Miraculous Hope Devotional

Well, Merry Christmas! My name is Rene, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. You guys having a good time so far tonight here at the Christmas concert? Such a feeling of expectancy in the air, as you know. Of course, we are just a few shopping days away now from that big day in December that the whole world's been looking forward to, young and old. And obviously I'm talking about the premiere of the new Star Wars movie. So that's going to be exciting.

And then just a week after that, it's Christmas! And so I've got some Christmas news for you. While the ushers come forward to take the offering, yes, offering, because although the concert's free, we always love to give you an opportunity to contribute to some of the many wonderful ministries here at Twin Lakes Church. And I just thank you so much for your generous contributions to Twin Lakes Church all year long. You enable us to do things like supporting children's homes in India and in Mexico and in Africa, supporting Second Harvest here locally, the Salvation Army, and so much more.

But while the ushers are taking the offering, I want to point out a couple of things to you. We have CDs from several of the artists in tonight's performance, including the Monte Vista Christian High School Choir and lots more. James Durbin has a brand new Christmas EP that we were giving away in the pre-show today. It's really nice. It's got a lot of kind of sacred traditional Christmas songs that he has reinterpreted. I was interviewing him before the last concert, and he said he felt like a lot of his recordings don't really reflect his faith. And so he decided to choose just specifically Christian Christmas songs for this CD.

So I have a question. Who would like this right now? Who would like one of these? I am going to try to toss it to somebody without putting your eye out. It's got sharp edges. So let's see if I can float it right to you. Medic? No, we got somebody right there. Good. Awesome. What's your name? What is your name? Maddie. Maddie got a James Durbin. Give it up for Maddie. I know you're jealous, but give it up for Maddie. That's good.

Also, if you will take your program and just open it up, you know where the Christmas quiz was on the inside back page? Open it up to the facing page. You see where those candles lit there? That gives you all the details that you will need to know about our Christmas candlelight services. They take place December 23rd and 24th. How many of you have been, by a show of hands, to one of our candlelight services? Can I see a show of hands? They are beautiful.

You will see this whole stage just awash in candles, and everybody who comes to the service gets a real candle, and during part of it, we light those candles with real live flame. And it's always just such a beautiful, exciting moment for me because I look around this huge room, and I see lots of five-year-olds with open flame in their hands. So that's always so thrilling, but so far so good, no injuries. But hope you can come out to that exciting service.

Also, we have added something new. It's called a remembrance service, as you see listed there. If you've lost a loved one this year, I lost my mom this year, and Christmas can be kind of a tough time. So we've designed a specific, acoustic, short, intimate service for you to light a candle in memory of your loved one. Of course, those are all free services December 23rd and 24th.

Not only are they free, but we're going to give you something. Everybody who comes to one of our candlelight services this year will receive a free book. It's a little book that I just finished, and it's called "Greater." And the idea for this is, a lot of times, the urgent things in life distract us from the greater things in life. Have you found that to be true? And so what this is is a 31-day adventure. Each day for 31 days, you're given a little meditation that reminds you to focus on something greater. Greater joy, greater gratitude, greater awareness of God's gifts to you.

And that ties into our January series, as you see there. It's also called "Greater," and each weekend in January during our regular service times, we're going to be talking about how to live for something greater. You make New Year's resolutions to get physically fit, why not make one to get spiritually fit? And join us for that series. Of course, you are welcome.

Now, so far, as you know, here in the concert, we've been talking about the story, the narrative, of how the world longed for a Messiah, and then the child was born. But, you know, we want you to do more than just know the story. It's a story that's familiar to most of us, after all. We want you to know something else. James Durbin was giving the choir a pep talk at rehearsal, and he said, "You know, we don't want just people to know the story of Christmas. We want them to know the love of Christ, the love and joy that can only come from God." And that's exactly our goal.

So in the second half of the concert, you're going to hear five songs that talk about our emotional response to the idea of God with us. What am I talking about, emotional response? Let me explain it this way. You might have seen this viral video this week. Some parents took video of their little girl who is deaf visiting Santa Claus at a shopping mall to their surprise, Santa Claus knows American Sign Language! And he started signing their little girl, and she so excitedly signed back to him. And the parents were so surprised because they thought they would have to be the interpreters, but he's fluent in American Sign.

Well, they posted this on Facebook, and just hours later, as recorded by a local TV news station, the whole line to see Santa Claus in the mall, just snaking throughout the mall, was full of kids excitedly speaking American Sign to one another. They wanted to talk to Santa because they realized he spoke their language. Another picture went viral this week, too, in a similar vein. Santa Claus on the floor rolling around with a little boy at a shopping mall.

Here's what happened. This little boy came to see Santa. When it got to be his turn, he reluctantly climbed up on Santa's lap, and suddenly the lights, the sound became sensory overload. He jumped off, started rolling around on the ground yelling, grabbing toys from the display, playing with them. And what did Santa Claus do? He kind of told the elves, who were rushing in to make order to back away, and instead of demanding that the little boy get back on his lap, Santa Claus got down on the ground and started rolling around with the little boy.

Because it turns out that Santa Claus not only knows American Sign Language, Santa Claus also has a master's degree in early childhood development. And he recognized the signs of autism. And so he recognized this was an autistic child, and he spoke the child's language, physical touch and proximity. And after a while, they connected eye to eye right there on the ground, and they had that great longed-for conversation.

Now, I don't know about you, but these stories practically move me to tears, but I think it's more than just they're sweet examples of human kindness. I think it's also because stories like this reflect the greater Christmas story, don't they? Because we believe that God saw that we couldn't see him eye to eye. We couldn't speak his language, so to speak. We couldn't even comprehend him, let alone be as holy as him and be in his presence.

And so he, rather than demanding we come up and be with him, he came down to our level, speaking our language, rolling around on the ground with us, so to speak, so we could look at us eye to eye. That's why Jesus is called God with us, Emmanuel, the Word made flesh. He came all the way down to a stable, all the way down to a feeding trough for his crib, and even further down to a cross. Why? Not just to show the way, but to be the way.

And man, when you believe that that's true, and we're up here singing because we believe that's true, something just happens when you let that kind of capture your imagination. You know that God must really love you. And so you have exuberant joy, you'll hear a song about that. You'll have wonder and amazement, you'll hear a song about that too. And no matter what happens, even if you wind up giving birth to a baby in a barn, you'll know that because God is with you. God is with you. Everything's going to be okay. All is well.