WEReveal

I have missed Sunday Service a cou­ple Sundays due to ill­ness. Our pas­tors have been giv­ing us a glimpse of Christmas as seen on TV and how we can have a bet­ter Christmas than what the world often presents. This week Pastor Bart encour­aged us to make last­ing and great mem­o­ries of Christmas. But first, the ser­mon notes.

Your sit­u­a­tion doesn’t mat­ter. Regardless of your sit­u­a­tion, you can make great Christmas mem­o­ries. Just look at the Christmas story itself to see this.

We usu­ally have typ­i­cal tra­di­tional pic­tures of the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus in swad­dling clothes sur­rounded by angels singing, the shep­herds wor­ship­ing, and wise men giv­ing expen­sive gifts.

But what is oft overlooked:

• Scandalous Mary preg­nant claim­ing preg­nancy is of God, Joseph had to be con­vinced to marry Mary.
• Nine months preg­nant and trav­el­ing and to make things worse, Joseph hasn’t made any arrange­ments for sleep­ing so they have to give birth in a stable.
• And then, they have to flee to Egypt because Herod wants their heads.

Christmas is what it is because Joseph and Mary accepted God’s “crazy” plans.

When we do the same, we will develop last­ing memories.

Mess up your mem­o­ries by try­ing to hard to make Christmas per­fect. The harder we try, the worse things come out.

But if you make God the most impor­tant aspect of Christmas, it will be a per­fect mem­o­rable time. It doesn’t mat­ter what our sit­u­a­tion is. Be pos­i­tive = believe God, have faith. Follow what God would have us do doing Christmas.

This of course depend on lis­ten­ing to God, to hear what He would have is do dur­ing Christmas. I guess I oft for­get that this is a basic way of life for fol­low­ers of Christ. We not only need to ask God what he would have us do for Christmas, we need to ask Him what He would have us do on a daily basis.

But yes, Christmas is a spe­cial time. We need to look to God and ask Him if He would have us do any­thing extra spe­cial — some­thing that has to do with the sea­son… I guess. I will take this week and seek out what God might have me do.… Or do I really need to? I am pretty pos­i­tive that God would have me first and fore­most be a good son, a good brother, a good uncle, and a good hus­band on Christmas. I need to ensure that my atti­tude and actions reflect that Christmas is all about giv­ing to oth­ers, espe­cially how God gave to us. During our fam­ily Christmas cel­e­bra­tion, it is all about fam­ily, not about me and my phys­i­cal ills.

Family, I know some of you read this. Lets not talk about my gluten intoller­ance and other ail­ments.  Ok?