I took the bus and then it started raining and I had been paying for a storage unit and I took my baby and we just went into the storage unit and I closed the door.

Enzo was putting his fingers under the door and somebody saw him putting his fingers under the door and they're like you're sleeping in here you're sleeping in here and I was like I'm not sleeping in here out of fear like that they would call the police or that they would call and get my baby taken away.

But it was really hard having narcolepsy, being eight months pregnant on the street.

You're extremely tired and I had no income coming in and I had to worry about taking care of my two-year-old so I couldn't go do yard work or something.

I couldn't babysit anybody else.

When you don't have support, you don't know who to reach out to.

You don't know who to call to come pull up and to save you.

I just wanted to be home.

So when I went to give birth at the hospital, they informed me that I had a positive test from one of my previous appointments.

The doctors put in a note that I had been using and so it opened up a case with DCFS.

they I did end up coming to the hospital and they took both of my babies from me.

And I knew the next day that I had to get into a program and that I couldn't waste any time and that I had to get my babies back as soon as possible.

Second time I was not playing around.

I listened to the counselors and what they had to say.

I did the parenting classes.

I went to the meetings.

I woke up at 6 a.m.

for breakfast, and I went to all my visitations.

I saw it more as like an opportunity to get to grow my connection with God.

I definitely have time now to be able to do that and find the balance between God and my recovery.

I have that support today to where I know if...

If I'm having a hard time, I can pick up the phone and call somebody.

And that I'm not alone.

I feel great.

I mean, I have to continue to do all of those things now.

I'm thankful that I have my babies with me today.

They make me feel like I'm on top of the world, and when I have them, it's like I can do anything.

Right now, I'm so thankful that I get to wake up to them every morning.

I'm so thankful I get to change their stinky diapers.

I'm so thankful I get to watch them play with their little ducks in the bath.

So thankful I get to take them to the park and push them on the swings.

I wouldn't want to do anything else.

Hey Mia?

Yeah.

Nice to meet you, I'm Goose.

I heard so much about you.

So I heard that you were in need of transportation so we actually got you a car.

No.

We have some very generous people in our team and they heard your story.

No!

See, look at me.

No, I'm kidding.

Yeah, it's a great little car.

That is so awesome!

Yeah, you wanna see it?

Come here.

You're welcome.

The church and God's mansion made it possible, so we just heard your story.

We just want to bless you and just let you know that you're loved.

Beep beep.

We love you so much, Trisha and I.

When you first came into the program in our lives, it's been an honor to watch you achieve and you make life change.

But I just want to like eat it.

Wow.

What an amazing ministry, and God's Pantry has literally encouraged so many different people in this community.

And I know you all are making a huge, huge difference here at One and All.

It is great to be back with you all.

I loved Jeff's message last week, focusing on the angels and their separate messages to Joseph.

It was a divine calling.

that they each received.

This week we want to take a look at that first Christmas gift of Jesus and the gifts that were brought to him.

And I want to begin by just having a walk down memory lane with you, all right?

Now listen, as I read off to you what have become the most popular Christmas gifts of the past 70 years, okay?

I'm not going to go through every year, don't worry.

But I want you to raise your hand at any of our campuses if you have ever had this item.

or any version of it, all right?

This is the audience participation message, part of the message, all right?

Here we go.

2015, the big gift was a hoverboard.

If you ever had a hoverboard, put your hand up, all right?

I loved my hoverboard, it was awesome.

2014, anything that was tied in with frozen, all right?

I'm talking products, not a temperature here, okay?

2007 was the first version of an iPhone.

So if you've ever had an iPhone, put your hand up.

Okay?

That's most of us.

1996, Tickle Me Elmo.

And you still got a smile on your face, you know?

1995, the most popular gift was a PlayStation.

You ever had a PlayStation?

A lot of excitement on that.

1985 was the Clapper.

Do you remember the Clapper?

It was the Lazy man's friend.

I drove my wife so crazy with that thing she made me get rid of it.

