Hey, I want to welcome all of our partner churches around the country who are joining us today in our Atlanta area, Atlanta-based churches.

Those of you in the state of Georgia, those of you watch them from wherever.

And, of course, our special friends down on the south side.

So we all are to some level, some degree with some level of emotion, maybe different emotions.

We are all anticipating Christmas.

We're planning. We're predicting, we're purchasing, maybe you're panicking. I'm sure there are other words to start

with a P that we could put on that list. But here's what we're going to talk about today and next

week. And as I prepare for this message and next week, I just kept thinking, how do I bring the emotion

to the reality of this so that for those of us who've been Christians a long time, it takes

on a different level of appreciation.

And for those of you who've lost faith in the past and you're just kind of going through

the motions because it's Christmas and, you know, you've got to participate at some level

to bring the emotion that maybe you

once felt about Christmas and about the Christmas story. How do we just bring that back out?

Because it's so, it's so amazing. But here's kind of the bottom line. And here's why this is so

important. Nobody. And it's hard for us to imagine this because, you know, we grew up with Christmas.

But once upon the time, there was no Christmas. But once upon a time, there was no

Christmas. And once upon a time, nobody saw the first Christmas coming. Nobody anticipated.

Nobody was expecting God to move in the direction of the human race. In fact, it was just the

opposite of that. In ancient times, people were trying to become like gods or to become gods.

They hoped to become gods.

They hoped to become stars in the heavens.

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