Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. I am in the podcast studio with today's Devo writer, Mr. Neil Monroe.

Hey, guys. Neil, so glad you're here. We're good friends. And we are in Luke two.

Luke two. The Christmas story. It is August. You work in Kids Ministry.

What do kids love more than Christmas? Well, if we're honest, Fortnite, dude perfect, memes.

Okay. But they like the Bible too. Yeah. They like Christmas. Yeah, they like Christmas.

But we're reading the Christmas story in August. What do we make of that practically? Yeah, I think that

the Christmas narrative is very, very important. Like the birth of Christ is a very, very big deal.

I mean, a lot of people could tell you about the birth of Jesus. I mean, a lot of people

could tell you John 316, that God so loves the world that he sent his son. And that was the first

verse that I memorized. And my sister, who does not even believe in Jesus now, but consider herself

an agnostic, she's the one that taught that to me. And she still knows that.

And she knows the Christmas story. But I think she would see it as just a common thing that we talk

about. But in reality, the birth of Christ is a really, really, really big deal that is not an

isolated event, but it truly is that God sent his son because he loves the world. Okay, it's a really

big deal. It's like, yeah, it's Christmas. That's why we have a whole holiday. That's why we take off work.

Why is it a big deal? And why is it like worth studying in August? Yeah. I mean, that's a good question.

If we ignore the rest of the Bible and we look at just the point of Christ coming, then we wouldn't start at the beginning. We would say, okay, the birth of Christ. We're going to glaze past the genealogy.

Like, I don't understand why it's telling me that Jesus' great, great, great, great, grandma was a

lady named Rahab. That doesn't matter to me. I want to see what Jesus actually did and how that

actually affects my sin. In a reality, if we actually understand the Bible, the narrative of

scripture, the whole narrative of

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