Title:   5. Christmas Challenges

•    God gives a teenage girl a son while she is engaged and also tells her finance it's OK.

•    Mary is a teenager and her finance is slightly older.

•    TV ‘soaps' are all about people – us. We find relationships at the heart of life.

•    God is concerned with people – Christmas is a God & people story

•    But it's also a supernatural story -  immaculate conception, guidance by dreams

•     This is God who can change us, God who can guide.

•    How many yearnings do we have to be changed?

•    Or have we settled?

•    God brings change and blessing to those who respond to Him. Do we?

•    The emperor demands a census which means the couple have to travel to Bethlehem where she has the baby.

•    We don't live isolated lives; we are impacted by others.

•    We live in an ungodly world with ungodly people around us impacting our lives.

•    They may be family, friends, employers etc.

•    They bring pressure & stress into our lives

•    They put us in difficult circumstances

•    Yet in the Christmas story God is working out a prophetic plan.

•    We may not understand it but He is - even today.

•    Can we accept that God is working for our good even in the 'bad' circumstances?

•    Shortly afterwards shepherds come to see the baby, being sent by angels.

•    People bring pressures, but people also bring blessings.

•    We're made for relationships with others.

•    If we let others in, blessing can come as God speaks and acts through them.

•    God uses people to change us, bless us, build us, guide us

•    Are we open to others? Do we let others in to receive God's blessing through them?

•    They go to the Temple a month later to give thanks according to the law and are greeted by a prophet and prophetess who herald the child.

•    Mary & Joseph obeyed God's guidance and received a Spirit blessing.

•    God wants word AND Spirit to operate in our lives.

•    Do we make obedience to God's word a priority, like Mary & Joseph?

•    Yet are we open to and do we know the move of the Spirit?

•    They stay on and some months later a caravan of wealthy scholars from the East come to worship the baby.

•    They remained in Bethlehem until God moved them on. There He provided for them. 

•    They were poor but God brought riches.

•    Each of the gifts was of great value and would have enabled them to have material provision for some while to come.

•    God wants to teach us that He can provide

•    Can we rest in the place of God's choosing and let Him provide?

•    God leads them to Egypt for two years and then back home to Nazareth. End of story.

•    Dreams were God's currency for Joseph -  dreams kept them safe – well obedience to them!

•    God speaks to those who will listen and respond. (Do we not hear because we don't listen?)

•    God is working to keep us safe and guide us into safety.

•    Can we be at peace in the knowledge that in the coming year He will keep us safe and guide us - as we respond to Him and let Him lead?

•    interacts with very human people,

•    does the supernaturally impossible,

•    is there working out His purposes for us even when others seem to be working to the contrary,

•    brings blessings through other people,

•    guides by word & Spirit,

•    provides for us,

•    keeps us safe when we let Him lead.