Welcome to the Jesus Calling podcast. Today is a special episode as we celebrate the release of two new books from Jesus Calling for Christmas time.

And to help us celebrate, we've asked Christian singer-songwriter Mark Lowry to the show.

Mark shares about his own Christmas traditions growing up and why Christmas is special to him. He also gives us a behind the scenes look at the inspiration

that led him to write one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time.

Mary, did you know?

During the second half of our show, we continue this celebration as we talk with

the President of Christian Book Distributors, Ray Hendrickson, and his staff at CBD, as they commemorate

40 years of ministering to the world with Christian products.

But first, let's have a little early Christmas celebration with Mark Lowry.

My name is Mark Lowry. I am a gospel singer who tells stories between the songs.

I think the Christmas story is beautiful because only God could have thought this up.

I mean, I don't think man could have come up with the idea of grace apart from God delivering it and because it's so crazy that God would love us before

for we even knew ourselves who we were before we were ever born he loved us.

He planned us and we are the apple of his eye. And Christmas

is a reminder, a yearly reminder, plus Easter. You know, he never asked us to remember his birth but he did

ask us to remember his death. But we take pride in remembering his birth because

without his birth there'd been no death. My personal Christmas traditions

when I was a kid was staying up as late as I could

to look for a red nose streaking across the sky and scratching frost off the window if there was any

looking for Rudolph you know because I believed when I was a kid in Santa Claus.

My parents did nothing to discourage it and so I love

that childhood and I remember coming down the stairs on Christmas morning and

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