This message is about the meaning of Christmas. It is about Love working in our lives.

What does Christmas mean? Christmas means more than turkey and Santa Claus. Christmas means someone you cannot see with your eyes, hear with your ears, or touch with your hands loves you.

Knowing this fact…knowing that someone loves you is the most important fact of your life. Not knowing that someone loves you leads to spiritual death, sometimes physical death, and certainly loneliness and devastation.

The meaning of Christmas is that someone loves you. Too often this meaning gets buried in the gift giving. However, if we are going to bury the meaning of Christmas, it is OK to bury it in expressions of love. Because love is what God is. Love is the reason God sent us His Son into the world. Love is what all of us need in life, especially the love God has for us.

Just for fun, let us say we decide to start a world-wide holiday. We could start this world-wide holiday to celebrate an evil thing. Evil things get started all the time. However, we do not connect celebrations and evil things together. It is wonderful how God works to help us honor only the good and wonderful events of life.

Instead of celebrating an evil thing, let us decide to celebrate a good thing…a wonderful thing. Let’s say that we are going to start a new holiday where God's love is honored, adored, and at work. Let us say we decide that we want to start a holiday that will sweep over the whole world. In starting this holiday, we decide that we are going to start a gift-giving holiday. With our new gift-giving holiday we want the world to stop working, and for at least a day, have people put aside differences, put aside each other's faults, and put aside all the things that separate people.

In creating our new holiday, we decide we want the following to happen:

That for at least a day there would be no war.

That for at least a day people would show each other they love and care for each other.

That for at least a day there would be peace on earth and good will toward men.

How could we start a new world-wide holiday? What could we do? What kind of event could we or would we come up with to start this world-wide event? To start our world-wide holiday, we are going to have to start our special day in the light, not in the darkness. Maybe we could have a sporting event. Sporting events get a lot of attention. Maybe we could get a proclamation from the U.N. so the world will observe our new day. Maybe the President and Congress could pass a law of some kind. However, all kinds of laws are passed and they come to no real effect so we can take a pass on Congress and a special proclamation from the UN.

Let’s be honest, (all humor and all joking aside) we couldn’t start something that has ended up like Christmas. Christmas started with a visitation of angels to Mary and Joseph. Christmas started with God’s love being made real in the world.

Christmas started with the birth of a child, the baby Jesus, born in a stinking stable where animals were kept. Christmas started with a bright light or star shining down on Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Inall seriousness, human beings would not start a holiday this way even if they could.

What does Christmas mean?

What did God have in mind when He started something 2000 years ago?

God wanted to start something in the world that would continue. To start something new in the world, God was willing to step down into our world into the lowest conditions. To start something new in the world God was willing to step down into a state of humility,

God was willing to let His son be born and raised by ordinary people. Knowing eventually His Son would have to be crucified for each of us, God was willing to let His Son be born into the world. God was willing to let horrible things happen, even the death of His very own Son, to show us something. Christmas means God wanted to show us that He loves us.

Accepting that someone loves you takes a lot of courage. Accepting love takes a lot of wisdom. Wisdom and courage are required because if we get to a point where we are willing to accept the fact that someone loves us, then we are going to have to do something. Action is required when we accept God's love because you cannot keep God's love inside. You cannot keep the love God has for you inside of yourself, if you really have it inside yourself.

When we come to realize what Christmas really means we realize that Christmas is a personal thing from God to us. The birth of Christ is a one on one thing. The birth of Christ is God telling you in a personal way that He loves you personally. When you accept the fact that the baby Jesus was sent to you personally, the whole world begins to look different. Then you begin to BE different.

At Christmas....we can begin to understand that God loves us in a deep personal way. Through Christ's birth, we can understand that God loves us in a one on one way that no person can match. After we understand that God loves us in a one on one way, then make an investment in Christ by using our faith.

As we begin to believe God loves us enough to cause His Son to be born for us, then we start trusting and believing in God. At this moment of trusting and believing, we start using faith. Faith means believing that a God we cannot see with our eyes, hear with our ears, or touch with our hands loves us.

When we start trusting and believing in faith, then a little voice says that God does love us and that yes, God did cause Christ to be born 2000 years ago.

But, let’s be honest here, in a lot of people, there is also a big voice that says..."believing all this Christmas love stuff, well....this all gets to be too improbable, and too unbelievable!"

Think about this just a moment...we are supposed to believe that an invisible God caused a baby to be born. How improbable! If we were going to start a holiday, we would not have a baby to be born. What is more improbable, more unbelievable about Christmas, is that the baby was born to a virgin!

Now let’s be realistic here. Would anyone really believe any of this?

