“How is it that you religious people are always trying to rob us of our pleasures?" inquired a fashionable young man of the world while in serious conversation with a Christian lady.
“You are greatly mistaken," was her reply. "I don't want you to give up anything—I want you to receive.”
"What do you mean?”
“I would rather not say any more at present. Think on that word, receive.”
On his way home the words kept ringing in his ears; "I don't want you to give up; I want you to receive.”
Try as he would, he could not forget them. Night and day he kept repeating to himself, "Receive... Give up." He became thoroughly wretched, till at last he confessed to himself: "I should not be surprised if these Christians have the better part of it after all. Perhaps they do have something which I have not. What are the things I could not give up? What does she wish me to receive?”
Finally he contacted his Christian friend again. He told her how unhappy he had been since their last conversation. He then asked her what it was he was to "receive"?
“Your whole life has been one long attempt to find satisfaction in things that cannot satisfy," she told him. "God wants you to receive from Him that which alone can satisfy. When you have received what God gives, you will be glad to give up the empty husks on which you have been feeding.”
She explained to him from the Bible that Jesus Christ alone can bring peace, rest and satisfaction to the hungry heart; and that when Christ is received by simple faith, the pleasures and amusements of the world lose their charm.
You may try to give up your love for the world, but you will find that you cannot until some greater, fairer object takes its place.
Sinner, God would have you know that He loves you that He so loved you as to give His only Son to die for your sins that you might not perish but have everlasting life. (See John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).
Why not receive God's priceless gift, which is Christ, now?