If you are like me, you wish you could be full of joy this holiday season. You know Jesus being born is an incredible gift, and you want to be able to praise and thank God from the depth of your soul. However, for some reason, you just can’t. You aren’t emotionally there. Most Christmas’ that’s exactly where I’m at, but this month I learned a secret. I want to share with you the two keys I discovered that will help you find joy in the birth of Christ this Christmas season.
How To Be Grateful For A Gift
Finding joy in the birth of Christ is similar to how we find joy in other gifts. The only big difference is that the gift of Christ happened long ago.
It’s easy to be grateful for a gift you are just given, but with time, exciting things become normal. By revisiting what originally made you grateful for the gift, you can find that thankfulness and joy once more.
The keys I discovered are: 1) understanding your need for the gift, and 2) recognizing the value of the gift.
This is why we are so excited once we get a good gift. We understand how much we need the gift right away because up to that point in life we’ve lived without it. Right away, we imagine just how much it will change and improve our lives.
Additionally, the moment we see the gift for the first time, we automatically calculate its value. If we deem it valuable to us, we’ll be thankful. If however, we conclude it doesn’t hold much value, we’ll have a hard time being appreciative of it.
These same points hold true for Christ. But, how do we apply these keys to truly understand how much we need Christ and the value of his sacrifice on our behalf? Let’s walk through it together.
Key #1: Why do you need Jesus?
Without Christ we are lost in our sin. However, Satan, the world, and our flesh do all they can to convince us we aren’t lost. To understand just how lost we are without Christ, we must dig deeper into this.
Because we all lie, cheat, steal, gossip, and hate we consider it normal and not a big deal. But this is far from the truth. Each of these is a huge problem. No one gets hurt when we do these, right? Though this isn’t true, the main problem is the heart mentality behind each.
- Whenever we lie, we speak Satan’s native tongue of rebellion against God (John 8:44). We twist the truth, which is God’s language, to benefit ourselves. We are taking that which is of God and maligning it so it will serve us.
- When we cheat or steal, we are essentially saying in our hearts, “I’m willing to hurt you to give myself an advantage because I am more important.”
- Gossip is capitalizing on another’s weakness for the point of making yourself look better or to help others view you in a more positive light.
- Hatred for another is essentially wishing they were dead (1 John 3:15). Though we might be smart enough to know killing them would only hurt us, this doesn’t change the fact that we want them to be harmed.
And that’s just a few examples. If you lived in a place where any sin—whether it be an act, a thought, or a spoken word—would result in immediate imprisonment, none of us would last a day. That’s how lost we are. Don’t sugarcoat it. To do so is to diminish our need for Christ.
We are lost without Christ. There’s a slimy, decaying, and vile darkness within each of us that desires to destroy us, God’s plan, and everything good in this world, and too often we listen to it because it feels good.
If God never gave us the gift of Jesus, we’d still be enslaved to our selfish nature with no hope of escape. That’s how much we need Christ.
Key #2: Why Is the Gift of Christ So Valuable
Now that we see where we would’ve been trapped if we never had the gift of Christ, we can contrast this with all the incredible things Christ brings.
Only Christ can free us from this bondage of sin. Without him at work within us, the cycle of shame and selfishness will forever imprison us.
Only Christ can reunite us with God. Imagine complete separation from God—the source of all love, life, joy, peace, hope, and truth. Doesn’t that sound terrible? Yet this would be our only option if it weren’t for Jesus.
We can only enter eternity with God because of Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. If you aren’t excited about heaven, research it. It’s going to be incredible! We are going to spend more than 500 trillion centuries with God in heaven. Since we will be with God, every second of it we will experience absolute joy, love, peace, life, and so many other incredible emotions. So much so that if we tasted even a fraction of that in these corrupt bodies, we’d literally explode.
Additionally, because of the gift of Jesus, we are adopted into God’s family, filled with God’s presence, given hope in this life and the next, and enabled to love sacrificially as Christ did.
Each of these things on its own is enough to fill us with thankfulness and joy this Christmas season. Altogether, if we truly take the time to digest each of these blessings, the birth of Christ will fill us with awe and wonder.
How To Find Joy In The Birth Of Christ
Reading those two keys might not have filled you with joy for what God did, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. If you want to be filled with joy, you need to internalize them yourself. I’ve explained how I’ve internalized all of this, but what works for me might not work for you.
Sit down and ask God to reveal to you just how lost you are without Christ. Ask him to reveal the wondrous blessing he grants you through Christ. Research both of these. Meditate on some scriptures that talk about these two truths.
Do all of this until the deeper truths move from your head to your heart. Only then will you be filled with joy for the birth of Christ.
Mankind has and will never fully appreciate the magnitude of Jesus’ birth in this lost and broken world. We can dig and dig, but yet the depth and breadth of it are unending. This means we can always learn more and grow to be more joyful.
I hope this encouraged and challenged you to be more joyful for the birth of Christ this Christmas season.
If there’s something I missed, I’d love to hear about it. Please comment your thoughts and questions below.
God bless, Merry Christmas, and live wilder!
If you are still trying to find joy in Christ, another way to do so is to look at all God has given us from a different perspective. I’d recommend checking out this blog post, The Show: God’s Creation Through A Poet’s Eyes.
Also, one of my favorite ways to find joy in what God has done is by marveling at his creation by watching this video.
Great insight.
Thank you!