Christmas - CHRISTIAN REP

Christmas Is God Shining In

Rose — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 03:27:33 +0000

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Christmas is God Shining In

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New Year New Beginnings

Mike Messerli — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:17:17 +0000

It’s a new year. A chance for new choices, a fresh start. A time to look ahead and change what was wrong, to plant a new crop for the new year.

It’s a chance for new beginnings. What will you do with the next year? It’s all in your hands to live each day with the excitement of a child as they open each Christmas gift. What will you find in the days ahead?

We always begin a new year with hopes and dreams of better things, but soon find that the same problems, same choices, and same people are still the same! But don’t let the sameness around you keep you from planting new crops in your life, from doing something different, from new adventures. Make the choice to do one new thing this year that you have always wanted to do.

Plant a new kind of seed in your life. Become a student of a new interest, learn something new that has always interested you, go somewhere you have always wanted to go. God is a God of adventure in our lives with him and in his desires for us personally. He smiles when we thrive. So, this year, with a new year beginning what new things will you do? What adventures will you go on in your walk with God?

We are in the last days. The Lord is coming soon. There has never been a time like this when God’s people can be part of such an amazing time. Love people. Get to know God more deeply. And consider the new year ahead the greatest adventure you will ever embark upon. It will be exciting!

Visit Mike at Finishing Well.

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Christmas Thoughts

Mike Messerli — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:18:10 +0000

This year, to be honest, my hearts not into Christmas. I’m not excited about it. In fact I’m feeling rather a Scrooge about the whole thing. I could easily go into a monologue about consumerism and how crazy it is to spend money for gifts while we lose sight of the real meaning of the season, but that whole discussion has been done to death.

This year I’m simply trying to focus on my walk with God in a busy time when God is so easily forgotten. Honestly I think my relationship with God, whatever that means, has suffered a bit in recent weeks. I could blame a number of things, but at the core of it all is me. I’m the problem. I’m not sure why, but I know it’s one of the normal cycles of a walk with God. It’s just the wrong time of the year for one of these down times to happen…..

Anyway, with Christmas only a few days away, I survey my living room covered with toys and grandkids playing, having fun, enjoying the day and we have yet to open gifts! They don’t need another thing and yet more will come in just a few days. Why do we do this? Will we answer for this crazy excess? I wonder. Yes, Scrooge is at work and I’m him. Sorry, I’m working on it, but for now I am just not into this season of the year.

Christmas is supposed to be a time to remember what God has given. Do we ever do that? Do we realize what he has done? Do we talk about it with our kids? This year we will give our grandkids chickens….chickens that will show up in India for a family in need. I would like to make it even more, maybe goats or cows next year……I would love to make our Christmas about those who have nothing. Now that would be a wonderful Christmas!

As I read the Facebook posts I see wives writing about cooking, decorating, buying gifts, tired, frazzled and worn out. Why are we doing this? Yes, Scrooge is alive and well, but in part I’m tired of this gluttonous consumerism in a country that has too much already. Ok, I’m done. I feel better already. Merry Christmas!

Visit Mike at Finishing Well….bring chickens.

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Anticipating Christmas

Mike Messerli — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:18:33 +0000

Christmas is less than two weeks away! It’s come so quickly this year that it has caught us unprepared. We don’t have a tree up yet. Few decorations are on the walls. It feels a little like a humbug Christmas because it’s not all about the trees, the lights and the decor…it’s about Christ.

I know he probably wasn’t born on this date. That’s not important. What’s important is the remembering of the birth of God on planet earth. The entrance of the king. The breach of time and space that brought God’s solution to our problem into reality. That’s the meaning of Christmas! And for that birth, for that King, for that invasion of humanity by God himself I’m most thankful. I do wish I better understood how amazing this event really is. God becoming man. How could we possibly understand such an amazing plan as this?

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