Christmas attitudes

Matthew 2:16  Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.

 

Christmas is emotional:

            The Christmas season brings many emotions to our lives; it is a highly charged time. There is the excitement of children (and some adults), the busy schedules, challenges, interpersonal exchanged and of course the fatigue tat goes with everything else. Add to that mixture the nostalgia of former Christmas celebrations – we often try to hold onto those past events and redo the past traditions.. Then as your family increase and children get marries, they want to establish their own traditions, their own memories – and so the challenges are present. Grandchildren come into the picture and our lives are rudely shaken. Along with all these we have the death of older family members and our “traditional” celebration had been overturned and we have to change and alter our celebrations.

 

Our attitudes:

What will our attitudes be? Are they Christian? Are we selfish, self-centered, stubborn, and unyielding? Things didn’t go Herod’s way so he murdered many children to appease his selfish desires.

 The enemy’s work

When God works, enemy tries to stop it; he tries to interfere with God’s work sand he will use anyone and everyone to thwart God’s working – “we never did it that way before”.

When God brought Israel out of Egypt, the enemy worked to hinder. When Jesus came that first Christmas, the enemy worked – thru taxation, Herod killing babies, then thru Pharisees, Judas, etc. The enemy works today even thru Christians when we have bad attitudes when things don’t go our way. We can cause some to stumble, maybe hinder younger Christians in their walk, we offend others not really intending to do so and we may even put a stumbling block in the way for others. (We don’t realize it but we are being used of the enemy for his purposes).

Aptitudes show

            Our attitudes show in our facial features, words, actions or lack of actions, our posture, etc.

The Cure

            The only cure if a total surrender and commitment of our life to Christ. We struggle today for our “rights” but we must surrender them to God and let Him be Lord of our life. Our calling is to be Christian – not act like one.  Sometimes this means suffering as well as being longsuffering. We cannot do it on our own – need power of God.