When We Need a Little Christmas Right This Very Minute
Many Christmas movies portray the season as one of hot chocolate, comfy slippers, and warm blankets. But the profound message of hope that Christmas brings, is a far grander and grittier story.
True hope is not merely about future outcomes but about experiencing God's goodness and strength in our everyday lives. A superficial understanding of hope can be dangerous, particularly if it invites complacency about our need for transformation.
By drawing on insights from Dallas Willard's work, The Divine Conspiracy, we see genuine change comes from a heartfelt desire for transformation, rather than just accumulating knowledge. We are reminded that hope is a sustaining force, capable of supporting us through both joyful and difficult times, and is essential for becoming the best versions of ourselves.
Takeaways:
- Honesty takes bravery, especially when reflecting on the true meaning of hope during Christmas.
- The Christmas story invites us to experience transformation rather than just information.
- Hope is essential for thriving, but it can also be a difficult concept to live with.
- True hope in the Christmas season is not about getting what we want, but about becoming who we are meant to be.
- We often confuse gathering information with personal growth, which can limit real transformation.
- Genuine hope is found in God's goodness, not merely in hoping for desired outcomes.
Empower yourself and your family to engage fully in God’s grand story. Subscribe to Hi(Impact) at Stephanie Presents for insights, encouragement, and practical resources!
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Transcript
Welcome brave listener.
Speaker A:Yes, I said brave because we are brave around here, because we are honest.
Speaker A:And honesty takes bravery.
Speaker A:And I want you to be brave enough today to ask yourself, have you ever felt like Christmas can just start to feel like wa wa, wa, wa wa.
Speaker A:Been there, done that.
Speaker A:Here we go again?
Speaker A:If so, I understand.
Speaker A:But stay tuned because we're going to talk about a perspective on Christmas today that can relight your joy.
Speaker A:Stay tuned.
Speaker B:If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.
Speaker B:Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.
Speaker B:If you're a parent, you'll also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.
Speaker B:Let's get started.
Speaker A:Two days ago, it was December 1st.
Speaker A:Well, if you're listening, when this podcast originally airs, and not only was it the first day of a new month, it was also the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday that we traditionally focus on the hope of the message of Christmas.
Speaker A:But what exactly do we mean by hope?
Speaker A:Is it just as we look back and as people were looking for that first coming of Christ, that they were hoping for a messiah?
Speaker A:And for us today, as we look at the second coming of Christ, is it just to be able to hope for his return?
Speaker A:Does the original Christmas hope only apply as we kind of transfer it to the second coming of Christ?
Speaker A:Is our hope in God, and for what?
Speaker A:Hope is something that we need to thrive as humans.
Speaker A:And yet hope can be a very dangerous thing.
Speaker A:We don't want to live without it.
Speaker A:And at the same time, when we're honest, sometimes it's hard to live with hope.
Speaker A:So when we talk about the first Christmas and as we prepare to celebrate this season and this day here in just a matter of a few weeks, what does the hope of Christmas really mean to us in everyday life?
Speaker A:Is it just about looking forward to an eternity with Christ?
Speaker A:Yes, there is that.
Speaker A:But again, because we're honest around here, we know that that hope is not enough to sustain us in everyday, ordinary life.
Speaker A:When the bills pile up and we don't see a way they're going to get paid, when the diagnosis comes in for our child and we don't know what direction to take, and if there's even a treatment that's available, when we can barely walk and breathe at the same time because of the loss of a spouse, either through a death or a divorce, or because they have just walked out the door, when we have a child who has walked away from Christ or who has walked away from the morals and the ethics that they were taught, and they are living in a lifestyle that absolutely breaks our heart.
Speaker A:And where is hope?
Speaker A:We've been talking on the Tuesday episodes for the last couple of weeks using some of the material from Dallas Willard's phenomenal book, the Divine Conspiracy, Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.
Speaker A: at I encourage you to buy for: Speaker A:One of the things that Dallas writes about is how we view the Gospel, the good News, not in some theoretical way, but in just real life.
Speaker A:And one of the things that he wrote was the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers.
Speaker A:It is a peculiarly modern notion that the aim of teaching is to bring people to know things that may have no effect at all on their lives.
Speaker A:Now, as a speaker and writer and podcaster, I understand this on both sides, both as someone who hears, but as someone also who teaches.
Speaker A:I don't just want to teach in order to throw out information and hope that somehow it sticks.
Speaker A:It is about helping people to be transformed.
Speaker A:Because all of us are in a stage of transformation.
Speaker A:It is only a matter whether we are downgrading, we are degrading, or we are upgrading and we are growing.
Speaker A:There is no stagnation in human lives.
Speaker A:There is no neutral.
Speaker A:We are either growing or we are decaying.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:No third option.
Speaker A:And it's all too common for us to confuse gathering information with personal growth.
Speaker A:And they are not the same.
