Christmas Chicken
The whole idea of Christmas revolves around the idea of a gift, appropriately enough. Giving and receiving gifts at Christmas is often a touching and sometimes surprising experience.
The whole idea of Christmas revolves around the idea of a gift, appropriately enough. Giving and receiving gifts at Christmas is often a touching and sometimes surprising experience.
Most of us have this idealistic idea about Christmas, but it will never be perfect. And you know what? The first Christmas wasn’t perfect either. It was beyond messy. So why worry when things go wrong this year?
As Chuck Swindoll assures us in this message, God continues to walk into our lives when we least expect Him, and His surprises still bring relief. When we say yes to God’s will for our lives, God floods our hearts with relief. And, oh, the joy that God’s peace brings to our hearts!
In this message, Chuck Swindoll reminds us that no halo graced the head of Jesus when He was born. Nothing in His physical appearance set Him apart. And yet, this baby was God in the flesh, the eternal Son of God who came to save us from our sins.
When someone hurts you deeply, it’s easy to feel justified in holding a grudge. But in this message, Chuck Swindoll warns us that holding onto resentment doesn’t just injure our relationship with the other person…it damages our relationship with God.
In our shame-prone culture, parents, bosses, teachers, and many pastors consciously or subconsciously urge people to connect their significance to what they produce. How much better to respect and honour others—even when they fail to measure up to expectations, or “blow it” big time!
While it’s true that physical maturity comes with age that’s not true of spiritual growth. In fact, without intentional effort many older Christians become like a shallow pond a mile wide and an inch deep!
For millennia, average Christians as well as learned theologians have strained more than one brain cell to try to understand the incomprehensible mystery surrounding the conception and birth of our Saviour. We'll not lose ourselves in the unsolvable riddle that is the conception of God the Son. Rather, we'll lose ourselves in the wonder that is God the Holy Spirit's most significant mission.
All of us who follow Christ have sensed God's working, even if we couldn't put our finger on exactly what He was doing. But how do we recognize it? This spiritual sense comes from the Holy Spirit who indwells every believer and who gives believers inner promptings to participate in God's activities in their lives.
The Christian life is like a car. One needs at least two important things to drive it: a key and fuel. When an individual comes to faith in Christ, he or she is given the key—salvation. But the car of the Christian life doesn't get very far without fuel—the divine enablement of the Holy Spirit, what the Bible calls being “filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18)