I donated it to one and all.

Here we go.

Wow.

Now you can clap for that if you want.

1983.

Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Strange looking creatures, weren't they?

1973, guys.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember this.

Electric football.

So, put your hand up if you had electric football.

It shook.

You turned it on and it shook and the players kind of moved around and they would end up, offensive linemen from opposing teams would end up square dancing with each other.

For about three minutes your entire house would shake but usually the playing service didn't.

that was electric football 1970 the nerf ball that's when it started 1965 exactly rock'em sock'em robots going back and forth remember that 1963 the easy bake oven oh you just have to say ah don't you warm fuzzies in this room when i say that And the final one, 1952, Mr.

Potato Head.

If you've ever had any version of Mr.

Potato Head, he has lasted for quite some time, hasn't he?

I wish you could be up here and you could see your facial expressions.

The mere mention of these gifts elicit a variety of emotions for you.

Yet, here's what is strange.

All those gifts that I've mentioned, the majority of them, unless it was very recent, are now in a trash dump or they're in your garage in a beat-up box.

But the first Christmas gift is one that has lasted and continues to be useful and sustaining in your life, and his name is Jesus.

Matthew chapter 1, verse 20.

It's going to begin with the angel appearing to Joseph, and then it's going to move on from there.

Verse 20, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

That last verse is a quote from Isaiah.

Chapter 7 verse 14 way back in the Old Testament get this it was written 700 years Before the birth of Jesus a virgin will conceive give birth to a son They will call him Emmanuel if you doubt Christianity and have the integrity to do research and study The evidence for Jesus being the Son of God and the Bible being true.

You will find that there is overwhelming evidence in every area every arena historically Archaeologically.

The manuscript evidence for the Bibles and the Bible and the multiplicity of the copies that we have.

Not to mention the testimonies of early Christians and those of us today who have seen and experienced, just like Mia, the hand of God, the power of God, the working of God.

But perhaps the strongest proof of who Jesus is and why he came to us is through prophecy.

For those of you who are pooled, players to win a pool game.

Let's say you're playing eight ball.

You know that before that final shot, when you knock that eight ball in, you have to call the pocket in which you're going to hit that ball in.

That way you can't just accidentally with an unintentional shot, get lucky when the ball falls in someplace else.

No, you have to call the shot.

So God goes to the advanced notice of calling his own shots.

Hundreds of years before these specific events happen.

We have these Old Testament descriptors of God's son.

Where, when, what will happen, how it will happen.

We call them messianic prophecies because they describe the coming Messiah, Jesus.

Listen again to this one in Matthew 1, 22 and 23.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel.

which means God with us.

Now don't let that word prophecy throw you off.

It's a fancy word which means a divine prediction.

Maybe a better word is a divine promise that's been made prior to it happening.

Over in the New Testament in 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 19 through 21, it says we also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable and you will do well to pay attention to it.

Verse 21, for prophecy never had its origin in the human will.

But prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Mathematician Peter Stoner, who used to head up the mathematics department at Pasadena City College, not too far from here, did an extensive study on the probability and the odds of a person just accidentally coming along and fulfilling the prophecies and predictions from the Old Testament.

What would the odds be?

So here's what Stoner did.

He took eight of the Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah, and he did what's called a probability study.

What are the odds that a person would be born in Bethlehem?

Out of all the places a person could be born, what are the odds that they would be born in Bethlehem?

Because that's one of the prophecies that is said in the Old Testament about Jesus.

Then he quantified what would the odds be that a person would die by crucifixion?

All the different ways a person can die.

What's the percentage of people who die from a crucifixion?

He came up with those odds.

He factored all those things together.

He did that for eight different prophecies, came up with the likelihood, the odds of one person accidentally coming along and fulfilling those.

And you know what it was?

It was one in 10 to the 157th power.

Now to give you some idea what that means, that number.

You could take that number of silver dollars.

You could cover the entire state of Texas, two feet deep.

