Family Christmas I Pastor Kendrick Vinar

Have you ever felt the weight of family expectations during the holidays? Pastor Kendrick offers a transformative perspective on navigating family Christmas through grace and intentional blessing. Drawing from personal experience and Scripture, he reveals how giving the gifts of flexibility, forgiveness, and understanding can transform tense family gatherings into opportunities for genuine connection. Whether you're dreading difficult conversations or yearning for deeper relationships, this message provides practical tools for avoiding conflict and building meaningful bonds. Discover how embracing empathy and faith in others can open doors for God to work in unexpected ways this holiday season. Don't miss this timely message about making your family Christmas more meaningful than ever.

📖 Key Scripture: Colossians 3:12-14
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Join us next week for another life-giving word from Grace Church of Chapel Hill!

Transcript

Everybody out at Almance, they were doing baptisms this morning, and it's just such an exciting time. I'm so proud of all of you that made that step. It's a big congratulations. But there's something powerful about having the courage to boldly stand up and say, I have decided to follow Jesus. There's something.

I think it's kind of transcendent across generations and denominations. Communion and baptism are two things that we see followers of Christ have been doing since the day that Jesus walked the earth. Right. And declaring their faith publicly is such a powerful step. And again, couldn't be happier for you and more proud of you.

And I know the Lord really honors that and uses it as a spiritual step in our journey. So, hey, as we launch, I want to greet everybody at Owlmance. We love you. I know y' all are having a great Sunday out there. Can we put our hands together, everybody, at Almance?

Come on, y'. All. God bless you here in Chapel Hill and in Alamance today. By the way, you might not know this, but we're honoring, celebrating, and blessing single moms. We actually have 70 single moms that are signed up for.

We're doing a little parte, and Nana, my wife, is gonna serve them and share a message with them. We want to bless them and honor them. And I love single moms. They are hardworking, they're strong, they're courageous. They never complain.

They, the Lord. They carry a lot of weight. And we want to get behind and honor and celebrate and bless our single moms here at Grace Church. So, hey, I want to mention this. We're not far from launching into our new year, and if you asked me, hey, Kendrick, how could I get my new year started?

Well, I'd like 2026 to be a great year. Well, let me tell you this. 2026 is going to be a great year. If it's a great year spiritually, if we put the Lord first and if we grow deeper in him, then our year will be great. Like, of course, we can work on, you know, working out or eating better or whatever.

Positive, uplifting things, you know? But at the end of the day, y', all, let me just say this. Our relationship with the Lord and the depth of our spiritual life, knowing God, walking with God, the. The deeper your roots go in God, the more you're gonna bear fruit and good things are gonna happen in your life. So we're putting together two key things to really help your spiritual life and your relationship with the Lord.

Number one, we do this every year we start off with 21 days of prayer and fasting. We take 21 days. We're kicking off on January 1st, which is a Thursday. And actually we're gonna do it in the evening. We woohoo.

Kick off. We're gonna have a fun evening. No fasting in Jesus name. On New Year's Day you're supposed to celebrate. Okay, this is grace church style, y'.

All. Okay, so it's 21 days of prayer and 20 days of fasting. Okay? So we're gonna have a fun night of worship. Prayer kickoff, and then in the mornings for the next 20 days, 7 to 745 in Alamance at the ministry hub here in Chapel Hill Live.

Or you can just watch online. Okay, I hate to give you the easy out, but you can put up your feet at home with your cup of coffee. It's better in person. Okay, but. Or you can watch it on demand later in the day.

Here's the deal. We're gonna go through the Book of John, Gospel of John. There's 21 chapters in the Gospel of John, and we're doing 21 days of prayer. There we go. So each day we're doing a chapter, we're gonna worship.

You're gonna have a short message from one of our leaders from Alamancer Chapel Hill that are gonna share and then you're gonna have some time to do your Bible reading for the day. I'm telling you, we've heard person after person say how significant starting their year this way has been. And concurrently at the same time, we're gonna do a sermon series called Disciple about vertically, how do we follow God? And there's different commands. Follow me, trust me, hear me.

