7 Days to Christmas

Have you met God? You have only met Him if your road brought you down the road to the cross. Michael Card tells the story of a Massai warrior named Joseph. Joseph was walking along a hot dirty African road one day and was encountered by someone who shared the Gospel with him. He accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior and the first thing he did was go back to his local tribe.

Joseph began going door-to-door, telling everyone about the Cross of Jesus and the salvation it offered, but to his amazement the villagers not only did not care, but they became hostile. The men seized him and held him as the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was dragged out of the village and left to die alone in the bush.

Somehow he managed to crawl to a waterhole and there after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile treatment and decided he must have left something out. He rehearsed the message in his mind and went back to share his faith once more.

He limped into the circle of huts and began to proclaim Jesus. “He died for you, so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God.” Again they grabbed him and held him as the women beat him once more dragged him to the bush to die.

Surviving the first beating was remarkable—to survive the second was a miracle. Days later he returned to the small village and this time they grabbed him before he could even open his mouth. As they flogged him for the third and probably last time he spoke to them of Jesus Christ and before he passed out he saw that the women who were beating him were weeping.

When he awoke in his own bed the ones who had beaten him were trying to save his life. The entire village had come to Christ.

Jesus approached a sinful people and endured their scorn and endured the cross so that they could be saved. Have you tasted of His victory? Have you told anyone? Isn’t it time to come? If you have come, isn’t it time to go and tell someone else?