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You are a Christian that is excited to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas, or maybe you're not a Christian and you're here and you're just kind of excited to be with women and celebrate the festivities of the holiday. Um, I think that regardless of where you stand on a faith base, that we can just say like Christmas is kind of crazy, right? Am I alone in that? Like it is busy. It is a busy time of year, and if we're not careful, we end up crazy along with the season. And so um, you know, we we're our lives are just filled to the brim, most of us. I know some of us maybe are not in that season, maybe you're in a little bit quieter season, but for a lot of you in the room, your lives are already just cups overflowing. And so I am sure that I'm just gonna hit the tip of the iceberg, but I'm gonna I'm gonna give it an attempt, okay, to describe what some of our lives look like. Um we have work outside of the home and it's like a full-time job, right? But then there's like the work in the home, and it's a full-time job. And so many of you are juggling two full-time jobs as if one was not enough. We are chauffeuring for our kids, sometimes our husbands. We are doing school for the kids and all the busyness that that brings. Some of you are students yourself. So, like you're juggling a part-time load or a full-time load and work on top of that and household duties. It's crazy. Y'all are doing a lot of stuff. There's um this crazy little thing called meal times. Can we just all sit here for a minute and think about what life would look like if we didn't have to do meals? Do we really have to eat three times a day? I mean, seriously, how much time would we save if we were not all having to eat three times a day? That just takes up a whole lot of time. There's like the thinking about the meals, making the grocery list, going to the store. It's that that alone can sometimes make me crazy. There's there's the meetings, you know, the work meetings, the school meetings, the PTA meetings. I mean, goodness, there's so many meetings. And then many of you in this room are doing a great job volunteering. You volunteer your time for amazing organizations around the city. Maybe you're volunteering for church or for the school that your kids are involved in. Some of you are leading or participating in a Bible study or hosting a life group in your homes. It's enough to make your head spin, is it not? And I just I know I miss things. There's many things that I'm sure I miss. But in this one month, and actually 25 days out of the month, we get this crazy idea that we can just like add all this seasonal stuff on top of our already overflowing schedules. And so let me see if I can attempt to describe some of this. Okay, on top of what you're already doing, we like create time, sort of, to decorate our homes, decorate a tree. Please tell me some of you have a man that can help you put lights on the outside of the house. And let's just be honest, why do we do that? I mean, just so we don't look like the Scrooge on the street. So, okay, outside lights, there's Christmas parties, there's work parties, there's school parties, there's like the 12 dozen cookies you have to bring to all those parties, right? It's crazy. Then um, someone give me an amen. The Christmas cards. How many of you are doing Christmas cards? Be honest. Okay, y'all are making me feel better. Because here's the deal: we took like, I mean, most years it takes us like 500 pictures to get the one picture that you want on the Christmas card. And then once you get the picture, then you gotta do something with the picture, which means I gotta get on a computer and upload a picture and then like create the card, and it just is like insane. And then for crying out loud, who has time for addresses and stamps? If you're gonna get a Christmas card from me, and like you're probably not because I don't even have them made, I'm just gonna hand it to you. Like, I'm not gonna do like addresses and stamps, it just it's like over the top. Um, the gifts. You gotta think about the perfect gift for the 20 plus people on your list, and then once you think of it, you have to go buy the gift, fight the crowds, or your closet can look like an Amazon warehouse, because that's what my closet looks like right now. Online shopping's the best, but um, we buy those gifts, we shop for the gifts, then why we wrap the gifts? Like, is not the target sack that I just paid 10 cents for good enough? Like, stuff some tissue paper in it, but no, we gotta wrap the gifts, put the bows on, and then let's think about the menus because we all know we have like three Christmas dinners that all have to come between 12 noon and 6 p.m. on Christmas Day, and we're all supposed to show up with a Martha Stewart casserole and a Pinterest perfect dessert. And we're all supposed to smile and act like there's no family drama because Christmas is about peace on everything, goodwill towards men. And like by the time you get there, you're not even feeling it, you know? Like, seriously? It's a lot. It's a lot. Our schedules are already full, and then we're doing all this stuff. It feels virtually impossible, doesn't it? But we do all this for a reason. And it's because we all know that Christmas is supposed to be special, even sacred. And I don't know about you, but um we we go them an extra mile, don't we? We we all do. We go the extra mile, we spend the extra time, the extra money, the extra effort, and we and we do it to try to make it all look perfect, but so often time we miss the sacred in the midst of the superficial. And I don't know, maybe you're sitting here tonight and you're not convinced that Christmas really is sacred, and that's okay. I'm glad you're here. I hope that you'll join us for the conversation to just contemplate maybe there is something more than just you and me that makes Christmas sacred. But you see, all the gifts, though thoughtful and lovely, and we all hope we get one, they're just superficial until we understand that the real meaning behind the gifts is that Christ himself was the ultimate perfect gift and no strings attached. Because you know a few of those gifts that you're gonna get this Christmas have some strings attached. No strings attached, completely free. And the lights, the lights are to illustrate that Christ, his light, wants to be displayed in our lives so that people would be drawn to him. That's the meaning behind the lights. And what about the parties and the food and the festivities and the decoration? All of that, ladies, it illustrates that God himself is an elaborate, lavishing God. It says in