Change of Plan

Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Now what is Advent? You may not have grown up with Advent as a tradition. Well, the word Advent simply means the arrival of an important person or era. And of course during the Christmas season, Christians remember the arrival of the Messiah, both his first arrival at Christmas and his anticipated second arrival when he returns to make all things perfect. And that's what we celebrate at Christmastime.

It happens the four weeks before Christmas, and since this is the fourth Sunday before Christmas, four more weeks to go. What happens is Christians all over the world will be lighting one candle per week and then the fifth candle on Christmas morning or on Christmas Eve to commemorate the arrival of Jesus Christ. And we're doing a couple of things here at church to help you anticipate the Christmas season, and one is this book. I hope you got it when you came in. If not, you can pick one up for free when you leave, and if Adrienne tries to sell one to you, don't pay any attention to that. These are free, and these were written by Valerie Webb. She did a great job at these.

Every day, between today and Christmas morning, there is a scripture reading and there's a daily devotional and a prayer to help you get into the right mindset for Christmas. Also, every service between now and Christmas Eve, we're going to have a different family from Twin Lakes Church come on up, light the Advent candle, and read that day's scripture portion. So for this morning, we have the Dunbars, we have Bill and Rebecca and Charlie and Bella. Would you welcome them this morning?

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, 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 his 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.

So beautiful, don't you love that families reading scripture and lighting candles together? Yes. Well this morning I want to kick off our Advent series with a message I call "Change of Plan." Would you just say that out loud with me? Change of Plan. Because you and I tend to hear that a lot around this time of year, don't we? Change of Plan.

Quick audience poll here. Show of hands, how many of you tend to be planners? You like to organize. When you go on vacations, they are planned. No, no, hold your hands up with pride. You are planners. Sometimes almost OCD planners. You are controlling planners, that is you, right? Okay. Most of the time I kind of count myself among that. When I go on vacation and so on, I'm definitely a planner. Now, what about those of you who like to be more spontaneous, more adventurous? Raise your hands if that is you. Look at this. You'll notice there were more planners here than spontaneous people. The spontaneous people didn't plan well enough to get here on time. They're gonna be coming in in 15 minutes. They all go to venue 15 minutes late.

But now hold your hand up again. You're spontaneous people. These people, you like to say, "I'm adventurous." No, you're annoying. You're annoying. Because you are the people that planners will be taken care of in your old age, right? But I could just as easily offend planners because sometimes we planners can suck the life out of things, right? We can over plan everything. Like I, when we, when our family goes to Disneyland, I literally have consulted the websites that predict how long the lines will be at each ride on what time of day for the day of the year that you are going to Disneyland. Yes, these sites exist and I love them.

And I have a battle planner. I have family pirates of the Caribbean at 1,300 hours. Synchronize your watches. Three, two, one, go! How many of you are kind of like that when you go on vacation? Anybody? Okay. You know what the worst thing to hear for somebody who's that much of a planner? What are the worst three words to hear in the world? Say it with me. Change of plan. We don't like to hear that phrase because we love our plan. We worked hard on our plan. We are dedicated to our plan. So don't tell me change of plans.

The only problem with that attitude is that life tells us change of plan all the time. I found some great quotes on this. The famous Scottish poet Robert Burns was plowing one of his fields back in the 18th century and accidentally plowed through a mouse burrow. And as he saw the little mice scattering everywhere, he leaned down and apologized and said this: the best-laid schemes of mice and men. Gang aft aglay. And gang aft aglay is an old way of saying go aft aray. That just means mice, humans, same category. We plan wonderful things that we think are going to go exactly smoothly. And then some plow interrupts our plans and makes everything go haywire.

Another great quote on this. Someone said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. That's from the great theologian Mike Tyson. True quote. I love this quote from Rick Warren. He said so much serenity would come from understanding this truth. Nothing ever goes exactly the way you planned. Isn't that true? And then there's the wisdom of Solomon, Proverbs 16:9. We can make our plans but the Lord determines our steps.

Quick show of hands. How many of you have ever had your plans changed by God? Anybody here? Yeah, sometimes in big ways. Well it occurred to me this week that the Christmas story is essentially the angel appearing to one person after another announcing, say it with me, change of plan. Mary, change a plan. Joseph, change a plan. Wise men hoping to go back by this route, change a plan. Holy family hoping to go back up to Nazareth. Change a plan. You're going to Egypt now. It's one thing after another and you heard it all start in the text that the Dunbars read for you just a moment ago.

