Reflection Stories - Christmas Eve Eve at Trinity Community Church

Today we're finishing up a sermon series called Reflection, and through this series we've been talking about how important it is that Jesus came to this earth.

We actually started with our first sermon coming from Isaiah 59, and we asked the question what would this world be like if Jesus had never come?

And what an amazing and horrible thing to think about the fact that if Jesus hadn't come to this earth, things would be vastly different than what they are right now.

Wouldn't you agree with that?

Amen?

And then the second message.

We talked about the fact that Jesus did come, and because he came, we live and we have life and breath and all of the things that he gives to us, and we have the chance for redemption and forgiveness, just as Amy read in the story, and last week we saw the fact that not only are we to be affected by Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, but we get a chance to shine the light of Jesus to the world around us, to the lost and dying world.

And so we're going to take a chance to listen to three different testimonies tonight, a reflection story, testimonies from three TCC partners, and we're excited about doing that, and I wanted to start by just looking at Luke, chapter one for a few minutes.

Verses 67 through 79.

Now, most of the time when we think of the Christmas story, we think of Luke, chapter two, and that for good reason.

It's full of angels and shepherds and songs and the baby being born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, and all of those things are exceptional and true and beautiful.

But tonight we want to go back a little bit and talk about somebody who's not mentioned a lot in the Christmas story but had a very substantial part.

So Luke, chapter one, verses 67 through 79.

And it says and his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying blessed be the Lord, god of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

To show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father, abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days, and you, child, will be called the prophet of the most time, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people, in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

What a beautiful saying, what a beautiful song, what a beautiful prophecy poem.

Whatever you want to say, zechariah sings this song and he declares in it how great our savior truly is.

And this was before Jesus ever showed up on the scene, before he ever arrived, born to a virgin and placed as he was in a manger.

All of those things that happened, we know, happened at a later time, but Zechariah was priest in Israel at the time that Jesus was born and he was one of 18,000 and he was chosen by chance, some would say, but we would say chosen by providence to be the one that would go into the most holy place that year to represent the nation of Israel.

And we know, just as we sang the song a few minutes ago, that there was a great curtain that divided mankind from the presence of God, and only one person, one time per year, was able to enter into that most holy place in order to receive word from the Lord, to minister to the Lord and to be a representative for the rest of the people of Israel.

And so Zechariah was given that great privilege to do that during this time and the time when Jesus was about ready to be born and he was in there to really intercede on behalf of the people, the people around him who were filled with sin and darkness and desperation and desolation.

And he was there to represent to God the people that he was a part of.

And, as he was offering up incense, an angel named Gabriel.

Anybody remember that name?

Gabriel became very famous later on in the rest of the Christmas story as well.

He's the one that spoke to Mary about Jesus.

But Gabriel appears to Zechariah and tells him that he and Elizabeth were going to give birth to a son in their old age.

They had always wanted a child and were never able to have a child.

And so now they're in their old age and Gabriel shows up in the Holy of Holies and tells Zechariah this great story about the fact that they're going to give birth to a child, not just any son, but John the Baptist, who would be used, of God mightily, to prepare the people for the coming Messiah.

Zechariah, being the man of God that he was, immediately had fear that rose up on the inside of him and he doubted what the angel came to say.

And he was beginning to speak those words out loud and the angel Gabriel silenced him, and so he was not able to speak out loud until John was born.

Can you imagine what that must have been like for a priest?

He comes out of the Holy of Holies.

He spent 400 years of silence where God hasn't been speaking to anybody, and all of a sudden, zechariah is so affected by whatever it was that he experienced in the Holy of Holies that he comes out and he can't say a word.

His gift of speaking is completely removed from him.

And, sure enough, elizabeth gets pregnant.

And about six months later, mary shows up on the scene.

And you know what happened when Mary shows up, mary is pregnant with Jesus and it said Elizabeth said that within her womb that John the Baptist left with joy because he understood somehow in the spiritual realm that the one that Mary was carrying.

Jesus was going to be the Redeemer and the Savior of the world.

And time goes on and Elizabeth gets ready to have the baby, and she has the baby and she says we're going to call him John because, again, zechariah is still not able to speak and all of the people are complaining about the name because it's not a family name, which would have been traditional for a family to name a child after somebody else in the family, right, zechariah, junior or somebody else, some other family name.

