Grace Blogs

The way of Santa and the way of Jesus clearly mark the distinction in the two fundamental approaches toward spiritual living.

The way of Santa says,

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.

The way of Jesus says,

“I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).
“Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).

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If God had a Christmas list what do you think would be on it? In other words, what does God want for Christmas? I must admit I am using this idea to help us focus on a unique perspective and in no way want you to think that God is in NEED of anything. However, could we say that God WANTS something from us? Could it be something uniquitely related to Christmas? MP3 download.

 

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10. “Yappy”, the Shunned Wise Man”

9. “Finding God’s Facebook: A Teen’s Christmas Journey”

8. “My 30 Year Post Traumatic Stress: A Shepherd’s Story after the Announcement of the Birth”

7. “Either take the Room by the ice machine, or it’s the Stable. That’s all I got: The Innkeeper’s story”

6. “You Pick the Right Manger!” Interactive dinner theater

5. “King Herod’s Kid’s Christmas Cantata”

4. “Biblical Billy Bass tells the story of Christmas”

3. “A pregnant stranger, her husband, a blizzard, car trouble, a kindly old couple, a baby boy born, house foreclosure averted Christmas!

2. “Mimes Keeping their Flocks by Night”

1. “The Night the Animals Texted”

Copyright 2008 Dave Tippett (djtippHA@yahoo.com).

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If God had a Christmas list what do you think would be on it? In other words, what does God want for Christmas? I must admit I am using this idea to help us focus on a unique perspective and in no way want you to think that God is in NEED of anything. However, could we say that God WANTS something from us? Could it be something uniquitely related to Christmas? MP3 download.

 

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We’ve started reading Starr Meade’s Keeping Holiday as a family. We’re only a couple of chapters in, but I’m enjoying it enough to recommend it as one of those neat books you can read to your kids, especially at Christmastime. It has a sort of Narnia-esque flavor to it, as others have observed:

R. C. Sproul:

I love it. In reading Keeping Holiday, I was reminded of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. It is delightful reading that pulls you into the adventures of Dylan and Clare

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As we stare down another Christmas season I would like to ask you a question: What do you think the purpose of Jesus coming was?  In this teaching, we will examine the purpose that God gives for the coming of Jesus.  It is a forgotten truth, a sometimes deliberate omission to our holiday celebration.  However, it is crucial if we are to really understand in full the “reason for the season.”

 

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Fred Sanders at the Scriptorium blog affirms that the true meaning of Christmas is the Incarnation, “the serious doctrine at the heart of Christmas… a theological account of baby Jesus that is the only possible justification for Christmas.”

He goes on to quote from Samuel Zwemer’s The Glory of the Manger:

The deity of Christ makes all the difference in our Christmas joy. He who came to the Manger was God’s Son. To deny this is to deny essential Christianity. If the Saviour of men is not identical with their Creator there are no good-tidings of great joy for the human race and no help in the Cross for the sinner… In our day we

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Compared to the Incarnation, birthdays are unremarkable: the good ship Earth goes around the sun one more time and finds you’re still on board. But when God became a man, the Earth found its architect and shipbuilder on the passenger list. That’s worth commemorating in a way that commands more than a song and a cake with candles on it.

Like I said in my last post, the real meaning of Christmas is far weightier than we usually realize, and the chaos of the holiday season only obscures what it means to have Emmanuel—God with us. I can’t help

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Survey some predictable guesses as to what Christmas is all about: Santa Claus. Getting gifts. Giving gifts. Doorbuster sales. Black Friday. Time off from work. Family. Friends. Jesus’s birthday.

You will often hear a refrain that calls people back to the true meaning of Christmas: “Keep ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas,’” they say. But I think we need to go back a step further. We probably shouldn’t assume people have a solid idea of who “Christ” is in the first place.

We need to recover God’s view of Christmas:

Incarnation Day.

In a season that keeps us breathlessly preoccupied with shopping and shipping and spending and sales and snowflakes and stockings and Santas and Scrooges, trees and traveling and time off, presents

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