December 14

Transcription

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.)

There was a pastor's wife and her best friend, they used to sit together every Sunday morning. And this one particular Sunday morning, as the preacher got up to preach, the pastor's wife turned and brought out her tablet and put in her earbuds. Her best friend nudged her and said, what are you doing? She said, your husband is about to get up and preach.

She goes, I've already heard this, it's okay. And she put her earbuds back in. So I've made it a rule that I never share with my wife exactly what I'm gonna teach or share.

I may give her little ideas, but I never tell her, because I never want to be embarrassed by looking back and seeing my wife with her earbuds and watching Netflix or something, rather than paying attention. So I wanted to start with an announcement. Christmas is coming.

I know you're probably thinking, well, thanks a lot, Captain Obvious, right? We know Christmas is coming. But for some guys in this room, they probably just went, oh, yes, Christmas is coming. So we're official, we're what, 11 days and counting? If anybody's counting, I see some parents nodding their heads going, yes, yes, we've got it on our fridge.

Or what's that other one, the silent elf or the good elf or something like that, that they mark the days for Christmas to keep everybody in line. But it's good to be reminded of things coming, because sometimes we can forget. I know sometimes things sneak up.

Aubrey texted me yesterday and said, thanks again for stepping in, and I was gonna text back afterwards and say, is that today? Was that this Sunday? But I just didn't have the heart to do it to him. No, yeah, I should've, I should've. Everybody, yeah, you guys all have pity on him, I'm sure.

You know he's gonna be watching the recording of this. And that was Elizabeth that said that, Aubrey, just so you know. But Christmas is coming, and it's good to count down.

And I think that when you're told or you know that Christmas is coming, there's one of three responses that we get, right? You may be like this guy, all excited that Christmas is coming. And if you've never seen the movie Elf, this guy was delivered to the wrong place. He was raised by elves.

And when he became an adult and this six-foot-three giant of a guy, they told him that his real dad was in New York City. So he went, dressed like this, into New York City to find his dad. And when he was walking through the shopping malls, he heard that Santa was coming.

And he got all excited and just freaked out because Santa was coming. But then when he went and saw Santa, he says, you're not Santa. I know Santa, that's not Santa.

So you may or may not know someone that responds like that when Christmas is mentioned. I know I have a 30-something-year-old daughter. Now, I do know exactly how old she is.

I just say 30-something to be polite. I have a 30-something-year-old daughter who loves Christmas. She loves the excitement and the buzz and the lights and all the interaction, the family and the gatherings.

And she gets that excited. And she's probably watched ALF a dozen times growing up as a kid. Or you might be like this person.

Now, come on, there's probably a couple little grinches in here that just think, oh, Christmas, right? Time to spend money, time to give gifts, time to get gifts and smile when I get them, right? And we can go around feeling a little bit grinchy. And I can tell by some of the responses and some of the arm-crossing in the congregation that there might be a couple of grinchy people around Christmas time. So you may or may not have someone in your circle who is like that.

And you may or may not be that kind of person. Or you might be like this person. We all know the ones that get all angelic and holy when the Christmas season is upon us.

They get all Mother Teresa. They get all up in the clouds. They just kind of float through the season, right? They're not touched or scathed by anything.

It's okay. This is the holiest of holy times. It's Christmas.

And you may or may not know someone in your circle who is like that. You may or may not be that kind of person yourself. And I think that it's okay to be a little bit holy, but what's the old expression? Don't be so heavenly-minded that you're no earthly good.

So sometimes we can get so caught up in all the glory and all the spectacular worship and all those wonderful things that we forget that we're still human beings and we still walk on this planet. We still need to interact with people. So I think there's a balance that needs to happen between them.

But I want to say this, that Christmas, it's not about you. It's for you. We have a tendency to make holidays all about us, don't we? It's all about getting the gifts, making everything just perfect.

We're like Santa Claus ourselves, making the list and checking it twice and the rest of it. But we go around just making it about us. And we can sometimes make it about past experiences.