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee. By the way, we visited Nazareth with a group from TLC last year. They are making some very exciting discoveries there. They've actually found the remains of the first-century village from the time of Jesus Christ. And this is huge because for a while critics said that's an anachronism for the Bible to say that they lived in Nazareth because there was no first-century village in Nazareth. It's never talked about in any of the other literature from that time and so that's a lie. There was no village in Nazareth in the first century. Well, there was. They've actually carbon dated it to exactly the time of Jesus Christ.

Why wasn't it mentioned by any of the other writers? Because it was nowhere's Ville. It had about eight houses in it. They know this through ground radar. They've uncovered two of them so that means there is a one in four chance that one of these houses was the house of Jesus Christ and his family. Isn't that amazing? But the point to the scripture is that Nazareth was a nowhere town in the middle of a very rural nowhere County Galilee as far as you could get away from the civic center of Israel's life as possible down in Jerusalem.

The angel goes to a rural county to a nowhere's Ville town and goes to a very unlikely person there, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. Now I'm gonna talk more about Joseph later on in this Advent series this year, but for now I want to focus on Mary and her plans. What were her plans? It says right there "pledged to be married." That's a pretty big plan with a lot of expectations bound up in it. But the angel says, "Mary, I know you were planning a wedding shower but I just changed that to a baby shower. Change a plan."

And I want to talk about this today because I want to help you get prepared for the Christmas season. I was listening to a great podcast from a church called Elevation while I was out jogging about a week ago trying to burn off calories so I could eat more at Thanksgiving, I guess, and the pastor made a great point. He said this is the phrase that typifies the angel's announcement: change of plan. And it's a phrase that you and I are going to hear during the Christmas season, I guarantee it. Because although there will not be an angel that appears to you and says you are pregnant with God's baby, that was a very one-time thing, there will be other surprises that God or life or all those who raised their hand in the second group are going to kind of inflict upon you.

Sitting at the airport. Ladies and gentlemen, I know you were expecting to go visit your families on time during the holidays but there's been a change of plan. You at your house on Christmas Day with your normal expectations, somebody's gonna get up late, grumpy, somebody's gonna forget what they were supposed to bring for the potluck, something you cooked is going to burn, somebody's gonna get you exactly what you said you didn't want for Christmas, some present you wrapped up six months ago so proud that you were ahead of the game is not going to be found by you and you're gonna tear apart your closets looking for it. There will be something that springs upon you, a change of plan.

So you and I need to know how do we deal with this? Like somebody once said, I don't mind my plans being changed, I just don't like it when they are changed without my consent, right? That's the problem. Well, your plans this Christmas season will be changed without your consent. I was talking to somebody before the first service last night who said, wow, I said what's wrong? They said, well just talked to mom and dad and says this is somebody who's an adult, talked to their mom and dad, you know, 20-year empty nester couple. I said, oh yeah? And they said, yeah, mom and dad told us we know you were planning to come to our house for Christmas but now there's gonna be two Christmases because your father and I are getting a divorce. Change of plan.

I mean how do you handle it when life throws you curveballs? Well, I want to encourage you this Christmas season, regardless of what happens or who shows up or what the stores have in stock or how bad the traffic is or what you end up eating on Christmas Day, don't let your plans make you miss God's purpose for the next month and follow the example of Mary who shows us some simple strategies. I am preaching to myself as much as anybody else here today for keys to handling Christmas and life surprises, and honestly, these are just practical outworkings of really letting the Lord be Lord in your life. You might want to jot these down.

Number one: plan for plans to change. Plan for plans to change. Now how do you plan for plans to change? How do you plan for an interruption? It's important because you know some of the greatest opportunities in your life will come in the form of an interruption. So how can you plan? How can you have margin for an interruption? Well, there's a little hint in Mary's response here. Did you notice it in Luke 1? Mary says to the angel, "How will this be since I'm a virgin?" Now I believe Luke is setting us up to ask a question here because there was something different about Mary's response in this verse compared to a very similar response to a visit from an angel just a few verses before.

Zechariah was an old priest and he and his wife Elizabeth had not been able to have a baby and there were decades past when they thought they would have children and they'd gotten used to being a childless couple. They'd gotten into the rhythm of it. Zechariah had apparently focused on his career because he had risen in the rank of priest about as far as he could go. Life was pretty good for them. It was routine and an angel appears to Zechariah and says what? Change of plan. Your wife is going to have a baby. And Zechariah's response to the angel is, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years." I love the way he puts that. You know he does not say my wife is an old lady. He's been well trained. I'm old and my wife is rich in years, you know? I love that.