And let's say that you marked one of those silver dollars with a big red X on it.

And then it was placed somewhere in the state of Texas, two feet deep.

And you rode on a helicopter and you were blindfolded.

And at some point...

You said to the guy who was flying you, you said, hey, put me down right here.

You got off the helicopter, you reached down, and the very first coin that you picked up had the red X on it.

That's the odds for eight prophecies.

But there were nearly 300 messianic prophecies that Jesus Christ fulfilled.

Now, some skeptics have tried to explain.

Those monumental statistics away by saying, well, Dave, I mean, come on.

There's a simple explanation.

I mean, say the obvious.

Of course, Jesus fulfilled all of those prophecies because after he lived, some of his crazy followers went back into the Old Testament manuscripts and they inserted all of those different details about the life of Jesus.

Well, he was born in Bethlehem.

Okay, let's write that in the manuscript someplace.

That way it would look like he fulfilled them.

They added a verse, he was born in Bethlehem.

They inserted that he was betrayed by a friend.

They wrote down that he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.

And the skeptic could say, you can't deny that that didn't happen since all the manuscripts that we have from the Old Testament were copies made after Christ had walked the earth.

So maybe somebody did do that.

Well, you could say that up until 1947.

But back then, there's an area called Qumran by the Dead Sea, and there was a shepherd boy.

And he was out playing with some rocks, just trying to entertain himself.

And he grabbed a rock, and he threw it.

And when it landed, he heard pottery break.

You see, the Jewish people love God's Word.

They would go to extreme measures.

When they were under persecution, when people were trying to wipe out the Bible, they would hide the Bible in different places.

And that's what they unearthed.

They brought in people and they found this cave that was filled with countless manuscripts.

They did the dating of those.

Everyone agreed that they went back to 300 years before Christ was born.

And when they unfurled the scrolls, They began looking for every messianic prophecy.

Born in Bethlehem, born to a virgin, betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver.

Every single one of them was there.

This is so overwhelming.

It's monumental evidence that the God of the universe engineered this to show his love for you.

And don't miss this.

Doesn't it stand to reason that if you went to all that trouble to allow imperfect humans with free will to say and do and write certain things that would come to fruition hundreds of years later, if he can orchestrate that in light of that, doesn't it make sense that this same God wants to be involved in your daily life, in your personal concerns, in your challenges?

And here in Matthew chapter one, we realize that the first Christmas is more than just God putting on the form of flesh.

This is more than the incarnation.

This is a Divine intervention by the God of creation, the King of kings, the Lord of lords.

His birth 2,000 years ago has implications for your life today.

If God intervened in history then, he can intervene in your life today.

You are not alone.

You are not abandoned.

God is with you.

Think of it like this.

You got your Bible.

In the Old Testament, God is for us.

in the New Testament.

God is with us.

But today, because of the Holy Spirit, God is in us.

If you have accepted and chosen Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, then the Holy Spirit has taken up permanent residency inside of your heart.

The Bible says the same spirit and power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us.

And the idea to have Jesus come to earth was in the planning stages long before the foundation of the world was laid.

Before creation, God had thought long and hard about the fact that we would need a Savior, one who could, by his sinlessness, take our sins upon himself.

Jesus was not a last-minute gift.

He was not some hurried selection on the way to the Christmas party.

Galatians chapter 4, verses 4 and 5.

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son.

born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Again, here's my point.

If God knew precisely the exact place and time of when to enter into this world, don't you believe he is just as deeply involved in your life to intervene and to intersect?

Take your Bibles, if you would, and I'm going to invite you to turn to Matthew 2.

Matthew chapter 2.

It's just one page over from where we were.

Matthew chapter 2, I want to just read these six verses.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?

We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.

And when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him.

When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them, where the Christ was to be born.

Well, in Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written.

So even they believed in the prophets having said these things.

This is what the prophecy said.

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.

That last verse is another prophecy.

It's a quote from the Old Testament found in Micah chapter 5 verse 2.