We can say, well, last time we did this and so we got to do it even grander. And we tend to make everything about us. And we forget that this season is actually for us.

And we're gonna read that in scripture this morning. In Luke, the first account of the Christmas story in Luke chapter two, starting at verse eight, we read this. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Today in the town of David, a saviour has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you.

You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger. Suddenly, a great company of heavenly hosts appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that's happened which the Lord has told us about.

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told. I can only imagine what it was like for Mary, this young teenager having this child.

First of all, being met by angels telling her she was gonna have this child. And then all of a sudden, all these events start happening around her. I can only imagine what was going through her mind.

She would have no real capacity to really understand. She had no real reference or experience. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened.

And as time marched on, then the magi, they show up. And this is where we get the three wise men because we had three gifts, right? So we know that they came along and they offered three gifts. The first gift was gold.

Now that we get, right? In the time, gold equalled wealth. It was a royalty. It was, when we look at the significance of wealth, back in the day, it was kind of gold was first, then properties, then livestock, then it carried on down from there, from jewels and other things.

But gold was at the top of the list. That demonstrated a place of royalty. You had to be something or someone to be gold, to have gold.

And so for the wise men, for the magi to come and give them gold, it makes sense. The second gift was incense. Frankincense is often mentioned.

And it was in a very expensive resin that was used in offering of worship. So we see the whole thing around deity. They recognised that there was a deity.

There was something unique. There was something to be honoured and worshipped. And the third gift was myrrh.

Now you think, why myrrh? Sometimes we can read through these things and not really pay attention to why. And myrrh, again, was another expensive resin. And it was often used in worship, but its main principle was in embalming, in preparing bodies for death.

So what we were seeing here was them coming and saying, here is a royal king of divinity nature, of divine nature, who is going to ultimately sacrifice. That's a whole lot for the first short time of a little person's life, isn't it? I mean, typically when we give gifts, what are we doing? We're buying stuff, teddy bears. We're bringing that kind of, we're bringing flowers for mom.

We're bringing those kind of things. We're not thinking gold and frankincense and myrrh. But these were the gifts that they were brought.

I think it's interesting that God chose shepherds and magi, who really were astrologers, right? They were following the signs of the stars and the planets aligning and everything. And they saw something uniquely happening in Bethlehem. So they were following the signs of the stars.

The shepherds were just out in the field shepherding. They were just doing their thing. And I think the important thing to notice here is that they had no real bias to what was going on.

If God had gone to the religious leaders, what did the religious leaders say? Well, nothing good can come out of Bethlehem. Nothing good can come out of Nazareth. Nothing good can come out of, they denied all those things.

They said, no, our king is gonna be riding in on big white stallions and is gonna be adorned with gold and jewels and all kinds of stuff. We know when we see, when this king comes, we're gonna know who he is. So they had a bias on how they would interpret this.

And so the shepherds, I believe, were chosen because they had no bias. They were just met with angels and they didn't dispute with the angels. They didn't just say, hey, no, you're off your rocker.

Like, you guys got the wrong show. There is nothing like that ever happening in Bethlehem. They had no bias.

They had no reason to disbelieve it. And the same with the magi. They were just following the stars.

They were just following what was aligning and they recognised that something was uniquely happening. And so they had no bias. They just accepted what was going on.

But so often we get the idea, excuse me, we get the ideas and we have biases when we go into different things. And our past experiences can often affect future events. When we think about Christmas, if I mention Christmas to you, you're probably thinking of, or could be thinking of past experiences, past Christmases, right? I mean, when we enter into the Christmas season, it's natural for us to say, oh, last year such and such happened, or five years this was the most amazing time, and 10 years, or when the kids were little.

We compare to all past experiences. And they set us up for future events. Why, because we're taking a lot of those experiences with us as we're going forward.

And it's not until we look at those experiences that we can enter into it in a whole new way. A friend of mine, when I was a young Christian, he challenged me and he said, every Christmas, he said, look at the Christmas story and ask God for something new in the Christmas story. And I thought, well, that's just crazy.

