Welcome to Auburn Community Church. My name is Miles Fidel, and it is such a privilege to welcome you on Christmas.

I know it's a big deal that you get to choose where you're going to attend church and where you're going to hear the gospel message of Jesus, and you chose to be here.

And that means so much to me. It means so much to our team.

And if you're new, we would love to have you get involved in the life of

our church. God is doing so many cool things at ACC. And I am honestly just humbled to be on this

stage right now. I am not going to talk long. And I told the 230 they had a guarantee on that

because you guys were coming in right after them. I make no guarantees. I'm going to make an effort to not go long at this gathering, realizing that many of you have your kids in here, which is just so cool to be honest with you. I don't view that at all as an interruption. I view that as the reason why our church exists to raise up families that love and honor Jesus. And you can clap, by the way,

you can laugh if something's funny. I hope at some point you do get to participate. I always feel

an elevated level of pressure when I'm preaching on Christmas or Easter. And before I became

a lead pastor, there were pastors who told me this. They were like, it's just different. It hits different on Easter. It hits different on Christmas. There's something that happens. And you got people in the room who are just ready and willing to receive the gospel message. And so anytime I step into this moment, I'm always like, okay, this is holy ground. And I want to say exactly what God has called me to say,

but I believe that that is true at an exponentially higher level right now, because not only

are we in Christmas, but we are coming to the end of the most difficult year many of us have

ever walked through. And so this is our final gathering together in 2020. And I not only want to say something

that takes you back 2,000 years into the story of Christmas, but I also want to bring a gospel

message that collides with everything that we've had to walk through over the course of 2020.

And if you're a part of our church, I don't think any of us will ever be the same, having gone through what we've gone through together.

You know, when you go through something traumatic with a group of people, there's this special bond that develops within those that were there.

And the fact that we were able to go through so many months of just doing church online, the fact that we were able to walk with families alongside the most brutal,

difficult times of financial uncertainty, many of them losing members of their family,

many people getting sick. And it's like, I think back to what we thought we were getting

into, going into a new decade and what we've had to walk through. And I just want to get in

front of you and remind you that God is still faithful and that

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