Now back in Matthew, these wise men, the Magi, were from the east.

It's presumed they would have traveled perhaps as much as 800 miles.

I find it strange that I'm preaching out west and that the wise men were in the east, but, you know, hey, I'll take it.

I'm not rubbing anything in, all right?

It's presumed that they would have traveled perhaps as much as 800 miles if they came from Babylon.

What's unusual is that they were Gentile people coming to worship a Jewish king.

Did you ever think about that?

They were astrologers.

It's no accident that Matthew covers this because the very theme of the book of Matthew is this, Jesus is king.

So why did the wise men bow down and worship this little baby and bring him these extravagant gifts?

It was because they were convinced that he was a king.

They waited a lifetime watching the stars for this to come to fruition.

According to the customs of the day, get this, gold was the gift for a king.

incense was a gift that you would give to a priest.

Myrrh was a gift for one who is to die, because that's what they would use to embalm the bodies of the dead.

And when the wise men brought their gifts to Jesus, they didn't come bearing trinkets, perhaps unknowingly prompted through divine intervention.

They brought gifts that indicated who he truly was, the King of Kings, the great high priest.

the one who would die for the sins of the world now they probably didn't realize all the implications of the gifts they felt prompted to bring them by god where is he who has been born the king of the jews that's their question for herod what a probing question they had seen the star the evidence was real now where is he they had faith that he was alive that he existed now all they needed to do was to find him their purpose was established now they had to find him And so they're willing to risk everything to find him.

They're willing to leave the safety of their homes to risk a perilous journey with expensive gifts to seek a king.

And the Bible says they saw his star.

It's not clear whether God led these stargazers through their own means of star studying or if he provided a special star that they followed for all these days.

But either way, these wise men were looking for a newborn baby who was going to be a Jewish king.

You see, the heavens declared this.

to them and the bible says the king herod was disturbed someone was going to take some of the power and spotlight from him and like herod even today there are plenty of people who are still disturbed during december and don't like christmas i feel like christians have gradually caved into the culture and succumbed to the pressure so you don't Don't sing Christmas carols in schools anymore.

It might offend somebody.

These are sad days when Christians have become so intimidated and so fearful of offending a few that we're scared to even say Merry Christmas to someone.

I think it was the great theologian Forrest Gump who said this, if you go to the zoo, always take some food for the animals, even though the signs say don't feed the animals.

It wasn't the animals who put those signs up.

Everywhere you look, the world has put up signs.

Don't talk about Christmas break.

It's holiday break.

Don't talk about Jesus.

It's about Santa.

Don't talk about Bethlehem.

Talk about the shopping malls.

Hey, I got news for you.

It wasn't Jesus who put those signs up.

Satan has always been trying to silence Jesus.

His first attempt was to have Herod kill all the baby boys under the age of two.

Can you imagine that?

Just to try to protect from somebody ever taking his throne.

But God prevailed.

Then Satan tried to silence Jesus after a period of 40 days of fasting and praying in the wilderness.

Satan tried to silence him through temptation.

But God prevailed.

Then Satan tried to silence Jesus on the cross by killing him.

But God prevailed by raising Jesus from the dead.

Satan tried to silence the church by persecution, but God used the scattering of the believers due to the persecution to spread the gospel even faster to the uttermost parts of the earth.

He tried to silence the apostles by having them put in prison, but God used it to give them audiences with kings and queens.

Today, Satan still tries to silence Christians through intimidation in the workplace, but God will prevail.

Through you.

The word is getting out more extensively and effectively.

Revival is breaking out.

Hey, this is no time for Christians to cower or to roll over and to play dead.

I mean, if you are truly convinced that Jesus is the king, then your life, your words, your witness should become an expression of that as you give your gifts back to that king through your time, talents, treasures, and testimony.

Romans chapter 1 verse 16 says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

There is a power that comes when we take advantage of the opportunity.

We seize those changes and those chances that are afforded to us, especially in the month of December.

