The holiday season is well underway and I can feel the excitement starting to bubble. I look forward to the holidays every year and it seems like every year I need to remind myself to stay focused on what the holidays are all about.
Holidays are used for remembering Jesus and his gift of humbly coming to live among us and laying down his life for us. We have a beautiful eternity waiting for us because Jesus chose to take the punishment for us all.
Here is how the holidays usually go for our family: We get really excited about the holidays coming up. We enjoy decorating our house and doing some holiday traditions. We start signing up for things without thinking about it because it is the holiday season and we can. We start to feel really stressed about gifts, obligations to family/friends, pressures we are putting on ourselves, etc. We end up needing to reevaluate the season and what it is for.
I don’t like that I get to the point every year where I need to reevaluate what I am doing.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5
When I need to reevaluate what I am doing with my life, I find myself going back to John 15:5 over and over again. I often want the future laid out for me so that I know where a decision is going to lead me when I take it. Life doesn’t work like that, often God only reveals a bit of his plan to us at a time. When I am remaining in the vine, I am taking baby steps in faith and trusting that God is in charge of the whole world.
Another reason that I need to reevaluate at Christmas time is because of guilt. Guilt is not a feeling that comes from God. Don’t get me wrong, God convicts us when we have sinned and are in need of repentance, but God doesn’t give us a spirit of guilt about our performances in life. When we feel like we are not good enough because of any obligation that we have put on ourselves or others have put on us, that is not from God. That is from the father of lies.
The holidays often bring up a lot of guilt for us because we want to be everything for everyone. We want our children to have great memories of holiday traditions that we created for them. We want our meals to be spectacular and we want to buy the perfect gift that will make our loved ones feel special. Everywhere we look this time of year, there are reminders about the things that we “should” be doing.
When we are connected to the vine, we know what we should be doing. We need to be having faith in Him and taking baby steps of faith each day. Just this week I found myself wondering if we could afford family Christmas pajamas to give the kids on Christmas Eve. Then I feel like I add extra stress to myself because I then would want the perfect picture of the family wearing the pajamas to post to social media. Already here are two ways that I have been tempted to kick Jesus out of Christmas and worship the commercialism all around us.
Ultimately those pajamas would have been worn very few times and I probably would have been frustrated with my children if they weren’t cooperating for pictures. None of this teaches my children about the amazing gospel story and what a gift it was to receive our Immanuel (God with us) that Christmas so many years ago.
Maybe you are feeling connected to the vine and excited about the holidays approaching. Maybe you are battling your own temptations to commercialize Christmas and add extra stress to your life. Let’s try and commit to making sure that we are abiding in Him this Christmas season and experience the true joy that comes from knowing Him instead of the counterfeit joy that comes from worshiping things of this earth.