Renew your faith at Christmas

But the angel said to them, "... I bring you good news of greatjoy that will be for all the people." Luke 2:10 (NIV)

Knowing that Christmastime is God's chosen time teaches us that Christmas is the time for us to renew our faith.

We need not fear God because of the Good News of Christ's arrival; it is a Good News meant to "bring great joy to all people." (Luke 2:10 NLT)

What is the Good News?

• You matter to God: God knows everything about you -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- and He still loves you. He cares about you. He loves you more than you could ever know. God is for you, not against you.
• You are not an accident: Regardless of the circumstances of your birth, you were not the result of an accident. God has a plan and a purpose for your life. The only way you will find meaning and satisfaction is to discover God's purpose for your life and then to get right into the center of his will.

God sent Jesus so you could know what He's like. If God wanted to communicate to birds, He would have become a bird. If God had wanted to communicate to cows, He would have become a cow. If He wanted to communicate to dogs, He would have become a dog. But God wanted to relate to you and to me, so He became like us -- a human being.

The thing is this -- I don't have the foggiest idea of what it means to relate to something like 'The Force' -- some impersonal power in the sky. But when I see Jesus in human form, I can say, "That's what God's like. I can understand that."

This is why Christmas is not about a religion. You may be Catholic; you may be Jewish; you may be Presbyterian, or Buddhist, or Baptist, or Lutheran; I don't care what your religious background is, Jesus didn't come to give you religion. He came to give you a relationship.

Christmas is God saying, "I want to relate to you. I want you to know Me as much as I know you." That's joyful news. It's good news!

Rick Warren

Release your fears at Christmas

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid." Luke 2:10 (NIV)

Christmas is not just a season, but it is a time specifically chosen by God for Jesus to come to earth: "But when the right time finally came, God sent his own Son." (Galatians 4:4 TEV)

Knowing that Christmastime is God's chosen time teaches us that Christmas is the time for us to release our fears.

What are the things you're worried about? The economy? Your health? Your bills? Your kids? Are you worried about the future? The fact is there are lots of reasons to be afraid in today's world, but God's message at Christmastime is "Don't be afraid!" (Luke 2:10 NIV) Release your anxieties; let go of your fears.

It's interesting to note that there are 365 verses in the Bible that say, "Fear not." God provided us with one 'fear not' message for every day of the year! Do you think God is saying, "Get the message. Don't be afraid!"

Why does he want us to get the message? Because a lot of people are afraid of God! But God says we do not need to be afraid of him. He is for us; not against us.

And with the birth of Jesus, God shows he is with us.

This Christmas release your fears to the God who says we no longer need to be afraid.

Rick Warren

The four laws of God's blessing

"I will bless you ... and you will be a blessing." Genesis 12:2 (NIV)

During this Christmas season, we should keep in mind the four laws of God's blessing -

1. Our blessings should flow to others
The Bible teaches us that we are blessed not just so that we can feel good, not just so we can be happy and comfortable, but so that we will bless others. God told Abraham in Genesis 12, "I will bless you and you will be a blessing to others." This is the first law of blessing: it must flow outwardly.

2. When we bless others, God takes care of our needs
God promises that if we will concentrate on blessing others, he'll take care of our needs. There's almost nothing that God won't do for the person who really wants to help other people. In fact, God guarantees this blessing. In Luke 18, Jesus says, "I guarantee this. Anyone who gives up anything for the kingdom of God will certainly receive many times more in this life and will receive eternal life in the next world to come."

When you care about helping other people, God assumes responsibility for your problems. And that's a real blessing, for he's much better at handling your difficulties than you are.

3. Our blessings to others will come back on us
The more you bless other people, the more you help others, the more God blesses your life. Luke 6:38 tells us, "Give your life away and you'll find your life given back. But not merely given back. Given back with bonus and blessing." You cannot out give God. The more you try to bless other people in the world around you, the more God says, "I'm going to pour blessings out on you. We'll play a little game here. Let's see who will win. Let's see who can give the most. The more you bless others the more I'm going to bless you in return."

4. The more we're blessed by God, the more He expects us to help others.
Jesus said it this way in Luke 12 "Much is required from those to whom much is given. For their responsibility is greater." Based on the blessings of your life, what would you say God expects from you?