There are those people who are open to the gospel message, maybe for the very first time, for you to invite them to a Christmas Eve service.

You know, the statistics are crazy.

At least Drobel talks about how one out of every two people that you invite to church will come.

It's a spiritual holiday.

They know they're supposed to do something spiritual.

I guess I should try this.

You just need to ask them.

You got a card when you came in at every one of our campuses that has a Christmas Eve service times.

Man, use that as a springboard and an opportunity.

Now think about it.

These wise men, they were bold.

They were generous.

They came.

They bowed down.

They worshiped Jesus.

They brought their gifts.

Most believe that in the future, God and his providence knew that those three gifts would be a great help to Jesus when Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt.

But the wise men didn't know that that was going to happen.

It was just God working ahead of time.

And as I mentioned earlier, it's true that the gifts symbolize that Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king.

But I doubt that the wise men knew that.

They were just giving him gifts to honor him for he was royalty.

to show that he was worthy of these gifts and the great sacrifice that they had made to bring the gifts to him.

Did you notice that nowhere in the story does it ever have that the wise men were expecting something in return?

They didn't bring their gifts to this peasant couple and then put their hands out and say, well, you know, you got something for me?

It's kind of like a gift exchange.

You know, you got something for me?

Didn't happen that way.

I recall a number of years ago, our family was leaving the church where I served, and it was late one December evening in Kentucky, and there had been a wedding that night.

And parked right out in front of the church, there was a limousine that was waiting for the bride and groom to get their pictures taken and then to whisk them away.

And our family happened to walk past at that moment.

My son Sam was four and a half years old.

At the time, he was intrigued by a limousine.

He had never seen a limousine in his life.

I explained to him, I said, that's a limo.

When we got home, he pulled me aside.

He said, I think I know what mommy wants for Christmas.

I said, really, what is it?

She wants to take a ride in a limousine.

Well, I dug a little bit and he was very convincing.

And so I kept challenging him.

He went to his room, he got a box.

He had.

a few dollars and a bunch of change.

He dumped it out as life savings.

He said, dad, is this enough to buy her a limousine ride?

I said, that sure is nice of you.

But to be honest, it probably isn't.

And since I was still looking for ideas for what to get Beth, I decided to dig a little deeper.

I said, hey, are you sure mommy wants to ride in the limousine?

Is that something that she has said to you?

And he got this sheepish look on his face.

He said, Well, if we got her that, could I ride with her?

And I shared that story with my church the next week at our Christmas Eve services.

And the next morning on Christmas Day, I looked out the window and there was a limousine sitting in our driveway.

9 a.m.

There was a crafty church member.

A generous church member who had heard the story and just devised his own plan through the night.

And he got a limo and a limo driver to come over.

I said, Sam, come over here to this window.

I said, look out there.

Well, he went crazy.

He was so pumped up.

He'd just gotten his Batman Christmas gift, a Batman outfit.

He was having a great time.

And so we went for a ride.

In fact, the whole family went for a ride.

We did make certain that mom got to go since it was so important to her.

In fact, the next Christmas Eve when I preached, I shared how my son wanted to buy his dad a Jaguar for Christmas.

Don't judge me.

You would have done the same thing.

And there's no picture to show.

So, evidently that generous man was not there that next year, alright?

The truth be known, in December, it's not just four-year-olds who have lapses of selfishness.

Maybe that's why I appreciate these individuals who brought gifts to this newborn king but expected no gift in return.

You know, when you brought your gift cards for the Joy Store today, you're not expecting anything in return.

But I promise you, God will have something for you.

I don't know what the blessing will be, but he'll have something for you.

Too often in December, our generosity is qualified with the unspoken thought.

If you do great things for me, then I can do great things for you.

If I'm on your Christmas list, then you'll be on mine.

In other words, we'll give someone the limo ride as long as we get to go with them.

And maybe that's why I love the story of the wise men.

No strings attached, no expectations.

They just wanted to honor and worship the king.

And that's what you do when you give to the church.