But then the angel strikes him speechless for his faithlessness until the baby's born. Pretty intense. So just a few verses later when the author Luke has Mary posing the same question, "How will this be since I'm a virgin?" and the angel does not rebuke her, it's clear that there is something just one degree different here in Mary's response. Instead of saying, "Yeah, right," like Zechariah essentially said, she's saying, "Yeah, how?" And I believe Mary was prepared for this by steeping herself, soaking herself in scripture. And here's why I think that.

Later in this same chapter, Luke 1, Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, Zechariah's wife, because now they both have kind of an unplanned pregnancy, mutual support system here. And Mary spontaneously composes a song there that we call the Magnificat, and it's a work of genius really. It's a beautiful poem, but every single line from her song lyrics is basically from another verse in the Bible in the Hebrew scriptures. Mary knew them so well she could just weave them, inspired by the Holy Spirit, into this beautiful lyric. Almost every line is basically about God saying change of plan. You proud people, change of plan. You scattered, you poor people who've given up hope, change of plan. You're lifted up, you rulers, change of plan. There's a new ruler in town.

I believe the point that Mary saw is that a common thread of the Bible is people who've had their plans upended. I mean, you think about it, which character in the Bible did not have their plans upended? It happens to every single one of them, and the Bible is an example of how God takes our expectations, turns them around, and does something amazing by changing our plans. And I think that's why Mary was prepared for this message from the angel and she's like, "What? That fits right into the way God works." And this attitude dovetails right into point two: I need to prize the blessings in the unexpected. I need to prize the blessings in the unexpected just like Mary did.

I'm gonna skip ahead in the story to the next chapter, Luke 2, and you're familiar with the story. You know that by this time Mary has heard change of plan so many times. Not only, as we said, you put your name on the wedding registry, well now it's gonna be put on the baby registry. Change of plan. And the change of plan, you're not gonna be staying in Nazareth, you're gonna be visiting Elizabeth. And oh, and change of plan, you can't stay there either, you have to go to Bethlehem. Oh, and change of plan, you were planning on staying in an inn, you got to go to the barn. Oh, change of plan, nobody has found a crib for you, try the feeding trough. I mean it is one thing after another: change of plan, change of plan, change of plan, change of plan.

So with that context, please do not overlook this little phrase. After all these twists and turns, Luke 2:19 says, "And Mary treasured up all these things in her heart." What an attitude! Instead of saying when at last, after a dozen of these change of plans, she's got to put her newborn in a feeding trough, instead of saying, "God, are you kidding me?" she treasures up all these things in her heart. I mean, you know that having a baby in a barn was not part of her dream plan for having that child. Do you know anybody right now who's expecting a baby or who just had a newborn baby? Now what do you know about their plans for the baby? They had the same plans for having a baby as any woman all throughout history. They want to have a baby in a clean place. They want to have a medical person there, maybe a midwife or a nurse or a doctor there. They want to have loved ones there. She's gonna want her mom there. She's gonna want her best friend there. And you know that's what Mary wanted. She got none of those things.

Nobody she knew in a strange place, a place that was dirty, and in fact the only people who show up are the shepherds, the lowest rung on the social ladder in that day. I mean, they stunk. They literally stunk. They were considered thieves. They were unwanted. Did you know that shepherds actually were not allowed to worship up at the temple if that was their occupation because they were considered ceremonially unclean? Interesting passage in Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, he basically says if you couldn't get any other job, you became a shepherd. So the shepherds were the oddballs, and Mary doesn't get mom, she doesn't get her best friend, she doesn't get a midwife, she gets these characters.

And I have always imagined them bursting into the barn just, you know, they're not these are not your socially aware guys and they come bursting in acting like Kramer or like any character that Christopher Lloyd has ever played, you know, Doc in Back to the Future. They come in here, there's a new baby, you know, oh what a beautiful baby, can I hold the baby? Let me hold him, let me hold him! And Mary's gotta be like, "What is happening right now?" But the shepherds, listen, the shepherds told her about the angels. Now think about this just for a second. How else would Mary have known that story of the angels appearing to the shepherds? Gloria in excelsia, stay! Oh glorious passage we read every Christmas Eve. Mary didn't see that, it was the shepherds who told her. And it says she treasured up these things in her heart.