Rick Warren

Be thankful even in tough times

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Philippians 4:4 (NLT)

When the Apostle Paul says, "Always be full of joy in the Lord," he doesn't say only be joyful in good times. Even when times are tough, The Bible teaches we can be joyful if we follow this simple strategy -

Don't worry about anything.
Worrying doesn't change anything. It's stewing without doing. There are no such things as born-worriers. Worry is a learned response. You learned it from your parents. You learned it from your peers. You learned it from experience. That's good news. The fact that worry is learned means it can also be unlearned.

How do you unlearn it? Jesus says (Matthew 6:34), "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough troubles of its own." He's saying don't open your umbrella until it starts raining. Don't worry about tomorrow. Live one day at a time.

Pray about everything.
Instead of worrying, use your time for praying. If you prayed as much as you worried, you'd have a whole lot less to worry about. Is God interested in car payments? Yes. He's interested in every detail of your life. That means you can take any problem you face to God.

Thank God in all things.
Whenever you pray, you should always pray with thanksgiving. The healthiest human emotion is not love but gratitude. It actually increases your immunities. It makes you more resistant to stress and less susceptible to illness. People who are grateful are happy. But people who are ungrateful are miserable because nothing makes them happy. They're never satisfied. It's never good enough. So if you cultivate the attitude of gratitude, of being thankful in everything, it reduces stress in your life.

Think about the right things.
If you want to reduce the level of stress in your life, you must change the way you think because the way you think determines how you feel. And the way you feel determines how you act, which is why the Bible teaches that, if you want to change your life, you need to change what you're thinking about.

This involves a deliberate conscious choice where you change the channels. You choose to think about the right things. Because the root cause of stress is the way we choose to think, we need to focus on the positive and on God's word.

What is the result of not worrying, praying about everything, giving thanks, and focusing on the right things? Paul says we will then "experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:7 NLT)

What a guarantee! He is guaranteeing peace of mind. Have you noticed that is what everybody seems to be looking for?

Rick Warren

Restore Broken Relationships in this Christmas

If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you ... agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. (Philip. 2:1-2, Msg)

God sent Jesus into the world so that our relationship with God could be restored. Christmas is about restoring relationships and many of us have relationships that need mending.

God wants us to value relationships and make every effort to maintain them instead of discarding them whenever there is a rift, a hurt or a conflict.

In fact, the Bible tells us that God has given us the ministry of restoring relationships. For this reason a significant amount of the New Testament is devoted to teaching us how to get along with one another.

The Apostle Paul taught that our ability to get along with others is a mark of spiritual maturity. Since Christ wants his family to be known for our love for each other, broken fellowship is a disgraceful testimony to unbelievers. This is why Paul was so embarrassed that the members of the church in Corinth were splitting into warring factions and even taking each other to court.

He wrote, "Shame on you! Surely there is at least one wise person in your fellowship who can settle a dispute between fellow Christians." (1 Cor. 6:5, TEV) He was shocked that no one in the church was mature enough to resolve the conflict peaceably. In the same letter, he said, "I'll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other." (1 Cor. 1:10, Msg)

If you want God's blessing on your life and you want to be known as a child of God, you must learn to be a peacemaker. Jesus said, "God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God." (Matt. 5:9, NLT)

Notice Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are the peace lovers," because everyone loves peace. Neither did he say, "Blessed are the peaceable," who are never disturbed by anything. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who work for peace" - those who actively seek to resolve conflict.

This Christmas is a good time to actively work toward restoring broken relationships.

Rick Warren

Love Is a Habit

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them." Luke 6:32 (NIV)

If you only love on and off like a light switch, you do not love others like God wants you to love. Jesus said, "If you only love those who love you what credit is that to you?" (Luke 6:32 NIV).

His point is this: anybody can love those who love them. Becoming a master lover means you learn to love the unlovable. It's when you love people who don't love you, when you love people who irritate you, when you love people who stab you in the back or gossip about you.

This may seem like an impossible task and it is - that's why we need God's love in us, so we can then love others: "We know and rely on the love God has for us" (1 John 4:16 NIV).

When you realize how much God loves you - with an extravagant, irresistible, unconditional love - then his love will change your entire focus on life. If we don't receive God's love for us, we'll have a hard time loving other people. I'm talking about loving the unlovely, loving the difficult, loving the irritable, loving people who are different or demanding.

You can't do that until you have God's love coming through you. You need to know God's love so it can overflow out of your life into others.

Love must become your lifestyle, the habit of your life. But it starts with a decision. Are you ready?

