Peace in the Chaos

One King held the hope of the world and that is what we remember at Advent every year. Good morning, my name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Merry Christmas! This is the fourth week of Advent. That's what Christians call the four weeks before Christmas. Can you believe this? This is week four! Christmas is practically here. I'm so excited about that.

And one of the things we've been doing every single weekend here during Advent at Twin Lakes Church is a different family has come up, lit that week's Advent candle and read the Advent scripture for that week. And with this week's verses, let's welcome Chris and Christy Carlson as they read for us now. Luke chapter one. God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end." Amen. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's thank Chris and Christy for reading for us this morning. Those were great verses about Mary. And in just a few minutes, James Durbin is coming back with a great song about Mary. How many of you love that song, "Mary Did You Know?" You know that song? It's beautiful. And James and his wife, Heidi, just a month ago had a new addition to their family, a little girl named Kinsey. And so I see Heidi backstage with their little baby, and I hear James singing the song, and all those images come together, and it's just even more poignant.

But first, we're going to learn a little bit about Mary, so the song is even more meaningful to you. Mary has captured the imagination of people for centuries, to say the least. I don't know if you heard the old story about the little boy who at Christmas time sees his friends writing letters to Santa Claus. And so he decides to go to them one better and actually write a letter to Jesus Christ. And he gets out a piece of paper, and he goes to his desk, and he writes, "Dear Jesus, if you give me a Nintendo DS for Christmas, I promise I will be good for a year." And then he pauses and realizes that's an impossible promise to keep, and so he crumbles up the paper, and he throws it away, gets out a fresh sheet of paper, and he says, "Dear Jesus, if you give me a Nintendo DS, I promise I'll be good for a month." And he realizes that's really impossible for him, too. Crumbles up that paper, throws it away, sits and thinks, and then he quietly goes downstairs to the living room where the Christmas tree is lit. It's nighttime. He goes to the nativity scene. He takes the figure of the Virgin Mary, and he gift wraps it, puts it in a bag, puts it in his closet, takes out a fresh sheet of paper, and writes, "Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again..." Mary really has captured our imagination for centuries.

I was in the store the other day, and Life magazine has a brand new edition. They're not even publishing weekly anymore, but they put out a special monthly edition this month called Mary, Blessed Art Thou Among Women, and it's full of beautiful imagery about Mary and stories about people's interest in Mary. And one of the things that they say in the very first article in this magazine is a really good point. They say you hear a lot about Mary in Roman Catholic churches and in Greek Orthodox churches, but you hardly ever hear anything about Mary in Protestant churches, and that's really true. And they ask the question, "Why is that?" I mean, she is in the Bible. She has a very intriguing personality. She's in the Bible for a reason. Protestant churches, hardly anything mentioned about her.

Well, I read that, and I thought, "We're going to change that this year at Twin Lakes Church, and I want to talk about Mary this morning," because she's fascinating. But first I want to cover why it matters. Why is it important to talk about Mary's experience as related in Scripture? And to answer that question, let me ask you a question. Show of hands, how many of you love the holiday classic, It's a Wonderful Life? How many of you love that movie? I want to show you a little bit, a scene from it. It's one of my favorite scenes from the movie. It's critics call it kitschy, but I don't think it's a kitschy movie at all. I think it's actually pretty dark for a Christmas movie, because in this scene, George Bailey, the character played by Jimmy Stewart, all the wheels in his life are coming off, all at the same time. He's just lost all of his money. He's about to lose his business. He is angry. He is bitter. And in this scene, though he calls himself not a praying man, he prays to God.

Ah, Merry Christmas! I'm glad you come. How much are we good to get? We got everything. God. God. Dear Father and Heaven. I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, oh God. Powerful scene. And my guess is that all of us here in this room have prayed a prayer a lot like that. At some point in your life when you're just at the end of your rope, and maybe you feel like that right now, well, you know, it's very appropriate that It's a Wonderful Life is a Christmas movie because prayers just like that have been a part of Christmas from the very start, from the lips of Mary. Prayers of confusion and prayers of anxiety.

