Merry Christmas, everybody.

We are so glad that you're here with us today.

Welcome to Saddleback Church.

I want to invite you to turn to your neighbor right now

and just say Merry Christmas to them.

In fact, if you're joining us online,

once you turn to somebody in your living room

and say, Merry Christmas, today is a great day.

And as you're doing that, why don't you lock eyes with them and look deep

into those eyes? You're going to see very clearly who the parents are that stayed up to 2 a.m.

Putting together kids' gifts. Maybe you've done that before. It took us a few years to wise up.

Stacey would tell you, I didn't stay up to 2 a.m. very much putting together kids' gifts.

But now with two teenagers, we don't buy gifts that require so much assembly anymore.

Now, some of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we love Christmas morning. We love Christmas

surprises. And I want to do a little survey with you. I want you to raise your hand. If you're

the kind of person that you love

surprises, just raise your hand up high and let everybody know you're the kind of person you love

surprise gifts, you love surprise parties, you like surprises. Now, there are others of us that we

don't like surprises quite as much. And if that's you, want you raise your hand up high and just let everybody know, you're the kind of person you don't like surprises quite as much. And if that's you, why don't you raise your hand up high and just let everybody know you're the kind of person you don't like surprises. And maybe

some of you spouses or parents you're learning for the first time, your spouse or your kid or

your roommate, they don't like surprises very much. Now, I don't like surprises because I like to know.

Like I like to know something's coming.

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