That's what you do when you give to others.

You make a difference.

And when God's people choose to honor the king by sharing their gold with others who are in need, then that becomes a tangible way for us to declare that Jesus is Lord and help to advance the kingdom of God.

I love what Mia said in that video.

She said, this is awesome.

Of course it's awesome.

Our God is an awesome God, and he uses you to share some of that awesomeness of God and to make his name famous.

Let me make three quick applications.

This Christmas, first, give more than you expect to receive.

That could be a definition for generosity.

Give more than you expect to receive.

Notice that we do not know the wise men's names.

Here, notice that tradition has come up with some names, but the Bible never gives us any names.

And that tells me something.

They did not give expecting to have their names attached to the present because they wanted to give, not because they expected to receive some notoriety.

Wouldn't it be weird if it said, gold was given by such and such, you know, myrrh was given by the Smith family, you know, that would just take so much away from the story.

They didn't want any attention.

They came to worship.

Matthew 2, 11, they saw the child with his mother Mary.

They bowed down and they worshiped him.

And when you are more concerned with giving than receiving, you can truly impact others.

Here's a second application for us to remember.

Give out of love, not out of obligation.

The Bible tells us to give cheerfully.

Remember, if your motives aren't pure when you give, some of the blessing gets lost.

We give out of love, not out of obligation.

The rest of verse 11 says, they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, of incense, and of myrrh.

Have you ever received a gift from someone with the impression that the gift was more out of duty than desire?

You know, here you go.

Here you go.

Yeah.

I didn't wrap it.

She wrapped it.

You know, you ever given a gift with that attitude?

That's not giving a gift.

That's paying a bill.

when you give with that attitude people can tell here's the third application give gifts that communicate your appreciation in other words when you put time and thought into a gift and it comes from a grateful heart the gift takes on a deeper meaning the wise men bringing their gifts this was a quest for them this was a mission i said earlier who knows it could have been up to 800 miles away and and they were grateful For the opportunity to honor this king who had been prophesied and who even the stars in the sky announced his arrival.

There was planning involved in this.

God had orchestrated this from the foundation of the world.

God was working upstream.

We're more likely to have divine intersections, divine interruptions, divine interventions when we are regularly reading the Bible for guidance.

And when we are regularly worshiping in God's house and in community.

with other Christians.

This is how we let God lead us.

This is how God shapes us.

That's why at One in All, you hear us say an awful lot from this platform.

You'll hear us say, hey, you need to be in church.

This is healthy for you emotionally, spiritually, yes, but emotionally it's healthy for you too.

It's tough to let God lead you if you aren't listening to him when he intervenes.

And the wise men felt drawn and led and God directed their path to where they could make a difference.

God would intervene in your life and use you to intervene in others as well.

I see God incidences all the time in my life.

I saw a story unfold.

My wife sent a gift card to somebody in Texas who she heard was going through a marital challenge.

And just the day that she got it, this girl had said, I was on my way to TJ Maxx, and I hadn't opened the mail, and I ended up opening up the mail, and There was this gift card from you to go to TJ Maxx, just in the lowest point of her life.

I know it sounds crazy, but I'm just telling you, those gift cards that y'all are given, Walmart and Target and Amazon, that's what's going to happen when that's handed to some people.

Just some divine intervention for God so loved the world.

But he didn't just intervene 2,000 years ago on a cold.

Bethlehem evening.

He's still doing it today.

And he uses his people to do his work.

My wife and I have a friend named Hannah.

She's in her 20s.

She lives in Nashville.

Right before she got on the flight, she was in the gate area.

She was praying, Lord, just use me to encourage someone today.

And she just kind of sensed when she got on the plane that she was supposed to spiritually encourage the person that she would be seated next to on the plane.

Well, she sat down.

No one was sitting next to her.

Okay, I'm like, okay.

She's like, all right.

Well, it's time for the flight to leave.

Front door had not been closed yet.

Finally, about that time, one last straggler came in.

