Christmas: Apostle Yakubu harps on celebrating with less privileged
By: Femi Mustapha
As Nigerians celebrate this year’s Christmas, the Senior Pastor of House of Purpose Ministry, U/Sunday in Chikun Local government Area, Apostle Yakubu Yusuf has urged Christians to allow the joy and peace, which the birth of Jesus Christ signifies to permeate their lives and cause them to extend love and fellowship to the less privileged.
He gave the charged in the Christmas sermon he delivered yesterday.
The clergy who was reading from the Book Neh.8:10-12 said as Christians celebrate the season, they should bear in mind that there are less privileged people among them whom they need to extend the celebration to by sharing things that will make the celebration meaningful to them.
”We spend time on what we deem important. For many of us these choices are valid: time with family and friends, work, prayer, serving the poor, fighting for rights, protesting wrongs. But as the Scripture reminds us, “And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).
“Even though we have the freedom to set our own priorities, Jesus made a point of defining certain ones of them for us: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment.
“The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matt. 22:37-39). Love, then, is not a grey area the Scriptures. Jesus gave love priority over all other Christian virtues. Every thought, response, and act of goodwill must first pass through the fine filter of love, or it means nothing at all.”
“As we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, it is important to reach out to the less privileged, Christians and non Christians, that is love and that is how to shine the light,” Apostle Yakubu said.
The apostle added that Christmas is not a religious ritual, but a celebration of the birth of the king and the savior of the world and nobody that celebrates in this direction will be stranded.