We're gonna talk about these fundamental core things that's going to cause the roots of your spiritual life to go deep. And then we're going to have small groups, six weeks that are going to help us be a disciple in our relationships horizontally. I'm telling you, by God's grace, it's going to be rich. It's going to be very significant and rewarding for you and a great way to start your year. I believe if you did those things, church, start your new year with 21 days prayer and fasting.

And then start your new year with disciple. Get in a small group. It will. God's gonna meet you. Now, fasting, let me just briefly mention, what does that mean?

I mean, it can be food, it can be social media. Like what we're trying to do is start off our new year making some space, making Some room. Not just running my own strength into the new year, but. But you create some space. So maybe you change up your morning routine and you come to Grace Church, you flip on the video.

At home, we're going to make some room for God and put God in his first place, and he'll put everything else in its right place. We're going to seek first in 2026, the Kingdom of God and his righteous. All these things will be added to you. So want to encourage you to buy into that, to make a decision. Hey, I.

To put God first. I want to start my new year right with my spiritual family and dive in. So today we're going to continue our Christmas series. Last weekend, we kicked it off doing an at the movies. We watched a Christmas movie called Family Man.

Today we're going to talk about family Christmas. Now, let me ask you this question. If your family gathering, your family Christmas that's coming up here was a Christmas movie, what movie would it be like? What movie like? Think about that for a moment.

Okay. Our family gathering. Would it be like a Hallmark movie, cheesy and sweet, or would it be like Home Alone, you know, would it be, you know, I don't know, Christmas Carol. And there's Scrooge or the Grinch that Stole Christmas or maybe Die Hard. That's a Christmas movie.

Hopefully not like that. But let me just say this. Real family Christmas for all of us. There's good. And it's a little messy, isn't it?

Like family Christmas. And when I speak of family Christmas, let me just say this. I want to speak to your relationships, your people. And I understand that being single, blended family, marriage, kids. Maybe your parents are alive, maybe they're not.

Um, let me just say this. Maybe I. I've got a couple friends that are missing someone for the very first time at Christmas who's passed away this year. Christmas can be painful, can't it? And there can be issues of walls up, some difficulty, like real family Christmas. Let me just tell y', all, if.

If you think your family's dysfunctional, welcome home. Like, we all got, like, something, right? There's always, again, no matter how great your family, what a blessing that is. And the good. We're grateful for the good.

There's always some things to navigate. And it just. The holidays carry just a lot. You know, there's expectations, there's parties, there's gifts, there's hosting. There's, you know, people's feelings and what people say and all that.

And you come into it and how do we Navigate Christmas. Well, in all of our relationships with our people, with our family, that's what we're going to talk about today, how we do that. Now, normally, what I do is this. I like to kind of start out big picture, spiritual. What does God say?

The Bible. And then we kind of narrow down, and I like to make it real practical at the end, you know what I'm saying? Like something to take home that can help you, that can build your life. Today, I want to do it backwards. I want to start off, and if you get nothing out of this, I want to give you a tool.

I want to give you something practical. You go like, hey, I'm glad I came to church today. I got a tool. I got something practical to really help my Christmas. Because sometimes that Christmas, particularly if you've got a bigger family or you're like, you know, like, I don't know, maybe your Christmas party, like, there's a lot of people there at work or whatever.

Sometimes you got to navigate people, see the world differently. And, you know, you don't want to offend people. You got to tiptoe around some things and gotta be kind but careful. So I wanna start off with a practical tool, a little tip that can help you out. So you can say, I got something at grace.

Y' all go ahead and check this out and see if this helps you. Happy New Year.

I know what month it is. I know that's a confusing thing to hear outside of January, but I love saying Happy New Year. I go year round. I bring my Happy New Year's year round. Cause everybody loves it.

Happy New Year. Just feels good to say. Doesn't matter where you're from, your religion, your country, everybody celebrates it. It's not like Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas can go either way.

And I hate to offend people. So this whole last holiday season, I didn't let out one Merry Christmas. That's true. Instead, I said, may the birth of the one and only true God, Jesus Christ Christ, bestow a blessing of grace and peace upon your household to the belittlement of every other false religion. Come on, y'.