It was a young gal, looked like she was mad at the world.

She had bright blue hair, and you could tell that she didn't want anybody talking to her.

And she sat down and threw her stuff down, crossed her arms and sat down there next to Hannah.

And Hannah thought, really, God?

This is what you want me to be talking to and with?

And so after they took off, she started a conversation with her reluctantly.

This is what she said.

She said, you know, I am fascinated by your hair.

How did you decide on the different shades that you chose?

And the girl started talking, and she started opening up.

And after a few minutes, the girl uncrossed her arms.

And that sparked some more conversation.

The young woman went on to share she was going through a divorce, had a four-year-old, was on a trip to decide whether she should ask her parents if she could move back home.

She wasn't sure that they would take her because she'd made some mistakes and there was conflict.

And Hannah lovingly said, well, God wants you to have a repentant heart and a spirit of humility.

But as they continued to talk, Hannah kept feeling God nudge her.

Tell her the verse Jeremiah 29, 11.

but hannah resisted in her mind she's saying to god you know that's so overused i don't want to say that verse and she's having this back and forth mental argument with the god of the universe but the prompting from the spirit to say jeremiah 29 11 wouldn't go away and so finally reluctantly hannah says well you know that god has plans for you In the Bible, in Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11, it says he wants to give you hope and he wants to give you a future.

And when he said that, she said that, immediately the young woman burst into tears and Hannah quickly apologized.

And she said, oh, I'm sorry if that bothered you.

I certainly didn't mean to upset you.

And the girl said, no, no, no, I know that verse.

She said, a godly relative always quoted that to me when I was young.

And she said, I'm crying because before I got on this flight, I prayed that if God was really up there, that he would have someone specifically say Jeremiah 29, 11 to me.

And if that happened, then I would know that I was supposed to go and ask my parents if I could come back home.

Friends, the Holy Spirit wants to use you to bring peace to people who feel helpless.

Well, he probably isn't prompting you to follow a star in the east, but he may be nudging you toward a co-worker in a cubicle or a neighbor on your street because God wants to intervene in their life through you.

When God prompts you, will you obey?

God may be using you to answer someone else's prayer.

Who is he nudging you to speak to, to speak life into?

Is there a name that comes to mind?

Is there someone you know that you need to speak words of life to?

Maybe you've brushed it off.

You've turned a deaf ear to the voice of God and said, oh, no, I really don't need to say that.

I don't need to say that to that person.

Really?

We need as a society, as a church, and as individuals to look for ways to give gifts that affirm the value of the person receiving the gift.

Gifts of time, gifts of energy, gifts of worth.

The wise men brought valuable gifts to Jesus because they recognized his value.

They were convinced he was the new king.

That's why they gave him those gifts.

Think about it.

We don't know where they came from.

We don't know how many there were.

When they arrived, we surmise.

That there were three men because there were three gifts, but then again, they were guys.

So yeah, I'll go in with you on the myrrh.

Yeah, I'll just go in with you.

Just put my name on the card, all right?

There could have been nine guys, all right?

But then you're saying, the ladies are saying, there's not nine wise men out there.

So I don't know.

When the wise men gave those gifts.

God used those gifts to protect this king from harm.

How else would they have the money to flee to Egypt when Herod came to slaughter all the baby boys?

If you want your gifts to really matter this year, the first thing you do is to declare your allegiance to the right king.

And you lay down your crown and your trophies and your gold.

and you submit to Jesus as Lord.

Maybe as you've listened today for the first time, you're starting to realize that God has intervened in your life.

You've seen it, you've sensed it, you know he loves you and he cares for you.

Hopefully this is a year when you're ready to worship the King.

Let's pray.

Lord, when we think of nativity and we see those wise men this year, May it remind us that there is a king who we claim is the Lord of our lives.

Would you help our lives to reflect that belief?

And may our faith, our generosity this Christmas, the way that we honor the king be pleasing in his sight.

It's in the powerful name of Emmanuel that we pray.

Amen.