Speaker A:And this was something that Dallas wrote about back when this book was first published, and 26 years later, it is as equally true now as it was then, maybe even more so, because we have all of the information at our fingertips from the Internet.
Speaker A:But the acquisition of knowledge is not the same thing as transformation of thought, of behavior, of character, of beliefs.
Speaker A:And we want to be careful that as we come into this Christmas season that we don't allow the familiarity of the story to just kind of be like wah wah wah, and rituals that we go through and traditions that we uphold.
Speaker A:And we don't see the gospel and the Christmas story for what it is, the invitation and the empowerment to a radical new way of living, dallas continued when he wrote, no doubt the initial response of most of us when we hear about God's care for us is that he's going to secure the various projects that we have our hearts set up on.
Speaker A:Oh, this is one of the takeaways, the wrong takeaways that we can draw from the Christmas story.
Speaker A:God has come in human form and he is here to give us what we want.
Speaker A:No, that's really not how the story goes.
Speaker A:And we know that in our head.
Speaker A:But sometimes we kind of try to live a different reality.
Speaker A:We kind of think, okay, now that he's come, he's going to give us the desires of our heart.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:I mean, isn't that what the Bible verse says?
Speaker A:That if we trust in him, he will give us the desires of our heart?
Speaker A:Well, we want to be careful that we don't take things out of context, because it's not just about that God makes the desires that we have when we come to him turn about in our favor.
Speaker A:It's also that he changes the desires themselves.
Speaker A:And the true hope of the Christmas story is that we can experience radical transformation in life now, that we can become a better person, not just by doing more works on the outside, but we can truly become changed on the inside, which is going to show up on the outside.
Speaker A:But this will not happen simply because we know the Christmas story inside and out.
Speaker A:It only happens when we have the devotion to being transformed by what the reality of the Christmas story tells us.
Speaker A:You know, Dallas went on and he wrote further, and he said he, meaning Jesus, knew that we cannot keep the law by trying to keep the law.
Speaker A:To succeed in keeping the law, one must aim at something other and something more.
Speaker A:One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow.
Speaker A:The hope of the gospel, the hope of Christmas, is that we can become a different kind of person.
Speaker A:There is a healthy level of self acceptance that each of us need to have when we look at our value and our worth.
Speaker A:But accepting ourselves in terms of being made in God's image and therefore having an intrinsic, unchangeable value is not the same thing as accepting our character for what it is.
Speaker A:Again, because we're honest around here, we are brave people.
Speaker A:That means that each of us, I'm pretty sure, can identify at least one area in our life that we would like to be different, something that irritates us about ourselves, something in life where we are disappointed with ourselves, where we recognize the need for growth, and this isn't an unhealthy beating ourselves up and pouring shame upon ourselves in some vain attempt or false attempt to try to motivate us to have more Self discipline.
Speaker A:Rather, it is a matter of honestly acknowledging we need to change.
Speaker A:You know, sometimes I wonder if we change some of the language that we tend to use in Christianity, at least here in the States, if it would change how we really interpret the gospel, if we, if it would help us to personalize the gospel more.
Speaker A:You know, we use phrases like, oh, this will help me grow in my faith, or this will help me be a stronger Christian.
Speaker A:But I wonder if we changed our language to say things like, this will help me grow up.
Speaker A:This will help me become more mature.
Speaker A:Because subtle shifts in language can lead to significant changes in our perspective.
Speaker A:Think about this for a moment.
Speaker A:If you were sitting in church and the pastor says during his sermon today, I'm going to give you three practices that will help you grow in your faith.
Speaker A:Are you going to hear that a little differently or maybe a lot differently than if he said, today, I'm going to give you three practices that will help you grow up?
Speaker A:Probably.
Speaker A:So you see, the gospel, the Christmas story, it's not just about giving us a way to attain some sort of spiritual, legal status.
Speaker A:Okay, now we're Christian, we have our visa stamped for heaven.
Speaker A:It is about attaining a character, a maturity that is like Christ's model for us.
Speaker A:It's like becoming the person that we would have if there was no sin, no sinful nature within us and no sin in this world.
Speaker A:And that is why we need hope.
Speaker A:But the reality is we only really value hope if we see our need for it.
Speaker A:If all I think is I just kind of need to have more information about the gospel and about God, I'm going to approach that very differently than if I see I need to grow in my character, I need to grow in my maturity as a human being.
Speaker A:Then I'm going to see my tremendous need for hope.
Speaker A:Because again, since we're brave around here and we're honest, we know that there is a limit to how much that we can just will ourselves to change.
Speaker A:I mean, if we didn't need help, if we didn't need hope that different types of help give us, we would have no need for weight loss plans, we would have no need for financial budgeting, we would have no need for 12 step programs, because we would just will ourselves to change all the things in us that we need.
Speaker A:But at some point, mature people recognize we lack the capacity to complete all of the changes that we need on our own.
