Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five day a week daily devotional where we share the word prayers in our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

So it's December 12th, and I'm guessing by this time you're feeling a little on the crazy side of Christmas.

You there yet?

Every year, I promise myself I'm not giving into the crazy

that I'm going to stay calm and enjoy it all, and I really try, but the schedule just blows up

and the kids are ready for a break, and I'm trying to get Christmas gifts together and all my work

finished, and yeah, you know the drill. I know all too well that all of that can't bring the kind

of true glory to God he deserves in his earthly birth month.

So I want to talk about how we can quiet the Christmas crazy and turn things back to glorifying God.

At least once this season, we will probably hear someone preach a sermon on Jesus being the reason for the season.

And it's because we tend to need this reminder every year as we madly shop, madly wrap gifts, madly go to Christmas parties, and yes, sort of lose our minds with it all.

Has Christmas gotten crazier in recent years, or has it always been this crazy? And I just

had to become a grown-up to realize it. I'm sure it's the latter. People have always struggled to

keep God first in the holiday. That is really all about him. But here's what I also want to know.

None of us really want to go crazy during Christmas, right?

We want to enjoy this season. We truly do. We love it, most of us, and we anticipate it like

crazy, and we're sad when it's over. As humans, we're wired to love all this season represents.

And so when we don't enjoy it, we feel super unfulfilled and sad about that. So rather than just sit around and lament another crazy

season, I wanted to talk through what we can do to make it less than this year. It's not too late,

I promise. Number one, I think we need to say no to some things for the sake of our sanity.

I mean, I always believe in this, but definitely over the holidays.

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