This morning I remember the year my mother kept Christmas up until March! She had a lovely artificial tree that she didn’t take down for three months after Christmas. I don’t even remember why now, but I do remember Christmas lasted a long while at her house that year.
God speaks to my heart this morning. Christmas, the holiday, maybe over. But Christmas, the meaning, is never over.
Oh beloved, whether you put away the festive décor of Christmas today or a month from today doesn’t matter. What matters is that you never put Christmas away – the true meaning and purpose – from your heart and mind. If Jesus came to purchase your freedom, then that Freedom needs to be celebrated every day all year long.
How do you celebrate Christ all year long? By looking past your circumstances to His Presence. He is with you and He is in you always if you have been born again. Your circumstances may look horrendous, but your King is Lord over it all, even your worst case scenarios. You have the gift of prayer – which is intimate conversation with the Lord – a gift you can participate in daily, hourly, often, whenever, day or night! Oh how you need that prayer life – so that you will go beyond accepting the inevitable without praying for the impossible! Your disappointments are not the highlight of your life. They are the stepping stones to the greater glory of God! Even if the prayers you pray seem unanswerable, pray anyway. You aren’t responsible for the answer, but you are responsible to put the King in charge of His Kingdom and to ask for unprecedented responses to unimaginable things you face. You aren’t the sum of your worst Christmas, worst outcome, worst day. You are responsible to trust in the Lord, pray without ceasing and look for His answer always!
God loves you and He’s for you. If you don’t believe that – you will have a hard time going to Him in prayer. Run to Him this morning and ask Him for a new understanding of LOVE. Keep reading the Word and see how true His love is and how He delights in showing mercy. And then, precious believer, live – really live – in the Light of His wonderful ways for Christmas and the rest of your life!
Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
John 15:16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
I John 5:13-15 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.