Hallmark and eggnog by a fireplace are nice. But Christmas is an invasion … the King is back! Let’s think about the implications for life, work, and ministry in this Christmas podcast series. It’s the Good News of the Gospel of the Kingdom for us. And it’s bad news for the Serpent of Old.
Part 1, 2020 Christmas Mini-Series: “Hey, Dragon! Ho! Ho! Ho!” (Ep 161)
Did you know that the First Christmas was an invasion? The King is back! Advent is not just something we look back to. It’s in THE NOW. And it’s in THE FUTURE. Advent is advancing! This changes prayer, what we imagine is possible, and our decision-making.
Part 2, 2020 Christmas Mini-Series: Hark! It’s Christmas Chaos Theory (Ep 163)
You can be Christmas Chordic this Christmastime! Opportunity is wrapped in chaos. Disruptive Innovation upsets and supersedes the status quo, and everything goes to a new level. How should we live in the true spirit of Christmas all year long? 1) The knowledge of the Holy One sustains us. 2) Welcome the Holy Spirit to overshadow your person, your situation. 3) Listen for the creative heavenly Word. 4) Then, take obedient action.
Part 3, 2020 Christmas Mini-Series: The Dance of Heaven and Earth (Ep 164)
We see the dance of heaven and earth in the Christmas narratives of Matthew and Luke. A faith-response on earth surrounds even the incarnation of Christ. And because Advent is Advancing, we can live today with this Christmas Dynamic. Heaven moves. We move. The best things happen on the Father’s Dance Floor!
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Go Deeper — “Hey, Dragon, Yule Be Sorry!” — Christmas Podcast Series
Related
Does the Virgin Birth Really Matter? (Desiring God) The virgin birth reminds us that the bedrock of Christianity is the miraculous inbreaking of the triune God into creation. Christianity and bare naturalism cannot coexist.
Ultimate “Disruptive Innovation” … the Christ Child! (Jesus Smart article) Flowing from Bethlehem into our time, there’s absolutely nothing like the Christ Child (and now the ascended, reigning Christ who is “filling all things!”) to disrupt and innovate what is.
Advent Is Devastating News for the Dragon (Jesus Smart article) Advent is not just the anticipation of celebrating Christ’s birth each December. The real truth of Advent is that Christ coming into our world pronounces a sentence of doom upon all darkness. It has set in motion a powerful process which is transforming everything.
Heaven and Earth Merging in You (Jesus Smart article) Here’s the true joy of Christmas … when we understand that heaven and earth merge in us through the indwelling Christ, unlimited potential is released.
Chaordic Age Organizations, essay by Dee Hock, inventor of Visa and Mastercard. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel … And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.
Genesis 3:15, Revelation 12:5 NASB
The Defiance of Christmas! (G.K. Chesterton)
Have you thought of Christmas as an invasion into enemy territory? G. K. Chesterton wrote that we take in the fragrance today of that “explosion in the Judean hills” 2000 years ago. He saw the cave as an outlaw’s den, an outpost, a fortress in enemy territory. Herod’s days were marked. And the Dragon’s doom is sealed!
“There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won. All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savour is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw’s den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out…. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.” (Excerpt from G.K Chesterton’s chapter The God in the Cave in The Everlasting Man.)
C.S. Lewis on Christmas
“Once in our world, a Stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.” — “The Last Battle”
“The birth of Christ is the central event in the history of earth — the very thing the whole story has been about.” — Interview
“Just a hurried line … to tell a story which puts the contrast between our Feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly ‘Xmas’ racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a bus say, as the bus passed a church with a crib outside it … ‘They bring religion into everything. Look, they’re dragging it even into Christmas now’.” — Personal correspondence
“Then he cried out ‘Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!’ and he and the reindeer were gone from sight before anyone realized he had started.” — “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
“We find in our Prayer Book that Psalm 110 is one of those appointed for Christmas Day. We may at first be surprised by this. There is nothing in it about peace and goodwill, nothing remotely suggestive of the stable at Bethlehem. … The note is not ‘Peace and goodwill’ but ‘Beware. He’s coming’.” — “Reflections on the Psalms”
“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.” — “Miracles”
RECEIVE A WEEKLY EMAIL WITH NEXT-LEVEL CONTENT — actionable insights and modeling from Jesus to help you live your best life. Plus, you’ll be in the know about new podcast episodes. Yes! Send me the eLetter.