Speaker A:And that is one of the reasons we need hope.
Speaker A:Usually when we use the phrase hopeless, a person is hopeless.
Speaker A:We mean that in a way that they have given up trying to achieve or attain something, they feel disempowered, they've given up, they're in despair.
Speaker A:But there's another type of hopelessness that is just as prevalent and just as powerful, may be even more dangerous because we don't recognize it.
Speaker A:And that is when we don't really see our need for hope.
Speaker A:You know, Dallas writes, actions do not emerge from nothing.
Speaker A:They faithfully reveal what is in the heart.
Speaker A:And we can know what is in the heart that they depend upon.
Speaker A:Indeed, everyone does know.
Speaker A:That is part of what it is to be a mentally competent human being.
Speaker A:The heart is not a mystery.
Speaker A:At the level of ordinary human interactions, we discern one another quite well.
Speaker A:I mean, we recognize if someone is rude to us, we recognize if someone genuinely likes us, we recognize hearts toward us.
Speaker A:The question is, do we discern ourselves quite well?
Speaker A:Do we have the bravery and the honesty to say, ah, here is where I need to grow.
Speaker A:Here is where I need strength.
Speaker A:Here is where I need empowerment.
Speaker A:Here is where without God, without his help, I'm not going to show up in life the way I should or even the way I want to.
Speaker A:Because the forces of this life are more powerful than we all by ourselves can sustain.
Speaker A:You know, recently I was serving with Samaritan's purse and in a town in the southeast where there had been tremendous tree damage.
Speaker A:And one of the things that I noticed about many of these trees that were entirely uprooted and laying on the ground across someone's house or a neighbor's fence is that their roots were massive, but they were very shallow and they were very wide.
Speaker A:They didn't go deep into the ground.
Speaker A:And when those storms came, even if they were once in a lifetime storms, they still took those trees out.
Speaker A:Life does a number on us.
Speaker A:Life comes in.
Speaker A:And sometimes we may just go from one storm to another to another.
Speaker A:Sometimes there are those once in a lifetime storms.
Speaker A:And what will anchor us in those times is when we have had the humility leading up to that to say, I need real transformation.
Speaker A:And I cannot do this all on my own.
Speaker A:And I have to have a hope that there is someone, there is some way that I can have help beyond myself.
Speaker A:And there is.
Speaker A:And that is what the Christmas message and the Christmas story is all about.
Speaker A:It is that hope has come.
Speaker A:Hope not just that we can be saved and someday we can make it into heaven, but hope that we can experience the presence and the goodness and the strength of God working in us even now that we can grow in our maturity, our character can become more like Christ.
Speaker A:We can sustain the kinds of storms that can just have the potential to take us out entirely, but they don't because we are deeply rooted in the hope of God's goodness within us and working on our behalf.
Speaker A:I want to encourage you, as you are listening this, to hold on to hope, not hope for outcomes.
Speaker A:I get that.
Speaker A:I understand it is so much easier to hope that God's going to give us the outcomes that we want.
Speaker A:But that's not what genuine Christlike hope is about.
Speaker A:It is hope in God's goodness, not just for someday, for eternity, because that's just too far away for us to give us what we need in the day to day of life now, but that we have a hope that in the day today that he is there to sustain us, to strengthen us, to give us a purpose, to give us a new perspective, to mature us, to grow our character and to prepare us to be the kind of people who can help others as they grow in their character and their maturity.
Speaker A:And together we show up and we become more like Christ.
Speaker A:As you go through this Christmas season, whether it is a time of just life is just aligned for you and it's wonderful and you are not struggling and everything is just great, or whether this is a deep season of lament, of sorrow, of sadness, where the pain that you might normally carry in everyday life is exponentially increased during this holiday time.
Speaker A:I understand that as well.
Speaker A:But know this, your hope is not in vain.
Speaker A:It isn't fluff.
Speaker A:It's not the equivalent of cotton candy.
Speaker A:It's not the equivalent of some sweet cookie that's on the buffet table at Christmas.
Speaker A:Hope is a sustenance that can sustain you in the brightest and in the darkest of times.
Speaker A:All right, my friend, that is going to wrap us up for today.
Speaker A:If you haven't already, make sure to visit the website Stephanie presents.com Sign up for the weekly newsletter High Impact.
Speaker A:You're going to get helpful links.
Speaker A:You're going to get creative content not just from myself, but links and resources that I share with you that I have found helpful and I want my readers to know about as well.
Speaker A:And as you go through this Christmas season, hold on to hope because you do have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal and irreplaceable.
Speaker A:I'll see you next time.
Speaker B:Thank you for listening.
Speaker B:Visit the website Stephanie presents.com and sign up for High Impact to join the mission of building spiritually strong, emotionally healthy and relationally smart women and families you can also book Stephanie to speak at your event and check out additional resources.
Speaker B:Together we can invite and equip generations to engage fully in God's grand story.