So they hand a tablet to Zechariah and Zechariah scratches out on the tablet his name is John and all of a sudden his voice returns, his speech returns and he's able to speak and the first words that come out of his mouth are what we just read Zechariah blessed God for making a gracious visit to redeem his people.

This is before it ever happened, before it ever occurred, but he's in concert with 300 Old Testament prophecies, over 300 Old Testament prophecies that declared that there would be a time, there would be a day that the Savior of the world would come and redeem his people from their sin and restore right relationship with God, which is the whole purpose of Jesus coming.

God had visited his people many times in the past throughout history, by sending judges and prophets and priests and kings to deliver them from the messes that they continued to get in.

But this time things were different.

This time things were different.

And why were they different?

Because this time God did not send an earthly flawed representative, he sent himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Jewish people had been in a perpetual cycle of bondage for most of the 700 years since Isaiah's prophecies that we read over the last several weeks.

God would send a deliverer to rescue them out of slavery.

They would do well for a while and they would obey God, and they would ultimately forget God and serve other gods.

And God would judge them and put them back under bondage.

And even if the people would do well on their own and they would come out of the bondage, the kings themselves would do evil against God.

And so this cycle continued to occur, where they would get right with God for a season and then they would fall to idolatry and then they would be in bondage again and oppression, and again and again.

And the current iteration of that at the time of Jesus' birth and the time of Zechariah's prophecy, was the Roman conquest of Israel and their heavy-handed rule over them.

The people of Jesus' day were looking for the Messiah to deliver them from their earthly oppressors, from the enemies that they could name and number, and they wanted him, at that time, to re-establish the throne of Israel and the government of Israel.

Although that was a problem, and, by the way, if you don't know this, there will be a day when all of those things will occur, because Jesus is going to return to this planet.

And who returns this time?

He's not going to return as a baby in a manger.

He's going to return as king of kings and Lord of lords, and he will rule and reign forever and ever and ever.

But throughout all of history, the temptation has been to attempt to make God do what we want him to do, the way we want him to do it and when we want him to do it.

No show of hands.

But has anybody ever attempted to get God to move in that way?

In doing this, we risk making ourselves God in the place of God.

Our desires, our wishes, what we want, comes before what God's purpose is, god's plan, god's will, what God is doing in that generation, in that time and in that season.

You remember that Satan was the worship leader in heaven, and still he thought he knew better than God, and so he tried to make himself equal to God.

That didn't work out so well, did it?

He was cast out of heaven.

Adam and Eve, god's special creation, were given one job to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and to enjoy every part of creation, except for the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

For if they would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die.

But Satan tempted them with the same temptation that caused him to be cast out of heaven.

It wasn't about the fruit, really, was it?

It was about who was in charge.

Who's in charge?

Who is God?

He convinced them that God was withholding the fruit from them because he didn't want them to be like him, and eating it would cause that to happen.

They ate, and immediately the glory of God departed from them.

For the first time in their history, for the first time in the history of the earth itself, shame was felt and guilt came upon this earth.

God shows up on the scene and he kills a ram to clothe them, to clothe their nakedness.

He then disciplines them and tells them about the things that they're going to have to endure because of the sin that they've committed and, most importantly, they're going to be removed, cast out from the presence of God in the garden.

But he also, in the middle of all of that, speaks words of hope and life and love that we hold on to even this day.

As he says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall crush your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Even in the middle of the sin and the guilt and the shame and the condemnation, our heavenly Father is saying I have made a way of escape for you.

And from that day on until this very day, every person who has ever been born into this world, except for Jesus Christ, has been born dead in trespasses and sins.

All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the payment that we deserve for our sin is to be put to death.

And so, on that note, I want to show the first segment of the video that we've produced with three TCC partners who are going to share the part of their story that they would describe as points of darkness, points of great difficulty, points where sin was ravishing them in some way or another.

But be of good courage and be of good cheer, for this is not the end of the story.

And then let's watch this.

And they were really cool stories.

But every time I came to ask the pastor, how do I get to God and that was my words, how do I get to God?

He would tell me well, you see Jesus up there on the cross.

He died for your sins and everybody else in the world, and as long as you know that, you're going to heaven.

It didn't make any sense to me.

It just didn't make sense.

So I got real tired of Sunday school and spent the rest of my time ditching.

I didn't go, and then, as an older child, I started to delve into things that I thought.

You know, my parents may not want me to do this, but God didn't care.

