Long-Expected Hope

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well, good morning. For those of you that I have not yet met, my name is Todd, and I'm kind of the fill-in around here for John. I was thinking you're Johnny Carson and I'm Joey Bishop. I fill in for you. I don't know. Oh, you don't know? Oh, come on. Joey Bishop? The Tonight Show? Johnny Carson? I remember Johnny. Okay. And Ed McMahon. Okay. Well, anyway. Joey filled in for Johnny quite often, so anyway. I filled in for Jay Leno. That's where you guys are. Okay. Anyway, before I get started with the story, I just want to offer an amazing prayer report, praise report. This week, my wife Jennifer went to Moffitt and got the results for her scan. She's been battling lung cancer with treatments of chemo and radiation for the past two months. The scan came back. The tumor has been significantly reduced. Yay. And she has been approved to continue therapy now with immunotherapy one time a month instead of once a week. So we're just praising God. We're thanking Him. Thank you and all that you've done. The cards, the letters, the text, you've just taken us under your wing, and we could not be more thankful. Thank you for being the church to us. So well done you, and anyway. All right. That being said, three questions, and then I'm going to pray. First question is this. Don't answer out loud, but just think about it. What do you want for Christmas? Question two. What do you need for Christmas? Those are two big different questions, aren't they? What do you want? What do you need? Question three. What are you giving this Christmas? Let's pray, and then we'll talk about it. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time, for this place, the opportunity to be here and hear hopefully words that come from you this morning. Lord, as I always pray, there's not one of us that is here by mistake. You have designed us to be in this place at this time, and I just pray, Lord, that you give each one ears to hear what you have to say. Whether I say it or not, speak and allow us to hear. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay, I have a bit of a confession to make before I kind of get into this. For many, many years, Christmas was not my favorite time of the year, and for good reason. And John can probably relate to this, too. When you're in full-time ministry, Christmas is tough, okay? And especially if you have multiple services and you have multiple style services, and especially if Christmas is on a Saturday. God help us. Okay, here's why. Friday night, if Christmas is on Saturday, that means Christmas Eve is on Friday, okay? There was a time when I had three services, 5, 7, and 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve. Then Christmas Day at 10 o'clock on Saturday, and then guess what? It's Sunday! And now you have three services on Sunday. So that was seven services in three days, which meant probably three or four different sermons, and by the time you were done, you were in a heap somewhere. So Christmas was not a great time of year. Just spent a lot of work. And also then, I think over time, just with the misplaced perspective of Christmas, that it became so much more about gift-giving and finding that just right gift, and somewhere in the middle of all that, Jesus just got kind of lost. And even that can kind of be typified by this question that many of us ask this time of the year. What do you get someone who has everything? Ever said that? Ever thought that? Well, about 20 years ago, in an attempt to kind of get me out of the Christmas doldrums, you will, Jennifer and I decided to opt out of the gift-giving scenario. Okay? So we simply said to our kids, we're not going to give you anything. You please don't give us anything. We said to our parents, we're not getting it. We're opting out of the gift exchange deal. Instead, we're going to take the resources that we would have given something for you, and we're going to give that to someone who really is in need. So to answer the question, what do you give for us? What do you give the person who has everything? The answer is nothing. They don't need anything. So why don't you use the same amount of money to give to somebody who really is in need? A homeless person, a orphan, a child, whatever that may be, but use those resources. And I got to tell you, since we started doing that, I actually enjoy Christmas. To quote someone I know you've heard of, he starred in a movie. He was actually the Grinch. You know his name, Jim Carrey? Look what he said. No holiday should manipulate you to the point where you're going into debt just to show someone you love them. I heard on the news the other day, some people are still paying off the debt that they went into last Christmas to please and prove their love for someone. It's become an expectation, isn't it? You have this expectation anxiety. I've got to buy for them, and I've got to have something special, and...