All. There you go. How about that? Does that help you? You see, you got something already.

There you go. Something really practical that you can take with you and just put in your back pocket. So, hey, family Christmas. Have y' all ever noticed this with your family? You can't fix your family.

Have you ever tried? Tried to fix your family, control your family? There's a lot about family Christmas that's outside of your control, right? That you can't just fix. And Paul gives us some Wisdom in Romans 12:18, says this.

If it is possible, when you get together with your family this Christmas, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all those family members, with everyone. Okay, this is where we're getting. We're zeroing in on this, one of the applications. But listen what it says, if possible, so far as it depends on you. And there is that a lot that's out of our control, and we can't fix people.

But what Paul is saying is this. There's a part that we can play, and that's what I want to talk about, that if we play our part, God can show up and do his part. And I think sometimes we underestimate. If we play our part and show up with some faith, show up with God's perspective, with God's heart, we can open the door to God doing something. Because you might say, pastor, you don't know my family.

My family. I mean, we put the funk and dysfunctional. It's like, it's crazy. And it's not possible to have peace. And I go, that's cool.

But what's impossible with people can be possible with God. And we need to open the door to let God do what only God can do. We can't fix people, we can't control people. But we can do our part to make every effort to see the Lord work and bring peace to our situation. So what I'm gonna do is this.

I wanna talk through three verses that are on relationships. And these three verses work all the time in all your relationships all year. Today we're gonna look through the lens, make a specific application of these three verses at the holidays, with our people, with our family, with our relationships. Okay? And so as I go through this, I want you to have your eyes open, ears open, to say, how can we avoid the bad and build the good in our family relationships?

I want you to kind of put that on, what with the people that you'll be with at the holidays. How can I avoid the bad, build the good, and look at this wisdom that God has for us through. Paul says this. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Start here.

I love this. Paul is gonna give us advice on how to avoid the bad, build the good. He's gonna tell us what to do, how to show up, how to do relationships, and how to do our Christmas with our family. A family Christmas. But this is a little Curve ball.

This is where it starts. He says, therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, you're chosen by God, you're holy and dearly loved. Let me say this. When you make a decision to follow Jesus Christ, surrender your life and give your life to him. God adopts you into his family and you become a child of God.

You become holy, set apart for God, forgiven, pure, righteous in Christ Jesus. And you experience that you are dearly loved by God. Let me tell you this. Part of the problem we can experience with our family members is we show up and we want to have affirmation or be dearly loved. And it's good to experience that.

But here's the point, what Paul is saying. You can only give away what you have. And you wanna be secure in your identity, in who you are in God. And that when you're secure that I am chosen by God, I, I'm holy and I'm dearly loved, then I'm not looking to my family to fulfill some insecurity or weakness or desire to be significant or to be loved or to be affirmed. Actually, I've already got that settled with the Lord, and I'm coming to give away what he's given me.

Bear with each other. Next verse says, forgive one another. If anyone drives you absolutely crazy at the holidays, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. I want to talk about avoiding the bad and, and building the good.

Here's the first thing we're gonna talk about, is this. We're gonna be able to avoid the bad if we can give our families a gift of grace. A gift of grace. Now, grace means getting what you don't deserve. When you get a gift of grace, you didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it.

Like this week, past week, if you worked a job or 40 hours a week, you get to the end of the week and you kind of go payday. I log my 40 hours. I like my paycheck. Is that a gift of grace when you get your paycheck? No, you earned it.

You worked, right? You're getting what you're due. You're getting what you deserve. You kind of made a deal and you work and you get what you deserve. Let me tell you this.

Grace is getting what you don't deserve. And God relates to us not according to our sins. Listen to what Psalm 103, verse 10 says. God, he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor Repay us according to our iniquities. Can I tell you this?

Praise God for the grace of God. I'll say that God does not treat me according to my sins or according to my iniquities. If God gave you and me what we deserve, it wouldn't be good. Y', all, we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I mean, there's good in our lives and we've done good.