It is hard enough to believe that an invisible being exists somewhere.

It is hard enough to believe that this invisible being loves us.

It is hard enough to believe that this invisible being caused a baby to be born. But to a virgin? No, this is impossible. A few of us do indeed believe this supposedly impossible event actually happened. Maybe that is why they call us "Believers!"

We believe in faith this invisible being we call God can do the impossible.

We believe in faith that God can do what we cannot do.

We believe in faith that God can do the seemingly unbelievable.

We believe in faith that 2000 years ago God did do the impossible in bring Christ Jesus to us through the virgin birth.

We believe God loves you. You might think it is impossible for God to love you. However, accepting the impossible starts something and stirs up something in your heart. Christmas is about the impossible. Christmas is about the seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible....being done for you and everyone else in the world. Christmas is about love working in your life and in our lives.

Have you ever noticed how people change at Christmas time? God had something in mind when he decided to send His Son into the world in the form of a baby. I wonder who he had in mind? God had YOU in mind...

God had in mind that in YOUR life....in each of our lives, that a seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible change would take place. At Christmas, these kinds of changes do take place in people. Not in every person, not in enough persons, but changes do take place in many persons.

Remember the story of A Christmas Carol? Remember how old, nasty Scrooge ended up going to the house of little Tim Krattchett the crippled boy. The change seen in Scrooge was love working. At Christmas, we give gifts. Christmas time is the big gift giving time in our lives. The gift giving mania we see each year is love working.

It is hard to tell that love is working during this season. When you have to stand in long lines at Wal-Mart and your feet and back are aching love in the air is a little hard to catch. Sometimes you have to look real deep to find His love, especially if the cashier is a new trainee and you are in line for 30 minutes. But if you look deep enough, you can see God’s seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible love at work. During the Christmas season, you can see amazing changes take place in people.

When we finally accept that God loves us, things change in us, and we want to express that change. If our spiritual life changes, we express this change by expressing love.

At Christmas time, we give gifts. We invite people in...Christmas means you and we are loved and we want to share it. The fact, the knowledge, the belief that someone loves you, does produce in your life seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible changes in you.

In truth, our lives are lived alone. We may live with someone, be married to someone for many years, and share with someone our innermost thoughts. However, the truth of life is that we all live alone. When we come to accept that God loves us in seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible ways...when we accept that God loves us in ways beyond our understanding...we are not alone anymore. Our Father in Heaven, who sent Jesus to be born in a manger for us, is with us. This God lives inside of us. He is living within all of us all the time. Christ said that the Kingdom of God is within.

Think about this...if God was a physical being He could not be with everyone, all the time. When Jesus grew up to be a man, and before He went back to Heaven, Jesus said, "I am with you always."

Jesus meant it. The little inkling of love people feel at Christmas time is Him, it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working and touching their life, even if they do not recognize them.

In our world, and in our reality, there are many reasons why other people do love us. However, God can look past all those reasons. If we want God to look past all those reasons, if we are willing to admit our faults and sins, and we want to change, Christ will erase those faults and sins as we take Him into our hearts. Then Christ makes His love real to us. Not only does Christ love us, He loves us in ways we can understand. Christ loves us in ways we can accept.

There are many reasons why you may believe you cannot be loved. You may have reasons like the shape of your body, the condition of your heart and soul, your past, your history, or the mistakes you have made. Many people believe that no one loves them and no one could love them. If you believe that no one loves you, remember there is a seemingly impossible, improbable, unbelievable, incredible God who does love you even if you think He doesn’t. Even if you think he can’t, He does. That is what Christmas means....that God loves you whether you want Him too or not.

Many situations in our lives keep love out of our hearts. We get sick. We lose people. We have relationships that come apart. We lose our jobs. We have unexpected bills and expenses that upset things, but there is a God who still loves us regardless of any situations that come up in life.

To accept the love of God into our hearts requires we do a lot of work we do not often like to do. To accept the love of God requires we open our hearts. The love of God in us makes us want to give instead of take, go out of our way to do things for other people, and put others before ourselves.

At Christmas time, these are the very things we do. We open our hearts,

we give instead of take, we go out of our way to do things for other people, and we put others before ourselves. That is the love of God working in us and in our lives. That is what Christmas means. That love is working all around you. If you will accept this love from God then things start changing in your life permanently because the love of God through Christ is not to be a seasonal thing.

I have told you about what Christmas means...

Now I want you to accept the love that God has for you...

Accept the love God has for you by holding the baby Jesus in your arms. Accept the love God has for you and let the cares and worries of life melt away.