I started smoking cigarettes when I was 12 years old, and that led to pot.

And after pot, somebody told me a friend of mine that LSD would allow me to meet God, and I so wanted to meet God.

I wanted to know Him, I wanted to experience Him.

So I started taking LSD, and from LSD I went on to other drugs.

Nowhere along the line did I ever meet God.

In fact, I just felt more and more rejected.

I felt lonely, I felt hurt that God wouldn't talk to me, I felt useless.

And then, when I was married at 33, which was a wonderful thing I was married, I had two beautiful children, my life was going great.

I had an abortion.

That was the darkest part of my life.

I didn't want an abortion, but I was overruled by the men in my family being my father and my husband.

So on the day of the abortion, I went to the clinic and everything in my body said get out of here, get out of here, get out of here.

So I jumped up from the chair and my husband grabbed my arm and pulled me back, and then I sat back down and everything in me said get out of here, get out of here.

And then my husband tripped me as I was running, and then I sat back down again and my husband sat at me.

From that point on, my husband drove me home and he wanted me to come in the house and take care of the kids, and I said no.

And I walked the block 32 times and every single lap I made I kept on saying why God, why God, why God.

And then I decided, if I was ever going to get past this, I had to just suck it up, go inside and act like nothing ever happened, and that's exactly what I did.

I did that for five years.

When I was in my 40s.

I had a beautiful family, Two beautiful kids, a beautiful wife.

I thought I had a very good relationship with Jesus Christ, but we always don't know and realize that knowledge is not a relationship with Jesus.

I got injured and I got addicted to pills.

It's a very dark place in my lifetime.

All the way through the whole history of me taking pills, I lost my wife, I lost my children and I ended up in prison.

I could not hear God's voice.

Even though I thought I knew Him, even though I knew Scripture, I did not hear God at all.

It's when today that I went into a prison cell five by seven and sit down on a metal bed and they closed an iron door on me and I began to weep.

I don't really remember a time when I didn't know Jesus, and I'm very blessed to be able to say that.

But when I was 10 days old I had blood clots in my heart and the Lord saved my life after spending 18 days in the hospital.

I had a number of health issues throughout my childhood.

I grew up in kind of a dual home.

It was a Christian conservative home, but at the same time my father was an abusive alcoholic.

The Lord delivered me from that when I was 12.

So I've always felt His presence in my life and relationship with Him and communion with Him, especially with God as Father.

And in high school and college I was struggling with a lot of things Struggling with trying to figure out who I was and dealing with PTSD, depression and anxiety.

I had transitioned from a private parochial school to a public high school and that was quite a culture shock for me.

It was really different and it had an effect on me spiritually.

My family was still attending Catholic services, but I knew that that wasn't where I belonged and it wasn't the truth that the Lord was speaking to me, and so I struggled to find a place where I fit, in a church community where I felt I could belong and in high school there's lots of different voices and when I was struggling, all those voices were competing with each other and I ended up listening to the ones that led me away from righteousness.

And even though I knew Jesus and I prayed and I talked with Him, I still fell into a number of sinful sexual relationships when I think I was seeking companionship.

I was lonely, I was dealing with, like I said, anxiety and depression and I needed somebody to talk to and I found that in some of these relationships.

But it was a dark time in that it left me feeling empty and broken and I knew that it was wrong and I was upset with myself that I was doing these things and engaging in these relationships.

I didn't come home, coming home anymore, and when some captive is right, I'm bored.

So I'll be able to live until the sign of God.

I'll be joyous.

Be joyous, emmanuel shall come to the original.

Come now days, bring, come and cheer our spirits by Thy name, and cheer and drive away the shadows of night.

And here's the cloud and rain, a slide.

He joys, he joys.

Emmanuel shall come to the original.

Oh, come, desire of nations by all, all peoples in one heart and one mind.

Let thou our side division cease and be thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice, rejoice.

Emmanuel shall come to the original.

Rejoice, rejoice.

Emmanuel shall come to the original.

Shall come to the original.

And I know that all of us, if we were to tell our whole stories, would have similar things, that we could recount Dark days and dark hours in our lives where we were living without Jesus, without hope, without redemption.

And some of you may even, this night sitting in this room or watching online, be in that same category.

And I want you to know that God doesn't just convict us of our past or convict us of the sin that we're involved with in order to leave us where we're at.