I mean, we read Luke 2 every year, right? We read those accounts. We read the same story. How could it be a different story? But as we began to share notes and compare notes, God was speaking to us in different ways around the Christmas time.

And what we were doing is we were letting down these past experiences, releasing these past experiences, and entering into it asking for something new, asking for something fresh, asking for a new insight. Right, you've probably heard it said that we could live for 1,000 years and read Scripture over and over and over again and see it in a fresh new way all the time if we allow God's Spirit to move with us, if we allow Him to speak to us. But how do we really let go of these past experiences and move into something new and not allow past experiences to affect the way we respond or the way we act within it? Many of us have tensions when it comes to family gatherings, for example, around Christmas time, right, because we all have that Uncle Eddie that can be really irritating and annoying and obnoxious and we get anxious when we think about, oh, I gotta face Uncle Eddie again, right? Or we got that crazy doting aunt that just comes over and slobbers all over us or brings up past stories, right? I was recently introduced, I spoke at another church and I was introduced by my mother.

I made the script to give to my mother because I didn't wanna have embarrassing stories about being bathed in the kitchen sink as a baby or something like that, right? But these are the things that can happen as we come into family gatherings or we can think of past tensions, past arguments, right? They tend to happen around Christmas time. Tensions, right, everything is anxious, everyone is anxious, things are a little bit tensioned. Some of the grandkids or some of the nieces and nephews may be acting obnoxiously and you want to just throttle them but nobody's saying anything, everybody's being nice and the tension just builds.

And so we can go into Christmas seasons expecting that same anxiousness. So how do we get rid of that stuff so that we can step into it with fresh new eyes? I brought a couple of things here this morning. This old picture frame represents some of the past experiences that we go through, right? And we just carry them through.

They're memories. You could put your own picture up here of a Christmas past. You could put something in there that, you know, an experience that you had.

You could fill this in with anything that you've gone through. And we carry these with us, don't we? We carry them in our mind. We carry the experiences, we carry the memories, we carry those thoughts.

But along with those, we carry the emotions that go along with it. And so sometimes when we think about things, that's why it hits us in the heart, it hits us in the stomach, right? Or just kind of makes our mind spin because of the emotion that goes around past experiences. But we just carry these things and we just continue to build them up over time.

And the longer we're on this planet, the more memories we have, the more pictures we have, the more experiences we have. The problem is is when we start to think about a troubling experience, a traumatic experience, or something that didn't go very well, the emotions rise up. And then what happens is we begin to make decisions or conversations or dialogue comes out of those emotions.

So it's no longer clear thinking, a clear head that's responding, it's the emotion of past experiences that's reminding. Does that make sense? And we just inadvertently do these things, we don't think anything of it. Now we know that we can't go back in history, like we couldn't go back to 1975, that was the worst Christmas on record, right? We can't go back to 1975, we can't go back to 1995 and say, oh, that was a terrible experience around it with a family member or something.

We can't go back, we can't erase those things, we can't transport ourselves back and remove that picture, remove that memory and say it never existed. But we can reframe the way we look at it. And so what we end up doing is the experience that comes up, we can say, yeah, that wasn't favourable, that wasn't the most fun, that was tense, that was, I was anxious or that was very traumatic, that wasn't the best time.

Like for me, one of the Christmases was when I was in my late teens. I had a job, most of you know that I quit school early in my career, I didn't finish my high school career. And I got a job in a factory, I had a really good job, but I was excited about the opportunity to go out West.

So I went out West, it didn't work, I ended up coming home, couldn't find a job and for a couple of Christmases, I couldn't afford to have the Christmas that I wanted to have, right? Anybody been there? You can't afford to have the Christmas that you really want to have, right? Because we're conditioned by Hollywood, aren't we? We look at all those crazy movies and this is what Christmas is, this is what it should look like, this is what it should feel like, this is what it should unfold like. We listen to commercials, right? According to BMW, you need to have a brand new BMW in your driveway to have a really enjoyable Christmas, right? According to Pandora, you need to have that expensive diamond necklace around your neck, right? So we're conditioned with all those things. So for me, it was I couldn't afford to do the Christmas the way I wanted to.