And Luke at the beginning of Luke gives us a little hint here of how he got this information because he says I interviewed eyewitnesses. Well, what eyewitness could he have interviewed? He talked to Mary and Mary told him about the angels because she didn't sit there and say, "Why are my plans falling apart, God? I hate this." She treasured these things up in her heart and she tells Luke, "And the shepherds told me about the angels." They heard singing. Sometimes the most unlikely people show you the angels.

I got a Christmas card once from our Joyful Noise Sunday School class here at Twin Lakes Church, our differently abled adults, and they all wrote in it. I got it, it was one of the best Christmas cards I've ever received. And I don't know why I saw it, it could have gotten so easily missed in the stack of all the other Christmas cards that come your way. But that's the way it is with stuff that happens to us in the next 30 days. There's just a stack of stuff you could throw all of it in the basket like all these unread Christmas cards, or you can prize the blessings in the unexpected.

Would you agree that sometimes around Christmas time we almost idolize perfection? We almost idolize our plans. But you know, sometime in the next 30 days you are going to be in the middle of an amazing moment, but you could totally miss it because you will be focused on what didn't happen just right. Don't let that happen to you. Say, "God, thank you for your redirection this year." Say, "God, thank you that my plans for Christmas actually got derailed in some way." You may as well say that because they will in some way. I had other plans, but I'm gonna roll with this, God, and I'm gonna look for blessings in the unexpected.

And by the way, this didn't all stop with the birth of Jesus. Mary kept hearing change of plans. She goes up to the temple to dedicate Jesus when he's just a few days old and Rembrandt painted this beautiful picture of this. This is Simeon who is receiving the infant Jesus. Now who's in this picture? There's Simeon, there's the infant Jesus, there's Joseph, who's not in this picture. Where's Mary in this picture? Mary's the viewer. Rembrandt painted this scene in a way that I don't think anybody else ever has. You, as you view this, you're Mary. You're in Mary's place, and it's just so moving to me because he captures the moment that Simeon's eyes kind of flick up from the baby to Mary. Because if you know the story, you know what Simeon told Mary. He looks at her after dedicating the baby and he says, "Oh, and a sword will pierce your soul." Wow! Change of plan, thanks for the baby dedication thoughts, Simeon. You know, can you imagine if I said something like this during baby dedications here at church?

But when this did this happen 33 years later, a sword pierced her soul as she watched while her son was nailed to a cross. And some of you don't have to imagine what that was like because you've lost a son or a daughter or another loved one very unexpectedly. But Mary knew God would redeem even that seeming change of plan, and so she does not curl up into a ball and just die. She stays in the thick of it, and you see at the beginning of the book of Acts, there's Mary and she gets to watch as the church gets born. The point is there is pain in life, but don't let the pain make you miss the purpose. God can birth something new out of every inconvenience, out of every changed plan, even out of every tragedy.

And that moves us right to point three: prepare for God to do the impossible. Prepare for God to do things in your life that defy your expectations, that defy even human reason. Getting back to the story, Mary says, "How can this be since I'm a virgin?" The angel answers, "Well, the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called what? The Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. She's got a big baby bump happening and everybody thought she was barren, for nothing is impossible with God."

Now, of course, this specific miracle was unique, but this principle applies to everybody here. Nothing is impossible with God. Not overcoming your addiction, not overcoming your past, not overcoming that bad habit, not restoring that relationship, not achieving that dream. For God, with God, nothing is impossible. Now some of you hear that and you respond as people typically do and you're just like, "All right, I have dreams, I've got plans, I've got longings, I've got godly desires and I know 2016 is gonna be a great year. I believe with God nothing is impossible and God's going to do amazing things through me. He created me to do great works that he's prepared for me in advance and it's gonna be a great year." And I'm glad, I'm glad that you feel that way because that's true, that's godly.

But to some of us here today, this verse applies in another way because some of you are bearing what feels like an impossible weight this season. Possible impossible for you to reconcile the pain that you're feeling right now with what they tell you about how loving God is supposed to be. And sometimes at Christmas time it can feel like I'm supposed to be joyful. Man, this is just too hard. I'm just gonna take a vacation from church for a month. This is one of the reasons why this December we're doing something that we have never done before here at Twin Lakes Church. On December 23rd and 24th, we're going to have our usual beautiful candlelight services here in the auditorium and then there will be an addition for those people for whom there's been a loss, maybe this year or maybe it just still hurts this year. We're going to do a couple of services called remembering. On December 23rd, it will be 6:30. December 24th, it'll be 5:30 over in Munski Hall, a simple acoustic unplugged service where we hear a brief devotional remembering the one we lost but also remembering the one who found us, Jesus Christ. And you'll be able to light a candle for your loved one there.