God brought himself, sent himself to this earth, emmanuel God, with us so that we could be forgiven, redeemed and made free because of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

And God understood the goal of salvation when he said these words to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness.

Before him all our days, to serve him out of a desire, a heart that says Lord, I want to follow after you, my heart is for you.

We said before that the wages of sin is death, but that's not the end of that verse.

It goes on to say but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and no matter what our story is like, what the backdrop is or the decisions that we made, some poor, some great, some in between.

We know that the great equalizer, the great place that all of us must find ourselves in order to be forgiven and redeemed, is at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ.

And we know that Jesus came to this earth and was born as a baby, but that was not the ultimate intention of his time here on this earth.

He came to this earth to live the perfect life that you and I, no matter how hard we would try, would not be able to accomplish.

And then, by his own will and by his own choice, he took upon himself the wrath of God that was due to us for the sins that we have committed, and he allowed himself to be crucified, to be nailed to a cross, to be beaten as he was beaten, so that we who believe in him could be saved.

This is why he came.

You see, the goal of salvation is to rescue us from sins, bondaged, so that we can live our life serving God without the wrong kind of fear, because of the righteousness given to us by our Messiah.

Because, you see, not only are our sins forgiven, but all of the good things that Jesus ever did, all of the righteousness that he ever performed here in this life, he gave it to us, he accredited it to us, to our account.

What an amazing God we serve.

We then continually, having been given this great gift of forgiveness and salvation, continually grow in holiness by the work of the Holy Spirit, as we shine the light of Jesus and look forward to eternity with God.

Jesus is the light of the world, and you'll see this revealed in the second part of the video.

I decided I'm going back to church and I took my kids back to church with me and I started learning about God.

Immediately a mentor came alongside me and said what are your questions?

So we went to lunch and they had a big party at their house.

But in that party I was off on the side speaking to my mentor and I started to get really intrigued with the God that he was telling me that was in the Bible.

And to have this mentor helping me walk through the Bible and explaining things to me, it was just glorious.

So I thought, boy, this is it.

Now I'm getting it, now I'm starting to understand.

And one day my mentor asked me, as I was crossing the threshold of their home do you believe in Jesus?

And then my heart went do I?

And I realized I did.

But guess what?

I was exhausted and I just became angry with all the stuff I was overloaded with.

And one day I was driving to work and I parked in a parking lot and I lost it.

I started crying again and I realized I was so overwhelmed with my life that I couldn't do it anymore.

So I closed my eyes and I took things from my hand and I handed them, one at a time, to the Lord.

When I was finished, I had a feeling like someone had grabbed my shirt like this and pulled me straight up of muck and mire and ooze.

I honestly felt released from what I had been under the pressure of all my life and I didn't even know it.

And then my eyes were still closed and this light broke through so bright that I thought the sun had come out and I had opened my eyes.

But the sun was still in the clouds and my eyes were still closed.

And that was the day I truly found the Lord.

So I spent 28 months in prison.

It kind of went completely full circle.

I ended up in a God pod.

A God pod is a special place inside of a prison that you have to be a model prisoner and you have to.

You've got to be approved to go into it and that's where you stay instead of a cell.

And the God pod is headed up by a church that oversees it and they bring in material every week and you have church and they do Bible studies and they teach you the principles of living according to Scripture and they taught me the love of a Father, which I did not understand.

That's where I was missing my relationship to God and I learned the love of a Father that I needed to know.

And once I got that revelation, my life began to change and that's what made me realize where I was wrong and I actually began to learn God was my Father.

He wasn't a God up there judging my sin, and that changed my life completely.

That's when my life turned around.

So when I got out of prison, I still struggled a little bit and I got.

I got help and people really sewed in to me and helped me.

I don't want to get married because you've experienced a bad marriage and a divorce.

And that was something that I definitely felt.

I didn't want to risk getting married and end up repeating the same mistakes that my parents did, or risk marrying a man and having him turn out to be an abusive father to my own children.

And then I saw my mom as the single parent, this single woman, and from a child's perspective at the time it looked like she's this strong, independent woman and she can do everything and she is doing everything, she's working and she's taking care of the home.

And I was so naive I look back and see that now but I bought into this lie that I didn't need to get married, I didn't need a man, that children were a burden, that I didn't want to repeat this mistake, that marriage was because people change and you never really know what someone is hiding.