But God doesn't relate to us based upon our good stuff outweighing our bad stuff. He doesn't relate to us according to our deeds. He gives us grace. He gives us what we don't deserve. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Shed his blood on the cross. Others say the ground is level at the foot of the cross. And when we come to God, he forgives us, he cleanses us. He loves us unconditionally. It's all free.

It's undeserved. Let me put it this way. If you've been hard on yourself recently, not feeling good about yourself, beating yourself up a little bit, you've been struggling with how you feel about yourself, like, feeling like you're just not doing it. You're not measuring up. Let me tell you this.

God wants to give you a gift of grace.

Instead of trying harder, instead of doing better this Christmas and saying, I'm gonna up 20, 26, I'm gonna be a better person. I'm gonna break the addiction. I'm gonna work on my marriage. I'm gonna be a better person. I'm going to be a better.

No, no, no. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Take this first. A gift of grace.

A gift of grace. It's not that easy to get and take y' all because we want to do it in our own strength, that it's so in the human nature. I want to do well, I want to be great. I want God to be pleased with me. And we think that God relates to us based upon.

If I'm good, I'm blessed. If you better watch out, better not shout, better not cry. I'm telling you why Jesus Christ is gonna whack you. That's what we think, that God's mostly mad and mostly sad. He's not pleased with me and I better try better and do better.

And he's, you know, he's watching and I'll be blessed if I do good. Let me tell you this. That's not what Jesus came to say. He came with a radically different message. Radically.

Religion is our working our way to God. And God so loved the world that he showed up in a manger in Bethlehem as a baby. He came to us. God came to you and me. And he loves you and he cares for you and he smiles over you and your being hard on yourself.

And beating yourself up isn't a sign of humility. It's a sign of this. You need more grace. You're not relating to yourself based upon grace. And you think God's hard on you, and then you're hard on yourself.

You don't need to forgive yourself. You need to receive God's forgiveness. Big difference, y'. All.

You're beating yourself up and being hard on yourself not because you see yourself wrong. It's because. Because you see God wrong. If you see God right, then you're going to see yourself right. You fix it by receiving this.

Hey, hey, let me just read it again. Therefore, you're God's chosen people.

Let that soak in. You're holy, you're. You're. You're dearly loved by God. Now when we receive that gift of grace, then we can give the gift of grace, which means I'm going to do for others what God's done for me.

God did not give me what I deserve, but he gave me what I needed. So grace is giving people not what they deserve, but what they need. You give people what they need, not what they deserve. So powerful. And you can do that this Christmas season, instead of saying, what does that person deserve?

Which we naturally all do, right? We just naturally go tit for tat, this for that. They were late, they didn't clean up the dishes, whatever, you know, they weren't. And you go back at you. But grace gives people what they need, not what they deserve.

Grace means treating, check this out. Treating people better than they treat you.

See, that's not natural. That's supernatural. If you love those who love you, what reward do you get? Jesus said, hey, even the Gentiles, even people that don't even follow God, do that. That's easy to do.

He goes, but I tell you, love those family members that drive you crazy and don't help clean up the kids kitchen.

Bless those that are difficult, unkind, like, like, you give them the gift of grace. You give them the gift of grace. And sometimes that can be really hard because it doesn't feel fair or right or just. It's not natural, it's supernatural to give the gift of grace. What we've received, we can now give.

Now I want to make it real practical. How do you Give the gift of grace to people at the holidays. This Christmas season, I want to give you three super practical ways that you can do that you can give grace to people. Here's the first one is you can give grace to flex. Grace to flex.

I don't mean flex your gains at the gym. I don't mean flex how much money you have, the car you drive, the clothes you wear. No, no, no, no. I mean grace to flex. As in be flexible.

Colossians says, clothe yourselves with patience. Have you ever woken up on the wrong side of the bed and just been a little ornery? Not been very patient. Get me my coffee. Okay?

It's like, you have to. What he's saying is this. Clothe yourself. Put this on before you show up at the family gathering. Like, put on your Christmas sweater and put on a little patience, a little flexibility.

You can have grace to be flexible. And what does that mean? Flexibility doesn't mean you stop caring. It means you stop controlling. Being flexible means.

