The 12 Days of Christmas - Day 4

  
On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
   Four Calling Birds
   Three French Hens
   Two Turtle Doves
   and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Four Calling Birds = The Four Gospels:
1) Matthew, 2) Mark, 3) Luke, and 4) John

Have you ever tried to reach someone through some means of communication and not receive an answer?  You might have exciting personal news to share, or have something to give them, only to receive no response.  How about when communication is misunderstood?  

When I think of the Gospel, this is what seems to be all around...people misunderstanding the message, or just being non-responsive.  

God's Good news is reconciliation and restoration - - NOT condemnation!

The Gospel is the Good News of God's reconciliation of the world to Himself through Jesus Christ.  These four Gospels proclaim this message!  

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  ROMANS 5:7-8

It is the call of the "church," the body of Christ to proclaim this message.  This precious message of reconciliation is what Mission, Jesus Style is focused on.  Paul's expression to the Corinthian church is still relevant for us today:

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  2 Corinthians 5:14-21

When you hear birds calling,
hear the love of God and His call to you to know Him, 

believe Him, and trust Him.

He loves you dearly!