And at the same time, I've been very gifted and the Lord has given me a number of ambitions and I thought, oh, I can just be a career woman, I don't.

I don't need to have a family, I can launch myself into a career and I've always been competitive.

So I wanted to be the best, the best professor, I have the most books published, have the best books published, and I had that drive to be this career woman where I wasn't going to get married or let that get in the way.

Combined with this, this hatred and this animosity toward men, this kind of idea of this strong, independent woman.

I can do anything I want to do.

It's my body, nobody needs to be telling me what to do with my life, sort of thing.

And that continued through high school and a bit through college.

But later in high school I started to listen more.

I was inspired really to listen more to those voices, the good voices, and I wound up founding a college that holds true to things that are good and beautiful and true and are righteous and that helped through education, helped me to see what was wrong with this way of life that I was living.

But even then I still struggled with that need for companionship, with loneliness, perhaps, with just wanting to drown out some of the sorrows or the stress.

You know, have fun.

I thought that I could have a friends with benefits relationship, without the emotional and physical consequences that come with sex, but I couldn't and a few relationships turned into one really, really big mistake where I put myself in a position with a man where I felt like I couldn't really say no without something happening.

But I recognized I put myself in that position and I ended up sleeping with a man knowing full well that he was in a relationship.

I did something that I never, I never would have thought I would do, that I chastised other people for doing, and the Lord found a really unique way to humble me, and that was right before, right before the world shut down with COVID.

And so I spent after that a number of months quite alone.

I went for a few months without a single hug from any person, without really talking to anyone other than on the phone or over zoom or through a face mask at the grocery store, and it was a time that God used to really reconnect, for me to really reconnect with him.

And I went through this process of conviction that when I look back on it now, when I reflect on it now, it was really beautiful, but at the time it was sad.

I was terrified, I felt the wrath of God, I hated myself, I hated my sin, I wanted to undo everything that I had done, and the Holy Spirit would jerk me awake at night and confront me with all of this.

Use Psalm 51 to really convict me of my sin.

My sin is ever present before me and against you alone, lord, have I committed these transgressions.

And I really connected with David and I really connected with the gospel message in that Psalm and at that same time that I felt terrified and angry and hurtful and sad and remorseful, I felt just the embrace of God and His mercy.

David starts off.

Have mercy on me, god, according to your steadfast love and kindness.

And I really felt God just embrace me in those nights and the Holy Spirit inspire me with just.

I was going to be doing better.

I wasn't going to make these mistakes again.

He wasn't going to let me.

I was going to reconnect with him and have a relationship with God like never before, with Jesus like never before.

And I would ask over and over and over again, creating me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me, and it's a process and it didn't happen overnight.

And this was feeling this conviction over and over again.

It was conversations with friends, it was reading scripture, it was finding a church community where I finally felt safe to be able to share my story and feel convicted through sermons and through worship.

And so now I want to expose the lives of feminism for what it really is and to contrast feminism with biblical femininity.

There are so many wonderful, beautiful examples of strong women in scripture, of godly women, of women who are the heads of their households, who make major political decisions.

I'm thinking you have the Proverbs 31 woman, and you have Esther and Ruth and Deborah and Hannah, whose prayers changed her life and the lives of others.

You have Mary.

You have all of these beautiful women and I'm finding the more I read about them in scripture, the more I want to be like them, and it's nothing like this image of women that we see in culture today.

The feminist version of women that culture is really thrusting upon us left me feeling empty and lonely and led me down into those dark paths of sinfulness and pain, a kind of pain that David says in that song my sin is ever present, is ever before me, even after I recommitted my life to Christ and after I was baptized I chose baptism.

Even then, you still bear those scars and it still hurts.

So I want to share my story to help other women see that you can be strong and beautiful, brave and courageous, hardworking, ambitious, you can have a career, you can be married, but you can do all of these things in a godly way, in a way that aligns with his truth and his plan for creation, and I want to share my passion for understanding how the spiritual and the political are so connected and so deeply intertwined and how the enemy is using every tool in the toolbox that he can to separate us from God, and that's really what my sin did was separate me from him.

Education is such a critical part of my story.

What I learned in a public school For a time be the louder voice of what I was learning at home and what I was learning from Scripture, and it was able to drown out the good things that I was reading in beautiful literature.

And I want to share my story with you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Though you have nothing, come, he is the offering.

Come see what your God has done.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

He's the Lamb.

He's the Lamb who is given slain for our pardon.