You know, we have this image of Mary being totally serene and detached and blissed out all the time, but the Bible actually paints quite a different picture. And this morning I want to talk about Mary not in the ways that she's different from you and me. I want to talk about Mary because of all the ways she is like you and me. Because that teaches all of us a lot about finding peace when life is tough. I want to invite you to grab the message notes that are inside your bulletins that you were handed when you came in, because those will help you follow along. Now, as you're taking those out, some of you are thinking, "René, you sure I'm like Mary? Me?" Yeah. There are at least five ways that every man, woman, and child in this room is just like Mary. Jot these down.

Number one, like Mary, there are things in my life that seem impossible, right? Absolutely impossible. There's times it seems impossible to do your job. Impossible to save a relationship. Impossible to change a habit. Well, talk about impossible. Look what Mary was facing. It says in Luke 1:26, "God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth to a town in Galilee." Now, stop there for just a second. Galilee is in the far north of the country of Israel. It is the sticks. It is the boonies. As my Swiss German mom used to say, "It was way out in the tulips." I mean, it was in the middle of nowhere. And Nazareth was a tiny hick town in the boonies. It was really Nowheresville.

What was life there like in the time of Christ? Well, just recently, as in about two years ago, archeologists uncovered the first evidence of a village from the time of Christ in Nazareth. This is a picture of it. It's a tiny little home of some very poor people. And based on some other preliminary work that they've done there, they estimate that in the time of Christ, there were only maybe about 12 little homes in Nazareth. It was small. It was poor. One cool thing is that's a one in 12 chance that that was Mary and Joseph's home. So that's kind of cool, right? Now, how do they know it was from the time of Christ? Well, they found some pottery from that time. So that's how they can date it to that time with absolute certainty. But it was poor quality pottery because this was a very poor place.

So the point of this verse is that God sent kind of the super angel Gabriel to this Nowheresville hick town, the least likely place for an angel to appear, right, to the least likely person, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. Mary was probably about 13, 14, or 15 years old. In other words, you saw the girls choir that was up here. Mary would have been their age because by about 15, she would have been married in that culture at the time. Now, there's a word repeated twice here in this verse that's very important. And what is it? The word virgin. Now, why is the word virgin emphasized so much in this story? Well, there's a couple of reasons. First, it was a fulfillment of prophecy. Back in Isaiah 7:14, it says, when the Messiah comes, a virgin will conceive miraculously and give birth to a son, and he'll be known as Emmanuel, God with us. And so that's very important.

But there's another important reason that that word is included in this story. And I think it's here that a lot of us can almost subconsciously make a real big mistake when it comes to Mary. Follow me here. Because we can make the assumption that this is in the text to show that Mary was so pure and innocent and perfect that that is why God chose her. And of course, there was a kind of innocence that she had, but that's not the point of the story at all. In fact, the danger in thinking this is that you start to think, well, the reverse must also be true. God is not going to call me and use me and love me like you love Mary because I'm not so pure and innocent. You know, I'm no virgin. But the point of the story is exactly the opposite of that kind of thinking. Mary's virginity is mentioned because it represents the total impossibility of her having a baby. That point is about God and about how God does miracles, how God will fulfill his plan against any obstacle in the most unlikely person. It doesn't matter how impossible or unlikely. That's the point.

And think of what this means for you. This means your relationship can be restored. This means your sobriety can be restored. This means that character defect that you want changed. That can be changed by God because God caused a virgin to give birth. God does the impossible. In fact, that's his specialty. Now, maybe you're thinking, I'm having kind of a hard time with this whole idea of a virgin having a child. Well, you're not alone because guess who the very first person was who had a hard time with that idea? Yeah, Mary. And that's the second point. Like Mary, I can be very confused at God's plan. Never get confused at God's plan. I am all the time.