It's not that I don't care, because I think part of our lack of flexibility is we build up in our head expectations of how we want things to go or how we think things should go or how things really should go. Right. And particularly if we've got a lot of family traditions and things like that. We got a schedule to keep and an agenda. We ended up trying to, like, control it, control it a little bit.

But being flexible allows small things to stay small. Have you ever had a family gathering that kind of melted down, didn't go great, and at the end, you kind of look back and talk, debriefed and later talked and realized, like, why did it melt down over that? When we ate, what happened? Something small probably became bigger. Something small probably became bigger.

Here's the principle. When you hold your plans loosely, grace to flex. You hold your family closer because you're prioritizing what matters most. Your family gets closer when you hold your plans loosely, when you give them grace. Because you're gonna.

I'm gonna clothe myself with patience. I'm gonna be patient. And a gift that you can give is gonna go, I'm heading into the holidays with the gift of being flexible. Grace. Now, here's a second one is this.

You can. You could have grace to forgive. Cause it's one thing to be flexible. Somebody showed up late, food got cold, all right? And you go, okay.

Be flexible. All right. But it's another thing when someone was unkind, harsh, mean, condescending, difficult. Cause then it's not just Being flexible, you actually have to forgive. And some of y' all are headed into the holidays and you go, ugh, I am going to have to see that person or deal with that issue.

Like, throughout the year, we can keep busy and stuff things back in the back closet. But sometimes at the holidays, what happens is it forces us to open up the closet and we see what's inside there, and we have to process things. Generally, holidays don't create conflict. Holidays reveal conflict. They reveal what's been hiding in the closet all year.

Right. They don't create a new conflict. Well, some. That's why I did say generally, sometimes they do create a new conflict. All right?

But generally speaking, part of the pressure is this is. As we lean in on it, gets really real. And then what is becomes again, the good is great. But also that's what is lacking. Or where there's a wall up, or where there's some hurt feelings, or there's been a distance, or where there's somebody missing at the table who should be there but chose not to be in.

Or maybe someone's missing because, you know, as I mentioned previously, maybe someone passed away and there's someone missing at the table, and it's your first. That's just really, really painful and hard. It's really painful and hard. And Colossians tells us to bear with one another, to forgive one another. And here's the key.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you, just as God forgave you. Wholeheartedly, unconditionally, completely. In the same way, we can forgive those in our family, those that we're closest to. And that's not always easy, y'. All.

That's not always easy because they are close and we know, and part of us could be like, wait a minute. Like I did. I tried that. They did it again. They've never admitted they're wrong.

They don't see it. I kind of like them to know how hurtful and difficult they've been. Now, let me just say this. Forgiveness does not mean telling the person it's okay. Does not mean it wasn't wrong.

Let me say this. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. When you reconcile with somebody, two people make things right with each other. Takes two people to reconcile. Takes one person to forgive.

Give big difference. Sometimes you have to set a healthy boundary. Sometimes you don't reconcile. All that's important. See, forgiveness doesn't make them right.

It makes you free. Forgiveness is about you. Forgiveness doesn't make them right. Doesn't mean you're going to Reconcile doesn't mean it's all hunky dory. Doesn't mean what they did wasn't wrong.

But let me tell you this. What forgiveness can do is it. It can free you, and it can help drain your heart.

It's like. It's like you drain your heart. And the anger or the hurt or the pain or the bitterness, the frustration can flow out of your heart. You are responsible for your heart, and you can forgive. Let me say this, too.

Forgiveness often comes in waves. Part of what happens at the holidays, y', all, is sometimes we revisit. We come back, we see some people that maybe we don't see all the time. And all of a. Suddenly we're back.

And let me just encourage you, you may think, well, I thought I forgave. Why am I still feeling this way? Why am I still thinking these thoughts? Let me tell you this. Often the Lord will bring you through a process of health, that forgiveness is not in an event, but a process.

It's not a one and done. Sometimes there's a real breakthrough, Praise God. But let me tell you this. Often there's a process, not an event, and you need to forgive. And the grace that you can give your family, a gift you can give them is without them moving, without them changing, without them getting better, maybe, maybe without them owning, asking for forgiveness, owning their part.