And one of the reasons that we're doing that service, I'll be very honest with you, is because as many of you know, it's the first Christmas for me without my mother. She passed away at the end of May. Dad died many years before and I've had mixed feelings about going into this Christmas season. I've been a little bit like this, like I'm being dragged into the whole thing because I don't quite feel the joy that I often used to feel because it's the first Christmas without mom. And while I'm really glad that her Alzheimer's is over and she's living in glory and I'll see her again and she's perfectly healed, I know there's going to be all kinds of cues during this Christmas season that remind me of Christmases with her and I'm not really looking forward to that, I'll be very honest with you.

And so I want to have a place where I can, where you can go and say it's wonderful to celebrate but also I need to just have some space, a moment to grieve and allow God to minister to me in my grief. And I really want to say this, I'm sorry that I haven't always said this during the Christmas season. And what I want to tell you is don't be afraid even during Christmas to grieve. Don't be afraid to acknowledge it's not all Christmas lights, there are also Christmas shadows. But don't let what you've lost make you miss what you have left. Don't let what you've lost make you miss what you have left because God still has amazing things for you. God, for some of you, is going to do what feels to you right now impossible. He's going to take some pain, some hurt, some loss that seems so impossible for you to get past and you're going to see God redeem that and do an amazing work in you.

And it will be said of you, she of whom it was said she was unable to move on, she was unable to get past it, she in her has been birthed something new and something thrilling, some new life, some new direction. God can do it for you. It will be said of him whose life seemed to be barren, God has done something amazing in his life even through that loss. And I gotta tell you here at Twin Lakes Church, there are so many people who have seen that happen in their lives, so many people. And to give you some assurance that these aren't just some sales words coming from some pastor, I want you to meet just one of those people and listen to her story. Watch the screen.

So I first accepted Christ when I was in high school. I was really involved in Young Life and went to camp and started my path that way. Over the years, just have done a lot of different kind of searching, but it was all intellectual. It was all in my thinking about it. I'm reading a lot of books, doing a lot of research, never really felt a personal connection, feeling like, you know, all this is okay. And for a long time, I even said all paths lead to God, so any path I take as long as I believe in God is fine. And then that all changed when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I would say it's an understatement that it put my faith to the test. And I think what I found is I really didn't have any faith. It was in that really a state of brokenness that Christ poured his life into me and it became very personal. The only thing that sustained me was Christ in all his glorious wisdom and compassion poured himself into me. I thought I was fine and I wasn't fine. And I honestly was not only walking towards a dead end, I was dead inside. And when my mom died, it was a huge wake-up call. And the blessing inside my mom's death was God opened this huge door to me to walk through and to really know him and to know Christ. And that wouldn't have happened if my mom hadn't died.

Powerful testimony. A sentence you don't think you'll ever hear, right? The blessing in my mom's death was... But the way God does the impossible is he brings blessing out of things that look like tragedy. I don't believe he makes the tragedies happen in your life, but what he does is he redeems them just as he redeemed the cross with the resurrection. For with God, nothing is impossible. And finally, Mary's response shows you and me how to put God first. Put God first. Mary says, "I am the Lord's servant." And in that one little phrase is wrapped up the whole reason for her response. She says, "I am his bond servant. He is my Lord. May it happen to me as you have said." You know, Mary had her plans and Joseph had his plans, and then God had what? Plan B? No, he had plan A. They just didn't know it. It seemed like plan B to them. What if God's plan B, rather, what if your plan B is really God's plan A?

You know, what if what you see as plan B is God's plan A for you? However you're disappointed or throwing a curveball this Christmas season, you know there's a familiar verse. If you Google the verses in the Bible that have the word plan or plans in them, you will come across this verse, very familiar verse to many people: Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Most people love this verse, but what would you say the key words in that verse are? The word plans? Most people love the words prosper and hope and future, but actually I think the key word of this passage is not prosper or not hope, not future, not plans. See, the context of Jeremiah 29:11 is that God's people have strayed outside God's plan. They had strayed so far, but God allows them to be carried off to Babylon, hundreds of miles away from their home in Jerusalem. And false prophets had told the people it's okay because God's gonna work a miracle and send you right back to Jerusalem again. And in Jeremiah 29:10, the verse previous to this, it says, "This is what the Lord says: When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place." In other words, you have your own plans for prosperity, but I have different plans.

