When our son was in college I think his favorite Christmas song was "I'll be Home for Christmas." That might be every college student's favorite song. He started counting the days, the hours, and the minutes until it was time to go home. But none of our kids have ever experienced anything like what my wife called her loneliest Christmas.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Loneliest Christmas."
My wife was a college student in Chicago, and things were really hard for her family back home that year. Dad was a farmer, and the drought was really wiping him out financially. There was no money for her to go home that Christmas. You can imagine how she felt as her friends one by one said goodbye and headed out for their family Christmas at home. Eventually my wife was one of only about a dozen students left on the whole campus. Those were two very long weeks for a young woman who was used to mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, and sister and friends; all celebrating Christmas together. Actually, she would tear up when she thought about it. It really hurts when it's Christmas and you're not home!
In a sense, many people have never really been home for Christmas. I mean, spiritually home. Oh we all have a homing instinct; this deep-down sense that there's something missing in our soul and we won't be home until we find it. The search for that missing piece of us takes us from relationship to relationship, from experience to experience, and that search inevitably leaves us still wondering where home is - for our heart.
Our word for today from the Word of God is from Colossians 1:16, one of my favorite verses in the Bible, six words that say it all. Speaking of Jesus Christ: "All things were" - and here are the six words - "created by Him and for Him." You and I were created by Jesus. We were created for Jesus. And we're going to have a hole in our heart until we have Jesus.
There was an article in a news magazine that said our lifestyle had "yielded only deeper hungers and lonelier nights." Wow! Well, God's Book reveals to us a startling fact that no person on earth can ever satisfy our loneliness. It's cosmic loneliness. We're away from God, and He's the only One who has the lasting love that we were made for. We're like my wife that lonely Christmas at college. Our heart is aching for home! Can you feel it? And God didn't leave us; we left Him.
In the words of the Bible, "All of us have wandered away like sheep. Each of us has turned to his own way." That's maybe why the middle letter of sin is "I." We've basically said to God, "Hey, You run the universe. I'll run me, thank you." And that rebellion has cost us the one relationship that we can't live without and we dare not die without.
Then comes Christmas. There's nothing we can do to erase the sin that keeps us from God, to be able to one day be with Him forever in heaven. So God sent His own Son into the world to pay the death penalty that sin requires. And God explains His motive this way, "God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." You see, to believe in Him is to tell God you're pinning all your hopes on Jesus to forgive your sin and to give you eternal life. Because only the One who died for your sin can forgive it. And only the One who walked out of His grave can give you eternal life.
A little boy was lost on a street corner in New York, and this policeman said, "Can you tell me your address or your phone number?" And the boy couldn't remember. Finally the little boy said, "But, sir, there's a big church next to my house, and there's a big cross on the top. And if you can get me to the cross, I can find my way home." So can you.
If you can get yourself this Christmas to the cross where Jesus died for you, you can finally be home in that relationship with the One you were made by and made for. I would love to help you make that discovery and secure your relationship with Jesus and your place in heaven. Would you go to our website? That's what it's there for. It's there for a moment like this - ANewStory.com. Your new story could begin this Christmas season.
Give yourself to Jesus, and you'll be home where your heart has wanted to be for so long - home for Christmas; home forever.