Your life is worth far more than you think, and by learning to love others with the love God gives you, you will have an influence far greater than you could ever imagine. If you will commit to this, you will experience love as God means it to be, filled with hope, energy, and joy.

My prayer for you is "that your love will grow more and more; that you will have knowledge and understanding with your love ..." (Philippians 1:9 NCV).

Rick Warren

The Bible says Love is a Skill

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7 (NLT)

Love is a skill that can be learned. In other words, it's something you can get good at and that means you get better at love by practicing love. There is no time better than the Christmas season to practice loving others.

You may think you're a good lover, but God wants you to become a great lover, a skilled lover, a master lover. Yet, most people never learn how to love. You can become an expert at relationships.

Wouldn't you like to become known as a person of extraordinary love? When people speak of you they might say: "He doesn't care who you are or what you look like." "She doesn't care where you've been or what you've done or where you're from."

The only way you get skilled at something is to practice. You do it over and over. The first time you do it, it feels awkward, but the more you do it, the better you become.

The same is true with love (1 John 4:7). Let's practice loving each other. As the Bible says, "Practice these things; be committed to them, so that your progress may be evident to all" (1 Timothy 4:15 HCSB).

Rick Warren

Love is an Action

Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions. 1 John 3:18 (NLT)

The baby Jesus shows us that love is something you do. You show love by what you do, not just by what you feel.

Do you really love someone? Let's see how you act toward that person.

Love is more than attraction and more than arousal. It's also more than sentimentality, like so many of today's songs suggest. By this standard, is love dead when the emotion is gone? No, not at all. Because love is an action; love is a behavior.

Over and over again, in the Bible, God commands us to love each other. And you can't command an emotion. If I told you "Be sad!" right now, you couldn't be sad on cue. Just like an actor, you can fake it, but you're not wired for your emotions to change on command. Have you ever told a little kid, "Be happy!" I'm trying, daddy!

If love were just an emotion, then God couldn't command it. But love is something you do. It can produce emotion, but love is an action.

The Bible says, "Let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions" (1 John 3:18 NLT). We can talk a good act: "I love people." But do we really love them? Do you really love them? Our love is revealed in how we act toward them.

Rick Warren

Love Is a Choice

... That you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Deuteronomy 30:20 (NIV)

The birth of Jesus reflects the truth that love is a choice and a commitment. You choose to love or you choose not to love.

Today we've bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable, that it's something that just happens to us; it's not something we control. In fact, even the language we use implies the uncontrollability of love. We say, "I fell in love," as if love is some kind of a ditch. It's like I'm walking along one day and bam! - I fell in love. I couldn't help myself.

But I have to tell you the truth - that's not love. Love doesn't just happen to you. Love is a choice and it represents a commitment.

There's no doubt about it, attraction is uncontrollable and arousal is uncontrollable. But attraction and arousal are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love. Love is a choice.

You must choose to love God; he won't force you to love him (Deuteronomy 30:20). You can thumb your nose at God and go a totally different way. You can destroy your life if you choose to do that. God still won't force you to love him. Because he knows love can't be forced.

And this same principle is true about your relationships: you can choose to love others, but God won't force you to love anyone.

Rick Warren

We Love Because God Loves Us

We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19 (NIV)

This Christmas season is a good time to remember that the reason God wants us to love is because he is love, and he created us to be like him - to love. The only reason we're able to love is because God loves us: "Love comes from God ... because God is love" (1 John 4:7-8 NIV).

We were created in God's image to do two things on earth: Learn to love God and learn to love other people; life is all about love.

But love all started with God. He loved us first and that gives us the ability to love others (1 John 4:19). The only reason you can love God or love anybody else is because God first loved you. And he showed that love by sending Jesus Christ to earth to die for you. He showed that love by creating you. He showed that love by everything you have in life; it's all a gift of God's love.

In order to love others and to become great lovers, we first need to understand and feel how much God loves us. We don't want to just talk about love, read about love, or discuss about love; our need is to experience the love of God.

We need to reach a day when we finally, fully understand how God loves us completely and unconditionally. We need to become secure in the truth that we cannot make God stop loving us.

Once we're secure inside God's unconditional love, we'll start cutting people a lot of slack. We won't be as angry as we've been. We'll be more patient. We'll be more forgiving. We'll be more merciful. We'll give others grace.

But you cannot give to others what you have not received yourself, and so my hope is that, as you learn how much God loves you, you'll also let him heal your heart so that his love can flow freely through you. It's impossible to love others until you really feel loved yourself.

Rick Warren