You can give a gift of grace by forgiving. Here's the last one. Under this is, you can give a gift of grace. I'm going to call it grace. To forego.

You're going to forego. You're right. You're going to forego what you could do. You're gonna lay down your life and be humble. Colossians tells us to clothe yourselves with kindness and humility.

What does it mean? What does it look like to clothe yourself with humility? Humility lays down your right to be right, your right to have the last word. You lay something, you forego proving your point. You forego controlling.

You forego needing to have the last word. You forego your desire to prove something to your family because you realize you cannot prove anything to them and get them to think the way that they could or should think.

So you forego and you make a decision to give them the gift of clothing yourself with humility. With humility. I like to say it this way. Two humble people will always get along.

Two humble people in your family, at work, with your friends, will always get along. You may disagree. You may see the world differently. You may have hard feelings. Whatever Whatever.

But at the end of the day, two humble people always get along. Now, the Lord kind of gave me that thought years ago, and I realized, lord have mercy, I so don't like that.

Cause when I don't get along with somebody, my first thought is what they've done wrong. And if two humble people don't get along, what I think is, well, they're obviously not humble. And if you think they're not humble, let me tell you the truth. It's obviously you, then it's obviously me, right? And a gift that you can give to people where you can do your part to make every effort to be at peace with all people, is give people the gift to forego, to lay down, to be humble.

And if you do that and say, I'm gonna give people a gift of grace this Christmas, I'm gonna avoid the bad because I'm gonna be flexible. I'm gonna forgive and I'm gonna be humble. I'm gonna forego my rights. It helps you sidestep a lot of the issues. And we can avoid the bad.

Secondly, when we're in this place, we can build the good. We can build the good. And how can we build the good? Well, I wanna talk about a gift, a second gift you can get this. This gift avoids the bad.

This gift builds the good. And it's called the gift of blessing. We can avoid the bad, all right, which is good, that's playing defense. But we can go on the offense, so to speak, by saying, I want to be a conduit of the love of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God. The greatest gift that you could give your family is not wrapped up in a present, in a materialistic thing.

The greatest gift you can give is spiritual, relational, and it's avoiding the bad and building the good. And if God could work through you to bring life, hope, strength, peace, blessing. That's what blessing is. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father above and could flow through you. And you can be a conduit of.

Of blessing and of good to your family. That's what the gift of blessing is. It's building the good. Now, again, I want to make it super practical. How could you do that this holiday?

How could you do it this holiday? Well, I'm going to give you three thoughts again on how you could build the good in your family by blessing them. And this first one, I think, is a little unexpected.

And I think we probably don't see this one coming because we think we know our family so well, and it's this. It's the gift of empathy. The gift of empathy and the gift of empathy. The blessing of empathy is this. First of all, Colossians says, clothe yourselves with compassion.

First thing it says, clothe yourselves with compassion. Now empathy and compassion are very related. There's two components to empathy and there's a third you add for compassion. Let me explain. Empathy is this two things.

Understanding and sharing in the emotion of another, Understanding, sharing in the emotion of another, compassion. You actually add another component where it moves you to alleviate someone's pain or suffering or difficulty because you understand and you share in their emotion. You wanna do something, you wanna help, you wanna be compassionate, you wanna do an act. Now I 100% believe in compassion. Woo hoo.

Okay? That's what the Bible says. Be compassionate to one another. Okay, let me just say this, I'm throwing out this thought for you. We're zeroing in on the holidays in our families and there may be a place for being compassionate and stepping out and doing good and alleviating some pain or difficulty.

Feel free as God leads you. But what if I'm just throwing this out? What if we just did the empathy part and see where it leads? What if we just did the empathy part? And I think actually at the holidays and with our family, empathy is a really good place to start.

Because if we jump to compassion and try to help and do good and alleviate and fix, often our family members do not hear what we intended and it does not come across that way. So let's just back up for just a moment. Let me throw out, let me propose that you give the blessing of empathy. Let me talk through those two things. First of all, the blessing of empathy means this.

