I love Christmas!  I love everything about it!  I love the crowds, because I get a kick out of watching and interacting with people.  I love the lights, decorations and music, because it is just out there!  I love the whole idea, because the original idea is really a cool thing!  I mean think about it:  Our Creator loves us and desires to have a personal relationship with us.  A relationship that will allow us to walk, talk and live life together – how amazing is that?

One of the great tragedies of this time of year, is that we often get so busy and preoccupied with all that we have to get done and the little amount of time that we have to do it, that we miss the point.  This is why it is important to stop, slow down and re-adjust our focus every now and then.  Change our focus get it right and we change our life and get it right!

Our focus should always be Jesus!  He is the great gift of God.  He is Divinity wrapped in humanity, God in the flesh – dwelling among us!  If Jesus is who the Bible says He is and if Jesus is who we say we believe He is, then this should change our lives!  May we never cease to be amazed at Jesus, who is and what he has done and may we never stop letting this reality challenge and change our lives!

Think about it!  God became flesh!  Jesus is God!  When God became flesh, He did not take off divinity, instead He put on humanity and He died and came back to life!  In Jesus we have hope that never runs out!  He is the answer that a lost, dying and hurting world is searching for!

Life is meaningless without Jesus!  If you actually take the time to stop and think about it, if and when you take Jesus out of the equation, then there is nothing of significance left!  Remove Jesus and you remove hope.

Hope is the belief or expectation of a positive outcome.  It is more than wishful thinking or positive optimism.  It is the thought and understanding that no matter how bad things might get, it’s all going to turn out okay!  We need hope today, more than at any other time in our lives.

When the Bible speaks of hope, it is talking about having a “trusting expectation”!  This is exactly what God wants us to have.  We can trust in Him and we can expect Him to work in and through our lives in amazing ways!

I encourage you to receive Jesus, unwrap your gift of hope and use it for God’s glory and everyone’s blessing!

Another great Sunday!  It seems like we get to say that every week at Northwood.  While there were a lot of challenges to my day, it still turned out to be a pretty amazing day of God’s presence and power!  Here are a few of the highlights!

*Woke up after an up and down night with my ten-year old.  Discovered after Joy took her to the doctor today that she has another bad ear infection  (she was just treated three weeks ago for the same thing).  She has started a round of omnicef which is supposed to do the trick!

*The real bummer is that as we start a lot of our Christmas traditions as a church, my family had to miss it today and tonight.  When you have been pastoring the same church for over ten years, church and family are interwoven in ways that are hard to imagine.  Really missed my physical family being with our spiritual family in this beginning of the Christmas Season for Northwood!

*Thankful for my spiritual family and really enjoyed our time together.  Glad that God has blessed us with some very special traditions and had some fun today looking back through the years and thinking about how God has grown us in so many ways!

*Talked about the wonderful gift of HOPE this morning in Worship!  As our Hope Jesus should challenge and change our lives!  I hope to share a little more on this tomorrow in my blog post!

*Had fun tonight with our simple, but sweet “Triming The Trees” Service!  Love the family atmosphere and think that we are blessed to be a church that has active and sometime rambunctious kids!  (Remember they are just like their parents!)

*Enjoyed the fellowship and really felt blessed to have someone bring me a plate already prepared and then to be served a diet Pepsi by a couple of my brothers in Christ!

*It’s been a challenging, but good day!  Looking forward to another amazing week of ministry for God’s glory!

I love you all and thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family!

SOUND THE ALARM! It seems to me that the devil amps up his attacks upon me and my life on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings!  This has been a trend for most of my ministry!  Last night and this morning, we had a rough night with a sick little girl and just about the time I would fall back to sleep, BAM!  Wake Up, think about how tough life is and go back to sleep if you can!  Now I am not blaming a sick little girl on the devil, but the thoughts that walked into my life and head came from somewhere!  You know the thoughts I am talking about, the ones that really don’t even have anything to do with what you are going through at the moment!

BE CAREFUL – YOU MIGHT BE ONE! I’ve also noticed that Saturdays and Sundays are the times when you seem to have the biggest problems with people.  Either I will say something and it does not come out like I mean it, someone will take it wrong, or someone will say something that does not come out right or that I take wrong.

THE ATTACK OF DISTRACTION! One of the biggest and most important days for the Church is Sunday!  Could this possibly be the motivation for these attacks?  Could it be that the attacks are actually efforts at distracting us from what is really important?  I think and believe that this is exactly what they are.

THE POWER OF GENUINE WORSHIP! The devil wants to distract us from true and genuine worship of our Creator King!  When we truly worship God, we are drawn to Him.  When we are drawn to Him, we can’t help but to grow in a closer and more meaningful relationship with Him.  When we grow in a closer and more meaningful relationship with Him, we are filled with His power and purpose.  When we are filled with His power and purpose, watch out devil, because your days are numbered and your influence limited!

YOU CAN DO THIS! I am not sure when or how the devil attacks you, but I know this:  Stand strong, weather the storm and we will all be better for it!  Hope God’s see you and you see Him in church today!