What's up, porch, how are we doing tonight?

Hey, it's good to see you. I hope that all is well. Happy Tuesday to you. My name is Timothy Atika. I'm one of the teaching pastors here at Watermark on Tuesday nights as well as on Sundays.

If this is your first time ever with us on a Tuesday night, thank you for trusting us with your Tuesday night.

I do want to give a shout out to all the porch live locations watching.

I especially want to say hello to porch live Midland, porch live Tulsa, porch live Boise, so glad that you're tuning in tonight, I hope all is well.

So here's the deal. I've got three boys in all three of my boys have birthdays at some point in the month that we are in, which is not great financially, but it's just a reality for the Atika family.

Which means that we are thinking a lot about gifts that we are giving and the third kids birthday is on October 12th and then right after that, like our kids are going to be thinking about what they want for Christmas.

So for the whole fall, we are really thinking about presents and something that I've learned over the years is this when you give a gift to someone you care about their response.

The response matters. I got to remember when I oldest son Noah was three years old at Christmas. He got a lot of gifts because he was the first green kid and I remember him on Christmas.

This was his rhythm. He would take a present. He would unwrap it. He would look at it. He would not say thank you and he would put it to the side. He would grab the next gift. He would unwrap it.

He would look at it. He would not say thank you and he would put it to the side. After you unwrapped all of his gifts, he looked at my wife and me and said, what else you got for me?

I was like, we're going to need to work on that. You're a pastor's kid. That's not going to fly. Jesus is the reason for the season anyway.

It's not the response we were looking for. Your response matters when you're receiving a gift. I remember when my wife and I, in our first year of marriage, I remember the first time we were exchanging gifts as a married couple. It was a big moment.

I did not win in this situation. She gave me for Christmas. She gave me three shirts that I would consider to be super basic.

Now, here's what you need to know about me because I'm in anyogram for it, which means that I think I'm really special and I need to be special and I need everything to be unique.

So I need the clothes that I wear to be unique and I know what you're thinking. You're wearing a polo in jeans. I don't want to talk about it.

But on this particular Christmas, I opened these three shirts. It's not that I responded poorly. I just didn't respond. I was like, oh, okay.

There's that. I got to remember what I said. I don't remember if that was the moment that cat threw a blanket at me or if that was another fight. I just remember it didn't go well.

But then I think about a time when I was in sixth grade and I received a gift and we still have the video of it to this day.

When I opened that gift, this was my response. I kid you not. This is what I did. I go.

Because at that time in my life, there was a band out called New Kids on the block. And I was kind of into it.

And so they kind of fueled my response. That was the right response to the gift that I had received. Your response when you're receiving a gift, it really matters.

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