Now, I want you to look at this. For hundreds of years, it was common in Christian art to show Mary as absolutely unflappable, unperturbed by the angel's visitation. She's in all the stained glass windows in Europe. She's totally serene and completely placid. She's kind of like a giant angelic being, has just erupted in glory in my bedroom. I'm totally cool with that. And that is not how the Bible actually paints her. And art historians say that the first piece of art that started to change this was this piece of art. It's done by a man named Dante Rossetti. And he painted this in 1850. And it was almost pulled from exhibit because it caused such a controversy. Why was this painting so controversial? It was the first one in centuries to paint Mary as a normal human being who was, as the Bible paints her, freaked out at the angel.

In fact, this is modeled by Rossetti's own younger sister. And he just painted Mary to look exactly like his sister. And I love her body language here. She's trying to crawl into the wall behind her. She's not even looking at Gabriel. She's scared. She's very reluctant and hesitant to believe what this being is telling her. And I think he captures the real Mary's state of mind perfectly. Because in the Bible, at first she was not serene. In the Bible, you see three things. First, Mary was troubled. It says Mary was greatly troubled at the angel's words. The word troubled was a very intense verb in the original Greek. That's the language this was originally written in. It means deeply disturbed, distraught, fearful. So have events in the world or in your life left you feeling like that this year? Well, guess what? Mary was feeling those same emotions here.

And it says that Mary was alarmed. It says she wondered what kind of greeting this might be. And I want to show you something that opened this up to me. I've never seen this before. The word wondered is a verb that's used repeatedly in the New Testament. In fact, it's used 25 times. And each time it's used, it's used to describe somebody who's trying to figure something out. But they're not making a headway. They're puzzled. It's kind of the sense of that line in how the Grinch stole Christmas. He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore, right? That's the emotion that's coming through here. What's she so puzzled about? It says she was puzzling over what kind of greeting this might be. Now, literally it means what kind of salutation. In those days, no matter where you were from, your region, your kind of ethnic group, had its own salutation. And that's how people knew where you were from, kind of what your agenda was. And vestiges of that survived today. If somebody comes up to you and says, "Kepasa!" or "Aloha!" or "Shalom!" You're pretty likely to know where they're probably from, right? Well, imagine if everybody did that. That was polite to kind of identify yourself where you're from by your style of greeting. And this literally means Mary wondered what manner of salutation this was. This means that what the angel was saying was completely foreign to her. I don't think she realized at first it was an angel. She's like, "Who is this? I don't know where he's from." And if the Word of God has ever seemed completely foreign to you, then you have felt like Mary felt.

And then when the angel tells her that she will bear the Messiah, Mary was questioning. "How will this be?" Mary asked the angel. "Since I'm a virgin," she says you're basically a pardon me, but in the world I live, this does not happen. And you know what? Mary is thinking totally clearly. She's absolutely right. That is impossible. And you know what? Sometimes when you think about something in your life, you know, this is impossible. Sometimes you're thinking clearly. Sometimes for God to do a miracle in your life, you have to come to the point where you say, "I am powerless to do anything about this. It's impossible, but for the grace of God." Sometimes that's clear thinking.

And then the next thing Gabriel says to Mary changes history. He says, "You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you're to call him Jesus." And then as you heard Chris and Christy read, he says, "He will be great. He'll be called the son of the Most High. The Lord God will..." Now look at all of the references to royalty here. "The Lord God will give him the..." What? "Throne of his father David, and he will..." What? "Rain over Jacob's descendants forever, and his..." What? "Kingdom will never end." Do you realize what the angel is saying to Mary? He's saying the Messiah that your country has been waiting for for 600 years through all those prophecies, through all that oppression, he is now coming into the world. And Mary, he's coming through you. This is it. This is the moment. And the mother of the Messiah is you. I wonder how that felt to Mary.

Well, that's a question that this next song we're going to hear asks. It's a great classic song about Mary that tries to put us in her shoes. What did she feel? What did she know? What were emotions like when she knew she was going to conceive, when she was about to give birth? So think of that. Put yourself in Mary's shoes as you listen to Mary Did You Know? And join me in welcoming back James Durbin as he sings that song for us.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters? Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you? And this child that you can deliver would soon deliver you? Mary, did you know your baby boy would give his eye to a blind man? Mary, did you know your baby boy would come to storm with his hands? Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod? Did you kiss your little baby? Kiss the face of God, oh Mary, did you know? Oh, Mary, did you know? Oh, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again. The lame will eat, the dog will speak, the prison of the mob.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation? Mary, did you know your baby boy would one day rule the nation? Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb? The sleeping child you're holding is the great lamb.