His promise is peace for those who believe.

He's the Lamb who is given slain for our pardon.

His promise is peace for those who believe.

So come, though you have nothing.

He is the offering.

Come see what your God has done.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Christ is born.

Christ is born.

Christ is born for you.

Thank you, lord.

It's amazing to me there's only one way to get to the Father and that's through Jesus Christ.

And yet he chooses a million billion ways to reach us.

Each one of these stories you see different ways that God reached out to these different people, to reach them where they were at.

That's how much God cares about each and every one of us.

And once we have tasted of the goodness of God, once we have come to Jesus who was born, once we have repented, turned around, turned away from our lifestyle of sin and rebellion and we turn toward Jesus and we become followers of Jesus Christ, we have the greatest privilege in all of the world and that is that now we get to be a reflection of Jesus Christ to the world around us.

What an honor, what a privilege it is to be chosen by God to represent Him to the rest of the world.

And Zachariah understood this more than most.

It's amazing, these words that he spoke, this prophecy, given this song that he's saying barely references his own son at all.

And he's been quiet for nine months and I can just imagine him cradling his son, john, in his arms as he's speaking these words and he says to his son and you, child, will be called the prophet of the most high, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tend mercy of our God.

Zachariah is saying John, shine the light.

You get to be one of the first ones in a very long time to shine the light.

And, friends, we are in the same position in a lot of ways.

We know that we again, as I mentioned before, are awaiting a second return, a coming back of Jesus to this earth, and yet I feel like Heavenly Father is crying out to us, just as Zachariah, the Father of John, was crying out to his own son and saying shine, shine brightly.

My wife and I have a daughter named Hannah, and today is her birthday, and it's also her daughter's birthday, so we have two generations of family members born on this day, and every Christmas Eve Eve, I think about the fact.

I remember back to that day when I first held my daughter in my arms and I'm telling you, the gift of life that God gives through the birth of children is an amazing gift.

It's remarkable.

There's no words, there's not enough descriptive words to describe what it is like to be granted that kind of gift.

We know that there are some who have not been given that, and we pray for you.

I know this can be a hard time of year, but when you think about the great gift of Jesus Christ that's been given to us, do we still feel the same way about Him all these years later?

Many of us have been in the Lord for a long time and yet sometimes I feel like when I look at my daughter, I still see her little, and I know she doesn't want me to think like that or especially not to talk like that.

I don't make sure that I do not talk to her like she's a little kid, but somehow I still remember that day holding her in my arms, and I think that this is a reminder to us that we need to remind ourselves how precious Jesus really is and how great this gift is that we've been given to give away, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

These are the concluding words of Zechariah.

You see, the gospel brings light which dispels the darkness of our prison state.

It is this light which gives life to our dead souls and guides our feet into the way of peace, and the three people that have shared with us their heartfelt stories are now being used in tremendous ways to shine the light of Jesus to the world around them, and that's how we're going to conclude tonight.

I went through a program called Deeper Still.

It is for abortion, wounded people.

When I went through it I had already gone through counseling.

I was healed.

I thought from my abortion I couldn't have been more wrong.

I went through it because I wanted to help other women and I figured, if I'm going to help them, I need to go through this thing and see.

You know what it's all about.

God did a great, mighty work in my life during that weekend and before I even went there, god told me to speak to you guys.

So that's what I'm doing.

God bless you.

Mark Manley had taught me that a man can destroy his character in one second.

And I began to learn all these things and become a partner at Trinity Community Church and I've grown and gotten better and little did I know I've become a prison chaplain and now I go to Morgan County Prison and I preach and share my testimony with prisoners.

I counsel prisoners.

I have people who go with me and volunteer and they do the same, and I have a ministry that I work in because God changed my life.

He took time to really help me and it took going to prison.

It took the darkest part of my life to see the light of God changing my life.

And not only that.

I do all kinds of work around the church and it's a blessed life.

I mean I look forward to what God has for me in the future.

And so it's so important for me now to share the passion from my story that arises out of my story to help others see the importance of education, the importance of training a child up in the way that he should go.

This is an order from our God, because he loves us and because he wants us to have a relationship with him, and that starts with our youth and that starts with our children.

So education and politics and the difference between feminism and biblical femininity, these are all things that I'm hoping to use my story, to use my own education to help people really see truth and see goodness and beauty and how God designed his creation to interact with each other.