So the next verse, Jeremiah 29:11, really the emphasis, the key word is not prosper or hope or plan. Really the emphasized word here is I. I, the Lord, know the plans. Implied is you don't know the plans I have for you. You don't know, but I know the plans I have for you. It's saying we get our plans sometimes confused with his promises. We get our plans confused with his promises. But just because our plans change doesn't mean God's promises changed. Just because your plan changed doesn't mean your destiny is changed. Just because your plan changed, it might mean God had a much better plan. Think of all the plans of the Bible that got changed by God. Hey Abram, I know you love it there in your nice neighborhood in Ur, but I'm moving you to a different place. Change of plan. Hey Pharaoh, I know you got some nice slaves there in Egypt, but I've seen how you mistreat the children of Israel and I got a change of plan. Hey Moses, I know you are sitting as an 80-year-old in the desert thinking you're washed up, unloved, unwanted, and useless, but I got a change of plan. How about the original disciples who think that the Messiah is coming to take over as an earthly ruler because for hundreds of years that was their plan? And then Jesus shows up and says a change of plan. Change of your plan, not change of God's plan.

See, don't miss the big picture. Christmas is not just an announcement to Mary. Christmas is a cosmic announcement that there's been a massive change of plan. What plan? The plan that every single human being really had instinctively to try to get to heaven, to try to get to God, was to be good, was to try real hard, was to specifically keep the revealed law of God, get there on my own merit, keep the Ten Commandments. But the Bible says in Romans 8, and this is on page 3 of your notes, the law of Moses was unable to save us. Why? Because it was wrong? No, it was perfect. But because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own son in a body, that's what we celebrate, the incarnation, like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body, God declared an end to sin's control over us by giving his son as a sacrifice for our sins. And he did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us.

See, the plan had been you keep the law, you get right with God. That was the religious plan. You keep the law and you'll be right. But God says, "No, there's been a change of plan. It's a plan I've had since the foundation of the world, but for you, it's a brand-new plan, the new covenant in my blood." And let me tell you something, no matter what goes wrong for you this Christmas, that went exactly the way God planned. And so you can rejoice in that. You know what? Some of you need to tell yourself, "I was planning on having kind of a depressed Christmas this year, but there has been a change of plan." Right? I've been sick or the kids have been sick or my teenager has been rebelling and life hasn't been going the way it should and I don't like my job. And so I was thinking this is gonna be another stupid Christmas. But there's been a change of plan because I'm not going to focus on how my plans got dashed. I'm going to focus on how ultimately God's plan came true through Christmas and he is my Lord and he is my Savior.

This is very personal for me because I was going into Christmas, as I said, with very mixed feelings. But I have had an announcement from God and it didn't come from an angel of the Lord. I don't need an angel of the Lord because I've got the word of the Lord and I've got the Spirit of the Lord shouting at me, "René, change of plan! René, you were planning on having kind of a mediocre Christmas because this is the first Christmas without your mother. But I, you can't change that situation, but René, you can change your attitude. And instead of expecting kind of a mediocre or depressing Christmas or a chaotic Christmas, you can go into Christmas with anticipation. You can go into Christmas with gratitude. You can go into Christmas with joy. You can go into Christmas expecting to find the blessing even in the disappointments, even in the unexpected, even when things don't go the way I plan because God's plan to save you and to save me went exactly how God had intended.

Anybody here agree with me on that? Because that is where our hope is. God changed our plan. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me and just close your eyes? Heavenly Father, thank you for this truth. And God, I just pray for the one whose plans have fallen apart here today. Maybe for the one who feels unworthy or for the one who is grieving. What do you do when your plans fall apart in your life? Well, the promise of God still stands, and the most foundational promise is this: whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you're listening right now with your head bowed and your eyes closed and you need to come to Christ for the first time or come back to him, that's why he came to earth at Christmas, to seek and save you. So just pray something like this: it's not the words that are magic, it's the attitude of the heart. I admit I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus is my Lord and Savior. I believe he died on the cross for my sin and rose again, and now I want to follow him in this new plan for the rest of my life. Thank you for being the God who specializes in saying to planners and to spontaneous people, "I've got a change of plans for you." And help us to look for the blessing in those new plans. Thank you, God. In Jesus' name, amen.