.

As a kid growing up, I loved all the good food my mom would make, especially fresh homemade biscuits and bread. I’d put lots of butter, jelly and/or honey on the hot biscuits just coming out of the oven.

We often had delicious turkey and ham with lots of potatoes and gravy, along with other great dishes to go with them. Great deserts followed, including cookies, pies, cinnamon rolls and homemade ice cream. My dad would sometimes make the best chocolate fudge candy.

It was also fun to decorate the Christmas tree, along with stringing Christmas lights and decorations around the house. Yet, as good as the food, deserts, and decorations were, it still could not compare with the anticipation of the presents under the tree.

One thing missing was the true meaning of Christmas.

My first real exposure was just before my sophomore year in high school. A staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ shared with me Jesus Christ and what he did for me. Before that time, I had no idea who Jesus was. It resonated and made so much sense to me that I trusted in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.

For the next couple of months I kept thinking that I had lost my salvation and assurance of going to Heaven, so I kept saying the sinner’s prayer, trusting in Christ again to make sure I was still saved.

Eventually one day I listened to a tape that explained eternal security with verses like John 10:27-28, Romans 8:38-39 and 1 John 5:13. Once you truly trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, nothing can separate you from God. Salvation is guaranteed forever, whatever befalls.

From that moment on, I’ve always felt peace and a calm assurance of heaven one day, no matter what.

Since my family never went to church, I only attended a few times until going to college in Pullman, Wash.. It was there that I found a Bible teaching church that taught the Word of God six days per week. It was almost like going to a seminary.

I was so delighted that I attended almost every evening for four years. I read through the Bible my freshman year in college. I earnestly studied what I was being taught, to know if it was really from God’s word in the Bible.

I was also greatly blessed in having Christian roommates during my last three years in college, along with developing many other Christian friendships. When I graduated from Washington State University, I not only had a degree from the college, but I felt like I had a degree from a Bible college.

I had definitely learned the true meaning of Christmas.

From then on it took on a whole new dynamic and more profound meaning. I understood that it represented the birth of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, who was fully God who became fully man in the flesh in order to live a sinless life.

He faced all the same temptations we face, and more, in order to be the perfect sacrifice on our behalf. He was brutally crucified on a Roman cross and took upon himself the punishment for all our sins (past, present, and future), and then rose from the dead three days later.

He did this in order to give us his perfect righteousness to one day live in happiness beyond our wildest dreams, forever in his heavenly kingdom, if we simply trust in him as our Savior and Lord.