5: Well, we are finally, here it is finally Christmas. You know,
I get to this time of year every year and I, I'm one of those people,
I just happen to really love Christmas.
And so I get excited when this time comes around and every year I look forward
to it and man, every moment of it makes me smile because I love it,
I love it all. I love the music, I love the decorations,
I love everything that goes with this idea of Christmas.
And I think back to like when it starts for me every year,
and it starts at different times.
Like every year is something different that lets me know that this is Christmas.
It, it might be a song on the radio one year.
Like when did Christmas start for you?
Was it when you first heard Mariah Carey for the 985th time
? Somebody said, no, .
When did it start for you? Was it when there was a cold spell?
And you realize like this is winter in North Carolina, 55 degrees,
right? , uh, wasn't when you put up the Christmas decorations,
or maybe it was the day after Thanksgiving, uh, black Friday,
maybe it was Cyber Monday, maybe it was giving Tuesday,
but something let you know that Christmas was here. You know,
who really knows this Christmas right now? Our kids?
Because they are reminding us every day that something is coming and it's
Christmas.
And so we have a thing in our mind that we know that there's a day where we
start thinking Christmas is near. Let me ask you a different question.
When does Christmas end?
Is it the day after Christmas when you take all of the decorations down and you
put them in the box and you put the label on the front that you plan to put it
in the garage?
Is it in July when you finally take down the last string of lights from the top
of the house?
When does Christmas end and when does it begin?
You know what's interesting is I know that every single year we create in our
minds the day that Christmas begins and the day that it ends,
and when it's over for us, we put it all in the box,
we put it in the garage and we forget about it until the next year to come.
And the problem with that is,
is that the true meaning and feel and hope of Christmas
was never meant to be put in a box.
It was something that was meant to be experienced and lived into, you know,
at Hope Community Church for the last few weeks we've been talking about the
advent season,
the idea that there were people who were waiting for Jesus to come into this
world. And as they waited,
they waited with great anticipation because the savior of the world was gonna
be born.
And they waited and they waited and they waited.
And when he came,
he brought great joy and great hope for all people.
And every year we are supposed to have that kind of anticipation
because when Jesus came to this earth,
he came with a whole host of gifts that he brought to us that we get to
experience. Even today.
These are things that have transcended time and history and have come to us as
gifts that we can unwrap every single day of our lives.
It is things like peace, the peace that passes all understanding.
So no matter how dark or crazy your world is, you can still have.
9: Peace.
5: I mean, what an amazing gift It it's gifts like joy,
a joy that the world doesn't give and the world can't take away.
And when people try to ask like, why do you have that joy? Well,
it's because of Jesus. And then there's the gift of hope.
The hope that this world, the darkness that exists is not all that exists
because one day all of this pain is gonna be over
and there is something greater ahead. You see,
Jesus brought all of that with him and then there was this other gift.
It's the gift that keeps on giving to us. It's the gift of love.
And the gift of love is a powerful gift and it's a a different kind of love than
what maybe we experience here in America. Because when we talk about love,
what we really usually are talking about is like,
but the love that Jesus has shown us is a different kind of love.
It's a supernatural love.
It's a love that doesn't keep records of right and wrongs.
It's a love that meets us exactly where we are.
It's an unconditional love that Jesus gives. You know,
there's a passage of scripture in one John that speaks to that kind of love.
One John chapter four verses nine and 10 says that God showed how much he loved
us by sending his one and only son into the world so that
we might have eternal life through him.
It goes on to say that this is real love,
not that we love God, but that he loved us and sits his son as a sacrifice.
Why? To take away our sins.
You know that word, sins, the idea of missing the mark.
And there's not one of us here that hasn't missed the mark,
that hasn't strayed away from God's best, from his plans for our lives.
But even while we were sinners,
he loved us so much that he sent his son.
And when baby Jesus came into the world, he brought all those gifts and more.
And these are gifts that you can't buy. These are gifts that we don't deserve.
These are gifts that we didn't earn,
and they're gifts that are only truly unwrapped when we put our trust in Jesus
Christ. And maybe today,
like those people so many years ago,
you have been waiting for something to change. You know,
when we get to this time of year, there's so many of us
who've been clouded by so much activity and darkness and frustration and
challenges that it's hard to even see Christmas on the horizon.
But maybe just maybe this is a day
And we can hit the reset button
and accept the gifts that God so graciously gives us a
peace, hope, joy, and love
by putting our trust in him and choosing to follow him with our lives that can
be ours. Even today. You know,
Christmas was never meant to be put in a box.
It was meant for us to experience. And so the waiting
it can end today, let me just ask you,
what are you waiting for? You know,
as you unwrap the gift of Jesus Christ, uh,
he brings that light that he once brought into the world into our lives,
and he lights our lives up from the inside out and it changes everything about
who we are. Everything about the existence that we once had.
We get to spend time with the true and living God and he becomes a real part of
our lives. And so let me just ask you one more time,
what are you waiting for?