Open the Gift

When someone offers you a gift, what do you do? You take it. This analogy is often used in the Christian realm- Jesus is offering you the gift of salvation. The only thing you have to do to get it is take it! But this summer, I realized there is a catch. Taking the gift doesn't mean you've actually received it.

There are a lot of people who have the gift. But they leave it sitting in a closet, accumulating dust over the years. They technically have the gift. And they tell people, yes, I've received the gift.
But they never open it. What good does the gift do you if you can't experience it? You see other people who have opened it, and kind of know what it is and how it works. But you've never experienced it for yourself.

Sometimes you want it. You're excited at the realization that you can experience the benefits of the gift if you merely open it. So you rush to the closet, open it and clean out the closet, looking for the gift, which has been shoved to the very back of the shelf. But then you begin to look at it- it's dusty. And unappealing.

Sure, you could fix that fairly easily with a wet rag. But, you'd rather not do that. It really can't be that great.

What we need to realize, is that just having the gift isn't enough. We need to open it. There are so many people who don't realize this. They tack the label of "Christian" on themselves, but live just as if they had never heard the name "Jesus" before.

If you are one of those people, and you know if you are, I have a challenge for you. Open the gift. Take the time to fix it up after all the years of neglect, and use it.

Tori