What is Christmas Without Christ? December 19, 2022
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What have Santa Clause, Frosty the Snowman, It’s a Wonderful Life, roasting chestnuts, hippos, hula hoops, and barking dogs got to do with Christmas?
They may bring warmth to our hearts. They may bring a smile to our lips. Or they may make us groan. Whatever they do to each of us what they all have in common is that they’re glued to Christmas like barnacles to the hull of the good ship lollipop. They’re the accumulated cultural baggage that increasingly obscures the real meaning of a revolutionary blessed event under the camouflage of a socially acceptable winter break.
The ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCPBSNPR Cartel tells us constantly that we now live in a post-Christian America. They exalt in proclaiming the end of Christ’s dominant influence on Western Civilization. As a result, we’ve descended from a city on a hill to a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Our elites call evil good and good evil.
Ever since the nine black-robed masters of America decreed back in 1962 that God was expelled from school we’ve witnessed the steady degradation of our society. The coarseness and vulgarity we’re deluged with on a daily basis was unknown in earlier days.
What we call prime time entertainment was once known as pornography. What were abominations and generally accepted as perversions have become the norm while believing them to be against God’s Word is now considered some type of mental disorder. The cabal of self-appointed paragons of pomposity that masquerade as educators, politicians, and journalists cap their war against God when they glory in the right of self-interest to sacrifice the lives of the innocent and demand that the government not only endorse it but subsidize it.
As a natural outgrowth of the city of man’s war against God that defines America’s progressive culture comes the war against Christmas.
Back in the dream time we used to go to Christmas programs at our children’s schools and listen to the little darlings sing The First Noel, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and O Come O Come Emmanuel. Now we listen to them sing songs in foreign languages or do beautiful arrangements of sounds that don’t even have a meaning intermixed with a few songs about winter, snow, or maybe animals. It may all be Woke but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with the reason for the season.
Just in case all the tinsel and the twinkling lights have blinded us to what that reason is let me elaborate.
Christmas is all about Jesus the Christ born as a human so that he could bear the sins of the world, die a substitutionary death in our place, rise triumphantly from the grave and ascend into heaven so that we who believe can live in and through Him. That’s what it’s all about. Christmas must be linked to Easter to have any meaning.
I’ve met people who never realized that the Jesus in the manger on Christmas was the same Jesus who hung on the cross on Good Friday. I did not meet them in the jungles of some remote island but in America with a church on every corner. This is a clear case of Santa with a coke in his hand winning the advertising debate over the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It may all be Woke but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with the reason for the season.
What is Christmas without Christ? It’s a worldly hedonistic overly commercialized gift giving/receiving orgasm perpetrated by humanity’s enemy to keep us from knowing that Christ came to set us free, to reconcile us to God, and to make a way for us to live as a new creation in a new creation.
Not to be Grinch, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Let’s enjoy our family and friends. Let’s celebrate our traditions as we remember Jesus is the reason for the season. Let’s wake up and smell the frankincense and myrrh for without Christ in Christmas all we have is “mas.”
This is an excerpt from the book Faith by Dr. Robert Owens. This and all his books are available from Amazon in paperback or kindle at Amazon.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 18, 2022
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Forget nothing but injuries. That’s the best memory we can have.
An Excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 17, 2022
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Our opinion doesn’t matter. The Bible is true whether we accept it as true or not.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 16, 2022
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It’s hard to free people from chains they cherish.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 15, 2022
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Are the things we are living for worth Christ dying for?
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 14, 2022
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Christ came to pay a debt He didn’t owe because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay.
Does God Speak to You? December 12, 2022
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Whenever people ask me this question, “Do you mean God speaks to you?” I answer it with another, “Do mean God doesn’t speak to you?”
You can officially mark me down as a crazy person or whatever you like I don’t care. But I initially turned from the world to face God because I heard a voice answer my silent plea, the plea of a lost and lonely sinner about to give up on life, “I’ve got to try something.”
What I heard was a voice as real as any I’ve ever heard say right in my ear, “Why don’t you try God.”
As a militant atheist I turned to confront whoever it was that dared to say some invisible make-believe spirit might be the answer to my aching heart. There was no one there. At least there was no one there that I could see or find. After an exhaustive search that turned up no one I started searching for who might have been there that I couldn’t see. It was a search that eventually led me through the Gospels to Jesus. It was a search that led me from a dead-end life to a life filled with hope.
I said all that to say all this:
Have you ever felt God leading you to do something? It probably won’t be an audible voice. I am convinced that God only uses an audible voice for either the extremely hard-hearted/hard-headed or to comfort the extremely hard pressed. Instead, he leads us through our spirit which is linked to Him through His Spirit which lives in us as born-again believers.
If you aren’t one of those it’s easy just confess Jesus as Lord or leader of your life and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead…and that’s it. Done and done.
So here we are children of God through adoption, made right with Him, spiritually standing in Daddy’s throne room, minding our own business and His Spirit leads us to do something: something that doesn’t seem like something we would want to do on your own……. say He leads us to spend everything we have to buy Bibles to give to homeless people.
What should we do?
I’m talking about spending way more money than our natural head says we can afford. It just doesn’t make sense when we look at our budget through natural eyes. And the wisdom of the world tells us, “Come on most of the homeless you give a Bible will either lose it or throw it away.” Or, “Come on they’ll only listen to you witness about what Christ has done for you and accept the Bible so they can get a handout or something.”
But there it is again, an urging, a leading to do this thing that makes no sense. It itches at our hearts. It won’t leave. We feel our spirit saying, “If I don’t do this, I’ll miss an opportunity to do what I’m supposed to do,” while our head says, “Are you crazy you can’t afford to do that!”
Over and over our heads, filled with natural sense knowledge keep shouting, “If I spend all that money just to give it away, I won’t have it for what I need.” Or the ever ready, “Can’t someone else, do it? Like someone who has more money.”
God isn’t looking for ability He’s looking for availability. If He can make donkeys speak and use murderers to being people back to life, turn water into wine, and save sinners like us He can surely provide for all our needs. When we say we can’t do what God calls us to do we are saying that our inability is greater than God’s ability.
If we want to see the miracles of God, we need to follow Him into uncharted water. We need to do what He calls us to do because where God guides God provides. Walking in faith always sensitive to what He calls us to do and then following Him in the doing … that’s the way to see the miracles of God.
Faith isn’t doing only what we can do on our own. Faith is doing what God calls us to do even when we know we can’t. Let’s step out of the boat and feel the waves beneath our feet.
This is an excerpt from the book Faith by Dr. Robert Owens. This and all his books are available from Amazon in paperback or kindle at Amazon.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 11, 2022
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The distance between believing in our head and accepting in our heart may look like about twelve inches but it is really the distance between heaven and hell.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 10, 2022
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If we don’t change after we embrace God, the acceptance of our mind may not have become the conviction of our heart.
An excerpt from New Old Sayings by Dr. Robert Owens December 9, 2022
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As we respond to God in our beliefs, our prayers, and our actions all these things like the concentric circles caused by a pebble tossed in a pond ripple through the world.
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 