We can easily get lost in the hustle and bustle of Christmas. With shopping, family, and holiday functions, it is easy to lose the meaning of Christmas. With everything being busy, it is so easy to get distracted and lose focus of what Christmas is really about. The Christmas Story can be summed up in one verse:

Jesus is God’s gift to us, to give us everlasting life and save us from our sins. We have to receive Jesus first though, before we receive everlasting life.

As the Bible says, "She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21).

Although we are saved, Christians still need to be saved from sin. There are a lot of people that are born again, but still struggle with sin. Jesus came for His people that accepted Him and to save His people from sin. Christians can get lost and lose direction through their sin. Jesus will heal you from sin, but it is your choices that determine how hard it may be and how long it will take.

The true meaning of Christmas brings

THREE DIRECTIONAL CHANGES

When God gets a hold of you, you will have:

With a change of heart, your thoughts and feeling change. God will change your heart and put a new spirit in you. The first thing to change is your heart not your behavior. While we might prefer changing our circumstances, our hearts must change first. Before Christ, you had no problem with sinful behavior. After you accept Jesus and then commit sin, it troubles and bothers you.

As it is written, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone..." (Ezek. 36:26) and "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). If your heart is new then you will want to follow Christ and the new way.

God is constantly renewing and changing your heart. You can either be troubled by it or accept it. To allow God to change your heart,

When there was news of Jesus’ birth, many were excited but "But when Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him" (Matt. 2:3). Herod, like some people, resisted change and caused turmoil.

What is your response when He calls you? You can either accept it or be troubled. We are all in different stages of redemption and restoration. God created us in His image, and for us to be like Him. When we are in the world, it tries to shape and mold us, but when God gets a hold of us, He stretches us and leads us to change. It can be easy to go back to old ways, when God stops pulling. Allowing God to change you can hurt because He will stretch you, but He won’t rip you. If you allow Him He will build you. You will have scars in your life that will serve as reminders, but they will no longer hurt because God has restored you.

Christians are saved, but everyone is at different stages with their walk with Christ. We need to accept, love, and forgive people for who they are. God loves us no matter what stages we are at in life, so we should love like He loves.

After a change in heart, you have:

We must be born again in Christ as the Bible says, "Truly, truly I say unto you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3) and "But our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a Savior, Jesus Christ..." (Phil. 3:20).

Remember, "For once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy!" (1Pet. 2:10).

To be born again, you have to die to yourself and in Christ be born again. Change happens from the inside out. You can act Christian like, but the true change needs to come from the inside. All your outward actions have no substance, if there is no change internally.

Lastly you will have:

We follow a perfect savior imperfectly. We all have imperfect behavior. We have the heart but the behavior does not match. We will struggle to find our way home, but God is still working on us.

It is written, "Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which translated means, ‘God with us.’" (Matt. 1:23). This means that God is always with you. In order to change your behavior, it is important to spend time with Jesus. The more time you spend with Jesus, the more you will be transformed.

Scriptures confirm, "But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).

?

You can have an imperfect faith and still grow. Natural man cannot understand the Spirit of God. It is foolish to him. That is why the unsaved world cannot understand God’s laws and ways. The only way you can understand the rules and laws of God is by being a citizen of Him. We are all held accountable to God’s law. God’s law supersedes the law of the state. The state enforces the law, and they can change it, but one day all will be held accountable. The ultimate and highest law is God’s.

Hanging around Jesus will help change your behavior. Jesus came to save and redeem you. Devotions are integral part of spending time with him. Sometimes you can read and seem to get nothing, but what He teaches you is perseverance and discipline. By doing devotions, He trains us by going by what we know, not what we feel. God tells us to do what is right even though there will be no earthly reward. The more we stick to Jesus, the more we become like Him. We love Him because He loved us first. When you stick to Jesus, your behavior grows to be more like Him.

?

Don’t get lost in the madness of the Christmas Season. Remember God’s gift of Christ to you. Find your way home to God by a change of heart, a change of citizenship, and a change of behavior.

?

?