You understand.

The emotion, what's going on internally. And, and I think this is particularly a curve ball because we think we know our families best, they're closest to us. If you're married, your spouse, if you're a parent with your kid, if your parents are still alive. I've known my parents my whole life. Are your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your friends?

Okay, again, these applied all your relations. But those that we're closest to, we think we know them best. And let me ask you this, have you all ever had this experience where maybe you left, went off to college, you moved to a new city, took a new job, a couple years, roll down the road, you come back, you're hanging with your family and you have the experience of like, oh my goodness, in their heads, I'm still back there. I feel Like, I'm a different person. I went off to college, I took a new job, I moved to a new city.

I. We had kids. I got married. Like, I've had this experience. I. I've gone back to Minnesota and my.

You know, with my church friends, my family, and. And. And. And it's like, oh, Pat, Pat, Pat. There's Kendrick.

You know, you're like, I did get married, have kids, and might know something about running to church, you know, a little bit, leading to church, you know, but. But, like, I. I feel like I got put in a box, stuck in time. Let me tell you this. We can do that because we think we know each other. What if you went into the holidays to give someone the gift of empathy?

To say, I'm not gonna presume I understand everything that's going on in your heart and in your life. Cause the people around you, all of us, are carrying things. Weight, responsibility, difficulty. You just don't even know. At work, in family, physical health issues, concerns, stress, internal battles that people are fighting for themselves.

And a gift. Here's a curve ball, y', all, that you could give this Christmas is showing up to say, I want to understand you to your spouse, to your kids, to your parents, to your uncle, cousin, like, whomever your friends you're hanging with.

How are you doing?

Wow. Ask questions. What you've been going through. Tell me about that.

What if you got to know better? Let's just say in the next month, over the next three weeks, you got to understand better your family. I know. I mean, if he ever got a job, he could get something done. You know, like, we think we.

We've got them pegged. We got, you know, my dad, he's always like, this. My mom or whatever. Like, we think we gotta. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Back it up. What if you gave him a gift of empathy? I'm gonna understand. And then secondly, I'm gonna share in the emotions of another. So when I ask a question and you answer and I find out it's been hard at work, don't fix it.

Don't tell them what they could do, should do better. Share in their emotion for a moment. Paul says it this way. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. If they share something good, be happy with them.

And for them, it might not even be in your world. Have you ever shared something that you were really excited about with somebody and they, like, you realize, like, I don't think they heard me. They went on to the next subject. They one upped you, whatever.

And I'll tell you what. This. I'm always really impressed with somebody when I realized they asked me a question, got out of their world, into my world. I shared about my golf story, my hunting story, whatever. And they're like, I realized they don't golf, but they were happy for me.

That's impressive. And if you want to connect with the people in your life, understand and share in their emotion on the up, what they're happy about, celebrate them, congratulate them, tell them you're impressed, and weep with those who weep. Whoa. It's gotta be really hard. How you doing?

How you getting through it? Just empathy.

That's a blessing. And God. That can open the door for God to do something really amazing at this Christmas. Okay, here's. Here's the next one is this.

After we understand and share in their emotions, here's another gift that you can give.

And it's not to fix them, it's not to change them. But after you understand and share in their emotion, here's another gift. You might not have thought of it this way, but as you head into the holidays, you head into connecting with your people locally or around the country or wherever, you can give them this gift. A gift of faith. A gift of faith.

It's like this. If empathy is understanding and sharing in an emotion that they have, faith is seeing this person the way God sees them, seeing this person with eyes of faith like that, they're made in the image of God. And God's got a future and a hope. And a lot of times we don't even have faith for ourselves. And one of the greatest gifts, if you want to give a gift to someone, like, hey, let me give you a gift.

One of the greatest gifts you could give someone is to say this. I believe in you. There's more for you. God's got you. I'm praying with you.

I'm not only understanding, sharing in your. But I'm get. I got your back. I'm standing with you. That's powerful, y'.

All. It's life changing. It's life changing. Powerful. And when you give people the gift of faith, it's not that you're getting onto your lane to do it for them.