So what did Mary know? Well, Mary knew three things that changed her life and they can change your life too. If you're facing a discouraging situation right now, like Mary was with this very unexpected, stressful news, you are going to be blessed by these three things very quickly. She knew, like Mary, I am told by God that I am highly favored. I am highly favored by God. This is so, so cool. Look at Luke 1:28. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you." Now, this expression, highly favored, it's translated in older Bibles as full of grace. I want to tell you something about this that blew me away the first time I heard it. This phrase is used only one other time in the Bible. It was used only this time. You'd say, "Wow, Mary's really special. I mean, to be full of grace, to be told you're highly favored by God, that is a really special thing to be said of you." And if it was only used here, said of Mary, that's where you'd leave it. But it's used one other time in the Bible and it's spoken about you and about me. Same phrase. Ephesians 1:6, it's translated this way. "We praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on who? On us who belong to His dear Son. He's poured His favor on you. Like Mary, you are filled up with grace. You are highly favored by God. The grace of God on your life is so important to understand. Grace means a free gift, lavished on you.

CBS News had a great story that to me was all about grace this week. It seems a millionaire in Kansas City gave stacks of $100 bills to the police department in Kansas City. And he told them, "I want you to go out and distribute them to people, pull people over and give them $100 bills." And the CBS News cameras followed them as they did. Watch the stream. The officers went out to do Santa's bidding. They specifically went after people they thought would appreciate it most. Cars driving while dented or out on bondo were likely targets. "Where's your Christmas?" "You're kidding." "See that?" "Yes, oh my God, no!" Most people weren't just blown away. Most people were brought to tears. "I figured they'd better." "Oh!" Their reactions, a combination of really needing the money. "Are you serious right now?" And being caught so off guard. "Hello." "You just looked straight at me and turned around and pulled me over with no car. Hold on." "How you doing, ma'am?" "I'm good until you pulled me over." "Okay, well, I'm going to be having a secret Santa and he wants you to have this." "Okay." Jessica Rodriguez, a mother of three, told the deputy he saved her Christmas. "I want you to be able to give the kids anything." "Well, I hope you'll be able to give the kids something with you." Isn't that awesome, man? I love that story. How many of you want to move to Kansas City right now and get pulled over by a cop? Right? I do.

But you see, they were graced by this money that they got from the cops. And you and I are graced by God with salvation and every other spiritual blessing. There's only one thing we need to do. There's only one thing you do with a gift. You can't earn a gift and it's no longer a gift. All I need to do is receive it. Man, that changes everything. When you receive it, you begin to see yourself as graced because I want you to think of this. This, I hope, blows your mind. That means the same thing said of Mary can be said of you and of me. If you could hear God talk to you at the start of every day, God talking to you in the morning, one thing you would hear is this. Greetings, you who are highly favored. Today, the Lord is with you. Man, that is powerful to see yourself through God's eyes. And of course, the greatest way that God showed his favor to us, the greatest, you know, $100 bill he handed us, is that he came to earth as a baby in order to die as a man for your abundant life, for your salvation forever, and Mary's salvation too, by the way.

And the angel reminds her of God's grace. The angel said, "Don't be afraid, Mary. You found favor with God." And here again is where Mary basically says, "Excuse me, I'm not going to have a baby. No way. I'm not married. And I'm not having relations with anyone. And I never have. And this is really weird. And there might be a mix up. You might have the wrong Mary here because that's a common name. I imagine all this is going through her head. And that's when it gets really good as the story gets to his conclusion. Point four, like Mary, I'm told that for God, all things are possible. All things are possible for God. The angel says, check this out, "The Holy Spirit will come to you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. And therefore, the Holy Child developing inside you will be called the Son of God." So the child is both fully human, developing within Mary, and is also fully divine of the Holy Spirit. So much we could say here. We could talk about that for hours. But for a couple of minutes, I just want to look at the phrase, "The Holy Spirit will come to you." Because so far you might have been thinking, "All right, René, I could buy that in the ways you've discussed." So far, I guess I'm a little bit like Mary, her confused emotions. But here certainly is where we start to differ. Really? Because one of the promises of the risen Christ is that when we trust in Him, the Holy Spirit comes to us in power too, the same Holy Spirit.