And so I had to go through a couple of Christmases where people were buying me gifts but I couldn't afford to give anything back. And I carried that experience with me, even as I got married and had children and started to grow, I still carried those past experiences of those Christmases. They haunted my memory.

And they kind of dictated the script that I was saying and repeating around Christmas time until I learned this, until I learned how to reframe it. So now we can take that old experience and we can say, okay, when that experience comes up, I'm no longer gonna look at it with that hurt, that wound, that disappointment, the frustration, the anxiety, I'm gonna now look at it in a brand new way. So when that thought comes up, you go, okay, that thought that happened, that experience happened, that time happened, we acknowledge it, but then we say, but I'm not going to respond that way anymore, I'm not gonna live it out that way anymore, I'm going to change the way I look at it.

So we're not denying the experience, we're not pretending it didn't exist, right? Because oftentimes we want to do that, don't we? When bad things happen, we want to pretend they didn't happen, we want to pretend them away and just try to make up a different script. But this way is honouring what happened and learning from it, right? Because we know in Romans it said that God can use all things for what? For good. So God can use all those experiences in our past for good.

But if we hold onto them and we're reliving that same script, that same dialogue, those same emotions, making decisions out of those same emotions, God can't use that for good. But if we allow it to be reframed, then we can move forward in a brand new way. So my prayer for us is through this Christmas season is that we would look at how we can reframe some of those past experiences that we've gone through so that we're not reliving those same scripts, that same dialogue, because we can beat ourselves up and we can cause extra anxiousness in our own lives because we're trying to measure up, we're trying to compete with those past experiences, we're trying to make everything better than it ever was.

And we can drive ourselves crazy. It's an endless hamster wheel, trying to go around and make things ever so better. And that's what's happened over generations, over generations and over generations, is that each generation has tried to outdo the past generation and make everything better and more unique.

But if we get back to the simplicity and say, you know what, Christmas isn't about me, it's for me. This Christ child coming is for me to be reconciled back to God, to have that new relationship, to have the opportunity to reframe those experiences, be renewed in those experiences so that I can move forward in those rather than carrying the past with me all the time. And it takes a whole lot less energy than having those emotions come up and then we either fight through them or we blurt out through them, we do something with them, it makes it so much easier if we just reframe them and say, okay, that past experience, but this is how I'm gonna move forward.

With God's grace and his wisdom, this is how I'm gonna look at that experience now. And then I can balance between those three people. I don't have to be that eccentric old over-the-top person that's really excited about everything.

I don't have to be that one that's holier than thou and lifting up, I don't have to be grinchy trying to rob people of their joy or their delight around a situation or a season. I can enter into it with a brand new frame. The words that we say to ourselves matter.

There's about 165,000 words in the English language in the dictionary. Out of that, we know probably 25 to 35,000 words. I mean, if we spent the time, we could probably come up with at least that many, most of us.

On average, guess how many words we use? 500 to 800 words. We use the same words over and over and over again. Like take Christmas, for example.

You don't use Christmas in February or March or April or May or June unless you're one of those holier than thou. Or you don't use Christmas all through the year, you only use it at certain times. We talk about Easter at Easter time.

We don't talk about Easter throughout the rest of the year. So there's a lot of words that we know but we just don't use on a regular basis. But our words really matter.

And it's important that we look at how we use our words because there's a difference between speaking your mind and speaking from unprocessed emotion. So often, people will just blurt something out and say, that's just the way I am. That's just the way I feel.

That's just what I'm thinking. But what we need to do is we really need to process what we're feeling, what we're thinking, what we're believing and understanding exactly what that is. Especially as the church.

The church, I think, has really gotten weak at being able to explain why they believe what they believe. You ask most Christians why they believe what they believe, they just say because the Bible says so. Right, that's it.

