What is the Spirit of Christmas?

WORSHIP.

I am so deeply grateful for this moment to write about something so meaningful to me right now.  This Christmas seems harder than any before.  But, somehow, I sense God moving me into a deeper understanding of who He is. Somehow, this Christmas, the Spirit of Christmas is ringing truer and deeper in my soul.  It isn’t something I am doing, it is rather something He is doing IN me.  All I feel is Worship.  I feel drawn to Him.  Some may think that means being a “religious fanatic,” a term I am all too familiar with since I became a Christian 14 years ago, but what genuine Christian isn’t a little fanatic?  It does appear to the average person that someone who stands in Worship of God would be different or strange.  Someone who decides to put their trust in the unseen rather than the seen.  Someone who depends their whole life on something written in a book…the Bible.  Someone who denies themselves to put others needs first.  Someone who seeks God’s answers rather than leaning on their own.  To one who doesn’t believe in the Word of God, or someone who doesn’t know God….it seems ridiculous.  For the believer, we have faith…a gift from God planted in us.  The ones who do not know God and do not desire to know Him…their eyes and ears are deaf, blind and their hearts are darkened.  I have found that I cannot change this, although God can and my prayers do make a difference.  But, what seems to have created insecurities in me in the past, is giving me new, fresh confidence in the Lord now.  For, what seems strange to this world, is really cherished by God.  Jesus himself was considered a religious fanatic and ultimately crucified by people who thought they knew better than God.  And Jesus was perfect in every way and sinless.  The World rejects what it does not know and cannot understand.  Jesus did not try to change the mind of people who refused to believe in Him.  He went after the hungry.

I feel comfortable in this place.  A place of purity, of trust, of genuine Worship to the God who has never left my side, never abandoned me, never given up on me, never stopped loving me, who is faithful, honest, true, loving, perfect in every way.  Yes, Christ can truly be sufficient to us.  I stand in testimony to that in the most difficult place I have ever been….and I have been through some hard experiences.  I have to say it is one thing to know Christ is sufficient….and a totally different thing to FEEL it.

I am experiencing God in a new, beautiful way this Christmas and hope for this to be the best Christmas yet.  A place of deep, true, meaningful Worship and a new level of trust and dependence on God that only those who really love Him might know.

I am thankful to be Chosen.  I am thankful God’s promises never fail.  I am thankful to be refined during this season of my life to get rid of the “old” and accept the “new.”  I am thankful He is creating in me a new spirit…it takes testing and hurt and trials to really show us what is in our hearts.  I pray that what comes out of this season is a new, purified heart.