We made it! It's Christmas, and I know that your day is filled with gift-giving and family and food and fun. Let's make a little room for Him, perhaps at the beginning of the day as we remember and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. Light your advent candles, ALL of them and do this devotion.

Read Luke 2:1-20.

Do you remember the song, the Little Drummer Boy?

This song is about a little shepherd boy who doesn't want to go see baby Jesus without a gift. Finally he decides he can give the baby Jesus a song, and he plays his little drum. 

Come, they told me, pa rum pa pum pum.

A newborn King to see, pa rum pa pum pum. 

Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pa pum pum.

To lay before the King, pa rum pa pum pum, rum pa pum pum, rum pum pum pum, 

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum. When we come.

Little baby, pa rum pa pum pum

I am a poor boy too pa rum pa pum pum

I have no gift to bring, pa rum pa pum pum

That's fit to give the King, pa rum pa pum pum rum pa pum pum rum...

I hope that you will finish out your advent season by lighting these final 2 candles; one on Christmas Eve and the other on Christmas Day. We will light our Love candle after 4 Christmas Eve services at church on Christmas Eve. It's going to be good to all sit around the table together, enjoy our meal and spend a few minutes talking about LOVE.

Ask: How do you define love? Share a time when you especially felt loved.

How does the world define love? Do you think people feel loved? 

Invite everyone to quote John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." 

How did God express His love? (by sending Jesus)

What did Jesus do to demonstrate the love of God?

Did He come to judge the world? 

Invite someone to read the verses that follow John 3:16, John 3:17-18

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ ...

This week we light our 3rd candle in the advent wreath. We've lit two purple candles, and this week we get to light the pink one representing joy. Here's a devotion to help guide your conversation centered on the joy we have when we remember what God did for us at Christmas time. 

Invite everyone to share the difference between joy and happiness.

You might wrap us the conversation by saying something like this: 

Happiness Is External, Joy Is Internal

One of the very obvious differences between happiness and joy is that happiness tends to be achieved externally, while joy is something achieved internally. For example, we can feel happy when we receive something like a gift or achieve something like awards or honors. These things are external or belong to the surface of our lives. It is not something deeper but, rather, superficial.

Joy, on the other hand, is something deeper. It is something we feel internally in our lives as human beings. For example, when we feel great...

There was a gospel tract that was (and is) very popular, it was printed and distributed by the Billy Graham Association. In fact, that little gospel tract has turned into a website, it's titled

Peace with God

Peace. 

This is the 2nd week of advent and we are going to spend a bit of time meditating on this beautiful word. Consider using this devotion with your family or group of friends as you celebrate the season of advent this year.

Invite family members to define peace.

After everyone has had an opportunity share what peace means to them, share this definition--

Peace is a stress-free state of security and calmness that comes when there's no fighting or war, everything coexisting in perfect harmony and freedom.

Invite someone to read Isaiah 9:6,

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

Share this: When Jesus came to...

We're almost there. 

We've made our lists, checked them twice.

Put that elf on many a shelf.

And now we're counting down the last few days before

Christmas.

As Christian parents and grandparents, it's not only our duty but also our sheer delight to pour our faith into our children while they are young.

The world will give us some resistance, but in our homes we are kings and queens and we get to choose how we spend our time together.

Here are a few creative ways you can invite Jesus to be the center of attention at your celebration.

1. Read the Christmas Story. Before anyone pulls a bow off of anything read the Christmas story. For fun dress up the children and let them act the story out as you read it from the Bible. Luke 2.

2.  Let Santa leave a devotion to do together. If you are okay with the fun of Santa, put him in a place of worship so that your children understand that even Santa knows Christmas is all about Jesus. 

Show your children this picture.

And...

I remember being terrified of Santa! 

To make matters worse, there was a PINK PIG we "got" (had) to ride before the ritual was complete.

It was downright scary.

And, thus I was baptized into our family's traditions complete with Atlanta's pink Christmas princess.

After I survived Santa trauma I could sit back and relax until the big day. And if you'd really like to know the truth, EVERYTHING about Christmas day was magical.

I could hardly sleep the night before.

All of our family's disagreements, all our arguments, any grievance we had with each other seemed to disappear on this one special, marvelous explosion of gift wrap and ribbon.

It wasn't until way later in my life that Christmas delivered its own kind of pain.

The magic evaporated like the frost on our fence post the year Tom called to tell me that Melissa's baby had died.

He stayed home that year to preach the Christmas Day sermon (because Christmas fell on Sunday). And just after we'd celebrated Santa's faithful...

 In December 2019, these were the top 5 questions searched on google regarding Christmas...

1. How many days until Christmas?
2. When is Christmas?
3. What do I want for Christmas?
4. How to draw a Christmas tree?
5. What does Noel mean?

Seriously?! 

I guess that if you knew the answer to #2 then you could find the answer to #1, but for #3 it's certainly handy that we have google to ask! 

With answers to all our questions literally at our fingertips, our lives have changed radically from what they were before the internet.

I read something interesting in Alisa Childer's Another Gospel?,

"the internet literally changed the world. All of a sudden, loads of information flooded our homes through the little glowing screen known as the personal computer. Skeptical claims and secular theories--which, in generations past, Christians lived entire lifetimes without hearing--were abruptly challenging our comfortable beliefs and confronting our deeply ingrained spiritual, sociological...