Proverbs 1 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, is the beginning of knowledge, and it's this fear of the Lord that I hope we can all feel when we're reminded of his love and his faithfulness and his goodness, but also that he's truth and he wants us to repent and to return to him.

Jesus.

Jesus, answer your name.

The spirit of the Lord, god is a calling, because he has anointed me to preach good news, to take away all of your sorrow and your mourning, to give the oil of joy and the garment of praise, for I have seen you in your captivity.

I will open up every prison door.

So rise and shine, for your light has come and my glory is rising upon you and I'm dancing on you and I'm singing on you songs of the living, and I will send every captive free and you will be with me.

Free one mind.

And I carried the weight of all your iniquity.

I've carried the burden of all your shame, and I've called you by name and you are mine, and I have carried the weight of all your iniquity.

I've carried the burden of all your shame and I've called you by name.

I've called you by name and you are mine, and I'm singing over you, and I'm singing over you songs of the living, and I will send every captive free and you will be with me.

Oh, free one mind, you are mine.

Free one mind, you are mine.

Free one mind, you are mine.

Free one mind, you are mine.

Wow.

The story of Christmas is the story of the sun rising on the earth, dispelling the crippling darkness that has kept us in bondage.

Angels will declare it, joseph and Mary will experience it, shepherds will confirm it, wise men will travel to see it and even Herod and Satan will try to extinguish it.

But this light will never end.

It will never go out.

So my encouragement to all of us tonight believe in Jesus.

What do you give Jesus for his birthday?

The God of the universe, who has everything he could ever think or imagine or need.

Give him your life, put your life in his hands tonight.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved in the sum of you.

And this was me at one time in my life.

I needed to return to the Lord.

I knew him, I experienced him, I was embraced by him, and yet I chose to walk away and live my life the way I wanted to, and it was only by the grace of God that I was able to return.

The good news about God is he celebrates our returning.

He's not waiting for you to return so that he can beat you up or extinguish you or damage you in some way.

He's waiting for you to return so that he can celebrate the relationship that you have with him restored.

So either come to the Lord for the first time tonight or be restored to the Lord if you find yourself far away from him tonight.

Those are the calls that are on God's heart and on my heart.

Tonight we ask that the elders would stand where you're at, just so that everybody can get a look at you, and at the end of the service, the elders will be here up front and if you would like to pray with somebody, we'd ask that you would come and let us and even the wives, those that are here, but to be able to come and pray, please come and let's pray together.

But, most importantly, even if you don't talk to us, talk to Jesus, talk to our Heavenly Father and make things right with him, amen.

So we're going to finish with one last song and then we're going to be dismissed.

Tonight we do have cookies and hot cocoa available for everyone and we've prayed already for the Lord to multiply it, so it's going to be good.

I would ask that if you would line up at these back doors on this side, on the left hand side, as from my position on the right hand side.

Well, when you stand up, it'll be on your left.

So on the left hand side and work your way through the coffee bar area.

We have cookies and cocoa and maybe some coffee for this late for coffee, though, isn't it?

Anyway, that will be available to you.

I do want to thank you again for coming and participating in our Christmas Eve Eve service, and I want to pray, and then we're going to close out with one final song.

Father, we pray in the mighty name of Jesus.

We thank you for the words that have been sung and spoken and read, and spoken from a testimony standpoint.

Lord God, we ask, in Jesus' name, that you would cause your spirit to do what only he can do to convict, to impress, to draw and to save and to restore.

And, father, we ask, in the name of Jesus, that you would give us the chance, even in the next few days, within our families and friends and coworkers and those around us, to shine the light of Jesus, and that many would come to know you, even this day and this week.

In Jesus' name, we pray Amen, amen.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May he lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace in Jesus' name, amen.

We're going to finish with the song and then your testimony.

Let's stand together.

You know this one Joy to the world and say your praise.

And then this song is born.

While fields and floods, or fields and rains, we keep the sound in joy.

No more the sin and sorrow, nor thorns and paths to hide, because he made His blessings come far as the curse is found.

He rules the world in truth and grace and makes the nations blue.

The glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love and the wonders of His love and the wonders of His love and the wonders of His love.

Let's do that first verse one more time Joy to the world.

The Lord is come and receive our peace.

Let me heart bring praise in Him and nature sing Amen, be just in Him and have an amazing day.

Merry Christmas everybody.