Amen. If you have Scripture today, we're turning to such a great passage of Scripture in the Gospel of Luke the second chapter.

And I love this in my Bible because when I turned to Luke chapter 2 in my Bible, there is a whole in the page on the other page. I know that's bad.

But that's because I did a Christmas tour with Chris Tomlin and I held my Bible open for about forty nights, like that night after night after night after night.

And that's what happens. And so that's a lot of life and history and a lot of cities in there. But I can still clearly read the column to the side there in chapter 2.

And I don't know. Do you have a Christmas story tradition at your house? We did a lot of the years growing up here in Atlanta. One of our nieces would read the Christmas story sometime before we dove into all the presents.

Do you ever do that? Like hold the kids off for a minute. We're going to read the Christmas story. And then someone, you know, usually you pick someone young and they read the tenderness of this passage.

Anybody got a tradition like that? Always trying to get that in the mix. Well, I think that, you know, sometimes for me, we'll hear a story like this so many times that it moves sort of into urban legend and it moves beyond the reality of what it really is.

And so for the next few weeks, what I would love to do and what's really been blowing my heart up is I would love to break down the Christmas story.

Because if we started, I don't know if you could get every single bit of it, but if I got you going today, most of us could get about 80% of it out there.

But I want to stop take a step back. Look at what God is saying to us and let him shape our hearts today in the midst of this story.

And here's why because in the season of Advent, we are celebrating the faithfulness of God. That's what Advent is all about. It's a season of expectation leading up to Christmas, which is the fulfillment of the promise of God to his people.

A promise that for a while, look like it had no shot. But in the right time, in the right place, God came through. And here's what I believe. I believe in our house today. We have people who need more than a Christmas story. They need the hope that God is going to come through for them.

Is there anybody like that in this gathering today? You're thinking, you know what, Louis? Christmas is amazing. But I'm not even thinking about Christmas right now.

I need God to come through in my life, in my heart, in my thinking, in my emotions, in our house, in our relationships, in my business, whatever is going on, we need God to show up and to do something only God can do.

And I think that's the reality of life. And that's why I love coming today to worship a sovereign God. Now that's a big theological word. But sovereign just means that God is running history.

And he's running the world. And he's running your life. And he's running my life.

You know, I saw somebody quoting this week and I thought, man, right on to it. They said, if you want to reduce the anxiety in your life, stop watching 24-hour news channels and stop listening to talk radio.

Because these things are addictive. You know why? Because chaos sells.

So if you've got a news channel, you can't be saying, hey, man, life's good. Passion City Church. They're giving away 29,000 books through the public school kids of Atlanta, Georgia. Be like, okay, that's great.

What sells is the world is coming unhinged today. Climate change, we might not even be here for Christmas.

Santa is in trouble. The reindeer are hot. Everything's upside down. And it's true.

I mean, in a global world where we can see our neighbors in an instant and continents and places where we only used to be able to read about, people can convince you in a 15-minute segment on a news talk radio show before you can get from Alphoretta to perimeter mall.

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