One of my favorite stories about a pastor is a true story that happened at the 1800s. Charles Spurgeon was the most famous pastor in the world, and he pastored at this place. It was called the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. This is an engraving of it. It was filled every weekend like this, wall to wall, thousands of people. It was three times the size of this auditorium, very successful ministry, and then one tragic Sunday when it was this crowded in the middle of the sermon, someone yelled, "Fire!" as a prank. And several people were trampled to death in the ensuing stampede. Understandably Spurgeon was shattered. He retreated to his bedroom where he didn't eat, didn't sleep for nearly a week, and at the end of the week, the elders of the church came to him. "So Charles, we know that you're overcome by grief, but you need to come into the church this Sunday and give these people some encouragement." He said, "I can't do it." They said, "You have to come." So he sat in the front pew, and he told his wife when it was time to him to preach, "I can't do it." And she told him, "Do you believe in the power of the Holy Spirit?" And he told people later that with every step up to the elevated pulpit, he said to himself, "I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't believe in my power, but I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit." And they said when he got up there, he gave an electrifying, unifying message as the Holy Spirit enabled him to overcome his anxiety.

And I've got to be honest with you many, many, many times, more than I can count, I felt anxiety and stage fright and unworthiness, and I've said to myself as I've walked up these steps, those exact words, "I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, not in my own power, my own strength." But how about you? Do you know no matter what you face, you can believe in the power of the Holy Spirit? You can have the power of God. Now some of you are saying, "Wow, that's a huge concept. How do I access that power? What's it all about?" I'm very excited about this. My good friend Kevin Harney, who's a pastor down in Monterey at Shoreline Church, just wrote a book. It was released about two weeks ago. It's called Empowered that talks about how you and I can be empowered in our weaknesses by the Holy Spirit. And we are going to make this book available to you starting next weekend at our cost. And if you can't afford it, then it's just free to you. Just take it. I want you to have this. And in January, we're doing a four-week series based on this, how you in your daily life can be empowered by God to overcome any obstacle. I am so stoked about starting the year with this. But kind of our theme verse will be this next verse, Luke 1:37. The angel reminds Mary, "For nothing is impossible for God." You know, if you look at this phrase in actually the original language, it literally is, "For with God, no word shall be without power." In other words, God's words aren't empty. When God says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you," He means it. When God says, "I will work all things out together for good for those who are loved and called according to my purpose," He means it. When God says, "He loves the whole world including you," you have His word on it.

And Mary at last opens herself up to all these possibilities. And number five, like Mary, I can also choose to surrender to God's will. Surrender to God's will. In 12-step groups, they talk about turning it over, right? Let go and let God. And Mary does that here. It's so beautiful. Look at this, verse 38. "I'm the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May your word to me be fulfilled." In the old Bibles, may it be unto me according to thy word. The word she uses for herself, "servant," it's not the word for like a maid or a butler, somebody who's a servant but can quit. It's bondservant that's somebody who is sealed to their master for life. In Jewish culture, a servant could choose to do that, to seal themselves to a master for life, to become part of their family. That's what Mary's saying, and it's such a freeing, peace-giving decision to say that yourself. God, I choose that you are my Lord for life. Because, God, you're the one orchestrating the world, not me. I'm going to make my plans, but you direct my steps. I'm going to resign as general manager of the universe because that's you. And I want to live with you not as a hired hand. I'm with you. I choose to be with you for life.

