Merry Christmas From Our House To Yours
What an amazing time of the year this is, a time to look back at the year and see the goodness of God on our lives and also the battles we all went through and came out of!
It’s been a great year for us although we have been through a few battles…. But out the other side! Most of the issues were health, and of course by the time the end of the year came I was totally exhausted!
What an awesome year of wonderful blessings though, 18 Nations, so many miracles, amazing encounters and incredible meeting so many pastors.
My most recent trip to Indonesia was incredible. We did a retreat for a school whose students were Moslem, Hindu, Buddhists, Christians and Atheists God broke out and as the students prayed for each other amazing miracles happened then they were sitting leading each other to Christ and praying and interceding for hours!
I preached at a Christmas party of nearly 1000 people and suddenly God broke out, deaf ears opened, those with life long issues healed and then one woman started screaming she felt she was on fire, the fire of God broke out…. after 7 different people from different places in the room came to me saying they saw an angel carrying fire walking among them….. WOW YAY GOD
It is now time for a short holiday and where I will rest in our wonderful church, Glory City Church. I love my church and love my pastors Ps Tom and Katherine Ruonala… God blessed me abundantly when He placed me there.
The message Ps Katherine spoke last Sunday was exceptional so I have taken bits and made it into my Christmas message… I pray I do it justice.
I will be travelling a small amount next year and have a short itinerary on the bottom, please get in touch if you would like a visit
EXPECTATIONS
One of the most beautiful but also the most taxing times can be Christmas. It is a time when family and friends take time to spend quality time together, fun, laughter and love BUT for many families sadly this isn’t the case…Christmas means one thing…STRESS!!
The reason Christmas = stress for many is because of unmet unspoken expectations.
So often we put big and unreachable expectations on people and in not so many words we are really saying, ‘you owe me.’
We put expectations on family and believe this is what I think a brother/ sister/ mother etc. should be like, because that’s what someone else’s family looks like, and when we do this we then get a sense of they are obliged and obligated to act a certain way around me.
Because you are my family you should be the way I think you should be. Its unrealistic, because people are people, each with their different natures, characters, upbringings, hurts and experiences and just like you and I do not want to act a certain way through obligation, then neither do those we think owe us in some way.
When we make people feel obligated or we have a sense of ‘they owe me’ then it puts us in a position to judge them, by how we think they should be!
Joseph I am sure had his own expectations of a marriage, a nice girl with a good background and pleasant family. They would have a big wedding according to their culture and have babies, in their home, bringing up a beautiful family and Joseph would start his business. Instead he wakes up one morning to find the girl he likes is telling him she is pregnant, still a virgin and the baby is God’s. Then an angel tells him to marry her. They have to elope and as she goes into labour the only place for her to have the child is in a stable with animals. He has never delivered a baby and suddenly he is delivering God! Then to top it off shepherds are the ones to announce God’s birth, a shepherds word was not trusted by Jewish law and not only that only deaths were celebrated, not births so did this mean though God had been born now God was going to die?
Think how every expectation that Joseph had disintegrated during the pregnancy and birth of Jesus. Joseph could have been angry, become bitter and started judging Mary because she was not like other women. Worse Joseph could have allowed himself to get into that place where he believed God, owed him! Joseph instead chose not to!
We have to be conscious of or thoughts and actions especially at this time of the year with family because if we are not then unconsciously we allow expectations to be drawn up in our imaginations and before long we believe that person owes me something!
When God gave us Jesus He made the most amazing mechanism available to us and was… forgiveness. John 3v 16 ‘For God so loved you and I He gave His only begotten Son to us.’ He came so we could be forgiven of everything we have ever done or ever will do and the most beautiful part of salvation is that we now have the privilege of forgiving and releasing others from the debt of expectation.
Judging another according to the picture of what we think someone should look like causes us to be bound because the Bible says we will be judged also and the thing is that when we bind people with our expectations they respond to the judgment we give, and often their response is harsh.
God had such mercy on us, He knew we would try and live putting expectations on others but He gave us Jesus Christ who in turn has given us power because as He is so are we on the earth. Jesus went through life never putting an expectation on anyone, He just believed in and saw their best even when they were acting their worst.
So how do we get to reveal Christ in this Christmas season? We have been created with the same nature and heart that is in God and we have been given power and love and the ability to forgive as God forgives. Lets choose to release those we think owe us from the debt of what we think they should be like and lets make the most of the opportunity to be loved by Him and to love as He loves.
Wrong expectations come from our need of identity and acceptance, and the fact is we have our identity in Him and we are accepted, accepted into the Beloved. That means accepted to be loved by Father God, Himself.
It’s natural to feel hurt when family don’t honour you and dig at you all day, it natural that in our hearts we want our family to approve us, but it won’t always happen, it didn’t happen for Jesus!
So lets do something for ourselves this Christmas and give ourselves the greatest gift of all, and set people free and let them go from the expectations we put on them!
Forgive them of their expectation of what I think they should look like.
Always remember because they are your family they are your weakness, others had the same thing, David, Joseph to name a few. Those who are closest to us have the capacity to hurt us the most, but this Christmas lets deliberately release them from expectation. We wouldn’t put that expectation on a stranger so we need to realise that the expectation and need for affirmation stems from a need to be affirmed and only one can fill it!
He wants to kiss us with his favour this Christmas season, so chose to think on something lovely, and good report and celebrate that your family want any sort of connection with you and release them from your unreal expectations.
If I truly believe that it is no longer I that I liveth, and that it is He that lives in me, and He has no problem forgiven them, then I should have no issue, and I should forgive as He does.
ITINERARY
February
1st Glory City Church
15th CGC UK
22nd ??
March
1st CGC
13th till 15th Toowoomba
April
3rd to 5th Melbourne
September
Canada and possible…..
So From Our House To Yours
Amanda And Roger
And Our Family
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