Welcome to this weekend's In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley. There are only a few shopping days

left until Christmas. No doubt some of you are still frantically looking for that perfect gift for

someone. Guess what? God beat you to it by about 2,000 years. Today's podcast helps us appreciate

the first Christmas gift.

Do you remember when you were a little boy, a little girl, and that first Christmas,

although at least the first Christmas is that you remember pretty well,

the thing that you were most excited about on Christmas morning is not what you were going to have for breakfast,

but what about those gifts?

Because you'd been rattling

them all week and picking them up and looking at them and seeing what had your name on it and

what was the biggest package and what was the smallest and trying to figure out what it was.

There was just an awesome thrill in your heart. You didn't know what was going to happen. You just

couldn't wait to open it up to find out what was there. Well, let me ask you this. How long did it

take you in your maturity to lose your sense of real joy, expectation, and a little bit of that

mystique about Christmas morning? Or whenever it was, you need to go

back and think about why you lost it. Because the truth is, you and I should never lose that little

boy, little girl excitement about Christmas. Now, people have all kinds of different attitudes

about Jesus and who he is, and sometimes

he never gets out of the manger to some people.

It's always had baby Jesus.

But you and I know that he wasn't just a baby.

He was far more than that.

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