Now, when you're a little kid and you hear this story, you just kind of imagine Mary going, "Mmm, okay." And next step, Bethlehem, smiling, animals in the hay, cute baby, cute animals, you know, and it's just kind of all nice. But imagine reality for just a second. What she knew she was agreeing to. Total chaos. I think the movie The Nativity Story shows it well in this scene between Mary, her parents, and Joseph. Watch this. An angel told you this, that you would bear the Son of God, Mary. Elizabeth had a baby, even in her old age. Elizabeth has a husband! I mean, I've been put to death for this. They could stone you in the street. Do you understand? You should have stayed with Elizabeth. Father. Father, I have broken no vow. Oh, you have broken every vow, Mary. Was it one of her soldiers? Was it? I have told the truth. Whether you believe is your choice.

Powerful scene, and that was Mary's reality. She's saying yes to God does not mean everything goes smoothly. For Mary, things got worse. Joseph wanted to divorce her. That's actually in the Bible. That's not a later fabrication. Her betrothed said, you know, I want a divorce. She had to give birth in a barn. She had to flee as a refugee to Egypt. This was not the easy thing for her to do, but it was the right thing for her to do. Are you facing impossible situations in your life? You let go and let God. You turn over the whole situation to him. You tell him, I want you to be my Lord for life. That doesn't mean everything gets automatically easier, but it does mean it's better to go through those tough times that way because now you're facing the stress with a sense of purpose and a sense of order and a sense of destiny.

And what happens in you will be what you could call a merry miracle because God will bring life out of that chaos as he reminds you. You're favored by God, graced by him if you receive it. Nothing's impossible with God. The power of God works in you when you put it all in his hands and see him do miracles. And let me wrap it up with this. There's been a lot of songs about Mary. We just heard a beautiful one. But did you know who composed the first song about Mary? Mary. The lyrics to the beautiful song she wrote are in the Bible at the end of Luke 1. It's the Magnificat, and it starts like this. My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. God, my Savior. The most important way that Mary was like you and like me is that she too needed a Savior. She knew it. And when we say, God, Lord, you're my Savior, then you can say these next lines, the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name.

Like the song says, the baby she delivered would soon deliver her. So I want to make a couple of suggestions to you, just suggestions. And one is maybe take those notes, circle this prayer, and try this. Try praying this prayer yourself. It's not magic, but praying it from your own soul as your own words. Maybe every morning this week leading up to Christmas, can you imagine the difference it'll make in your perspective if you start your day saying, I choose to have my soul glorify the Lord, and I choose to rejoice in God, my Savior, and I choose to see how the mighty one has done great things for me, how he has lavished his riches upon me by his grace. Holy is his name.

And here's another little suggestion, and this might sound a little bit corny, but I'm praying that this will be kind of a mnemonic device, that this will stick in your memory. We've talked about how Mary responded to these unexpected realities in her life. My guess is there's going to be some unexpected realities in your life this week. Little stresses, little surprises. This time of year you hear a lot of people say, Merry Christmas, right? Merry Christmas. Well, I want to suggest to you that every time until Christmas you hear somebody say that to you, you consider it a reminder to have a "Merry Christmas," that you respond to the stress of life like Mary did, saying, God, man, you're in control of this train, not me, and I'm troubled, I'll be honest with you, don't like it, don't get it, but God, ultimately, I'm your servant, and I believe that with you, all things are possible.

Let's pray. Would you bow your heads with me? With your heads bowed, where's the stress point in your life, right this moment? Just with our heads bowed, have a moment of prayer with God, just be honest about that with God right now. Say, I'm deeply troubled. You can be honest with him. Mary felt that way. This is impossible, God, too much for me. And now hear God saying, don't be afraid, remember your highly favored, remember the power of the Holy Spirit, remember that with me, all things are possible. And now, like Mary, respond to him by saying, may it be unto me according to thy word, I'm your servant. Lord, help me to focus on God, our Savior, this season, not the running around, not just on searching for the best gift, but on the truth that you sent your son. And with that, all things are possible. And God, I pray that every single one of us would leave saying, thank you, God, my Savior, you've done amazing things. May it be unto me according to your word, in Jesus' name, amen.