Like, we bear each other's burdens, but we have to carry our own loads. You know, I'm not fixing you, but I'm believing in you, and I'm standing with you, and I love you. And it's like the story of the friends that brought their paralytic. There was a Paralytic who could not walk. I love.

It's like the four friends brought him to Jesus. And though the man couldn't get there, his friends had faith to believe. And sometimes you can believe more in others than they believe in themselves. And I'm just telling y', all, that is a gift that can change people's lives. This Christmas in your family, and you say someone might be stuck in a rut for the last 20 years.

They might have been struggling with an addiction. They might have had the same pattern. They might have a broken chain of relationships. They might be just as hurtful and unkind or ungrateful. But you go, you know what?

I'm gonna be empathetic. I'm gonna dodge the bat, avoid the bat. And then I'm gonna understand, share in their emotion. And I'm gonna have faith, and I'm gonna believe for God to work. And then lastly, you can give him this gift.

It comes from verse 14. Is the gift of love. Is the gift of love the blessing of love. The blessing of love. That's the final blessing because it's the greatest faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love. And that's what it says right here. And over all these virtues, over all these virtues, over all these things of who you are, what you can do, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. You know, our families aren't perfect. We're not perfect.

But when we show up with love and when we accept we avoid the bad, we give grace. We come to be a conduit of blessing. We can put on. Over all these virtues, we can put on love, and there can be a unity. I just want to say this.

No matter where your relationships are at in your life, with your family, with your extended family, with your blended family, with your. As a single parent, whatever, let me tell you this. God can work, and it is what it is, and he can. When you show up with love, there's like a perfect unity. And I'm just telling y', all, I'm praying it gets better.

I'm praying God works. But it's always a little bit of a mess, and it's always a little crazy.

And if we can kind of embrace that and go, this is my crazy life. This is my family. It's the one I got. That's the hand I got dealt. Here we go.

I'm gonna love them. I'm gonna believe in them. I'm gonna avoid the bad. I'm gonna build the good. I'm gonna give you a Gift of grace.

I'm gonna sidestep and be flexible. I'm gonna forgive. I'm gonna be humble and forgotten. I'm going to lean in for God to work through me. I tell what God can really work.

And I want to pray with you and for you that we. Wouldn't it be cool if we could all just open the door to God this holiday season for our family Christmas and ask God, Lord, do what only you can do. I'm going to do my part to make every effort to be at peace with people. And I'm going to trust you, God, to do it only you can do. Let's pray.

Father, thank you. Today, let's pray. Everyone in elements will. Let's. Let's bow our heads and pray.

Lord, we thank you today.

That as we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the fact that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. He showed up in a manger in Bethlehem as a baby, grew up, walked in love, taught, lived a life of purity and holiness and trust unto the Lord Jesus. You. You died. You were crucified on a cross, rose from the dead in order to give us a gift, a gift of the love of God, of the grace of God.

Lord, we cannot give away what we have not received. And I want to pray for anyone here today who wants to receive the gift of grace. Anyone here today that maybe you believed in God in your head, but you've been trying to live for God in your own strength and you've been asking God to bless you and to help you and empower you and help you make decisions. Let me tell you this. It starts with surrender.

It starts with acknowledging I don't have it. It's not my smarts, it's not my hard work. It's not my good deeds outweighing my bad deeds. It's me coming in humility in order to receive a gift of grace, a gift of forgiveness, a gift of a new start. And maybe you've been hard on yourself.

Maybe you've been beating yourself up. Maybe you've been continually just wanting to try harder and do better. Let me tell you this. Today is the day for you to receive a gift of grace given to you from God.

Receive that gift. Lord Jesus, come into my life. Forgive me. Not going to just try harder. I'm going to receive forgiveness, grace, a new, fresh start.

Lord, I pray that this holiday season we could be a conduit of blessing, that we could bring your love, your grace, your peace. We could forgive. We could sidestep and forego. We could be flexible.

I pray that we could understand our family and our relations, the people in our lives. We could share in their emotions and we could have faith for them. Lord, work and move even this holiday season. We trust you and love you. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.