They don't have a real deep understanding of why they believe what they believe. So I believe it's important for us to process what we believe, why we believe it. And then we can process the emotions that come up with those.

And this supports us in everything, whether we're going into the Christmas season, whether we're going into a business meeting, whether we're going into a family discussion. By processing what we feel, what we are thinking, we can really look at the emotion. And rather than respond from the emotion, we can respond from some intelligence.

Does that make sense? So that we don't allow the emotion. Because when we get into an experience where emotions come in, let's say bitterness comes in. We're just bitter about something.

And if we allow that emotion to stay in us, everything that we do around that particular area is responded out of that bitterness. It's not out of a heart of love. And so to process the things that we're feeling, the things that we're thinking is really important.

And I'm speaking primarily, I think, to guys right now because we're terrible at processing emotion. We're terrible at sharing our feelings. We're terrible at digging down and understanding.

So here's three practical things that we can do. One is look at an area that may be coming up. There might be a thought.

There might be an area that's coming up to mind as we're talking. And consider that. And look at that and say, okay, what happened around that experience? What was it about that really irritated me or that was really troublesome, that was really bothersome? I shared my experience with those couple of Christmases.

Just the frustration of not being able to give the Christmas that I really wanted to give, to do the things I really wanted to do. So what is it about the experience that you're going through that is causing you to feel that emotion? Then process it and just say, okay, exactly what is it in that that was upsetting, that was irritating, that was frustrating? And then the third thing is just to, how can I respond differently? How can I now step forward? How can I reframe, as we talked about, how can I reframe that situation so that I'm not responding out of unprocessed emotion, I'm responding out of processed emotion, I'm responding out of deep thought? I think it's particularly important for us right now as a church. For those of you who are visiting, our minister is gonna be retiring in a year and so we're in search of a new minister.

And so I think it's important that we use our words to communicate what we want as a body, as a church. Not just to allow things to come, allow things to unfold and allow things to happen just as they happen, but that your words matter, your opinions matter. And to process those and just say, okay, what is it that I really want to see? What is it that I really love about Central and what do I want to see continue? How do I want to see it continue to grow? How do I want it to flourish? And then begin to share it with people in leadership, share it with the board that's been put together, share it with the team that's on top of looking for a new pastor leader.

Because your words are really important. Do we get that? The things that we say are valuable and they become more valuable when we process them and really understand what emotion that we might be speaking out of. I know for me, I remember I sat on a board at another church and there was always tension, there was always bickering, there was always struggles, there was always challenges.

And so when I left and then I was invited to step onto another board at another church, I'm telling you, the anxiety was through the roof. I'm thinking, I don't want to relive that again. And so I reluctantly said, yes, I'll serve on the board at this new church.

And as I served, the first number of meetings I went through, my heart was just racing because of those past experiences. And you may have experienced a similar thing where it's a work situation or a relationship situation, a family situation, a church situation where you come in and your heart starts to race or your gut just starts to get you and you're like, oh, I don't want to go through this again. My challenge is to look at that and say, what is it about that situation that really is upsetting, is challenging and frustrating, and process it so that you can move forward with a brand new lens, a brand new frame and really receive what God has for us.

I don't think there's anyone amongst us that wouldn't want to see things in a new way. I think that's probably a daily prayer for me is God, give me eyes to see you in a new way. Help me to process the stuff that I'm living and going through so that I can see you in a new way.

And that's my heart for us as a church. Did I use up all my slides? I did. Poor Grace and I were communicating about the slides and I'm so used to having the clicker so that I can move my slides and so I wanted to make sure I didn't have anything left up there.

I didn't see anything else in my notes. So can I pray for us? Would that be okay? God, I just pray for all of us as we enter into this Christmas season. Lord, would you help us to recognise it's not about us.

It's not about the gifts, as fun as they are to give. It's not about the presents, as fun as they are to receive. It's not about the family and the friends that we'll gather around with, as much as that's fun.

You've really created this season for us. Help us to see that this Christmas is for us. What you did.