scripture that he's prepared a feast for us in heaven. And I want to be there because it's gonna be good. And it symbolizes how that he lavishes his love and his grace and his mercy on us. All of this helps us to remember that the whole existence of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of a Savior, a perfect Messiah who would be our only hope for all eternity. Just like Jesus laying down his life for us required his surrender, exchanging the superficial for the sacred comes only through our surrender. At this time of year, when I think about surrender, I think about the teenage mother of Jesus himself, Mary. For just a moment, I'd love for you to ponder with me her journey to surrender as we contemplate the possibility of us surrendering in much the same way. In Luke 1, we see the story of Mary and it starts unfolding, and it is an amazing, kind of scandalous story. Think about this. She uh was approached by an angel named Gabriel who came to her saying, You're gonna give birth to a child. And you are highly favored, and God has chosen you to give birth to his son. So I'm gonna have it on the screen, but I'm gonna read to you just a few verses in Luke 1, starting with verse 34, and it says this Mary asked the angel, How can this be? Since I have not been intimate with a man. And the angel replied to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth, even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is a sixth month for her, who was called childless, for nothing will be impossible with God. I am the Lord's slave, said Mary. May it be done to me according to your word. And then the angel left her. Notice the word slave. It's also translated servant in many translations, but ladies, I mean, let's like think about this. Like, who do you want to be called the slave of? Like, it would be really hard for us to respond to anyone to say, sure, I'll be your slave, I'll be your servant. And that's exactly the approach that Mary had. I think it would be really hard if we found ourselves in her shoes. Um culturally, culturally, she would be completely outcasted. In the Hebrew culture, for a woman to become pregnant, she wasn't married. Like this was a crime if she was accused of not being faithful that was worthy of death. She was gonna be outcast. She knew this from the moment the angel came to her. Not just culturally, not just talked about in the street corners, talked about in the square, her family was probably gonna shun her. And actually, we see evidence of this in that they sent her away to live with a relative for several months of the pregnancy, and then we all know the story, she and who go to Bethlehem? Joseph. Culturally, her family should have been there with her for delivery. She was alone without family. She was kind of like family drama queen. So we see um that she gave up her dignity, possibly even her own marriage. What was Joseph gonna say? Was he gonna believe her? That an angel came and said, The Holy Spirit has conceived a child in you. She knew that there was a possibility that even her fiance was gonna walk away, that she'd be left alone to carry this blessing yet burden alone. So when we really put ourselves in Mary's shoes, it's incredible to think about her words that say, I'm the Lord's slave. May it be done to me according to your word. See, Mary in that moment, the dignity, the reputation, the dreams of what she thought her life was going to look like, all of that ended up seeming unimportant in the moment. She was able to give up that for the sake of the sacred, not just sacred, but what would be salvation for her and for the whole world? See, Mary knew what it meant to lay down the superficial for the sacred, and it required her surrender. So, in these few moments tonight, let us think about this in light of our lives. Uh, what superficial things do we tend to exchange for the sacred? What do we need to surrender or give up control of in order to enjoy the sacred this Christmas season and not just be caught up in the crazy? When we are shopping for that perfect gift, are we really just looking for acceptance and approval from the recipient? When we're hoping to impress with decorations and lights, perfect casserole dishes and Pinterest perfect desserts, are we really not just wanting to be noticed to feel significant? When we're faced with the family tensions and everything starts unraveling in the places that we thought were supposed to be safe, aren't we really looking for that security to know that someone will always be there, not abandoning us? Someone will always be there to love us? Is that not what we're really looking for? And don't we intrinsically know that Christmas is supposed to be special because we want to impress on our children and others that some things in life really are bigger than ourselves? There are some things in life more important than money, or the stuff that we can collect. Wouldn't we like to impart these things to our children or to other people around us in our lifetime? What things do we need to give up control of, to surrender in order for God to take control of not just my Christmas season, but what about beyond the season? Sometimes I think about like the surrender for me, laying down the people that I'm trying to impress, knowing that there's only one person that I really need to perform for. And he's already given me his seal of approval. Done. Some of us need to surrender the fact that we're not exactly where we thought we'd be in this season of life. This isn't what I would have chosen. I'd really rather have picked a different thing, God. I'd rather have picked a different gift. I'd rather have picked a different occupation, family. Some of us need to surrender the discontentment to where we are right now. God wants to be in control of every season of our lives. Let's take a quick back look at the life of Mary as we finish up. When Mary surrendered her life to God's bigger plan, she did literally receive the sacred. She gave up the superficial for the sacred, and it came in the form of a baby. But she received what I really think all of us as women really want, that we're really hoping that we can achieve in our lifetime. We're gonna look back at Luke 1 again. It'll be on the screen, no worries. But verse 46 through 50, I'm gonna read this to you. It says, And Mary said, My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God, my Savior, because he has looked on me with favor on the humble condition of his slave. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed, because the mighty one has done great things for me, and his name is holy, his mercy is from generation to generation for those who fear him. Okay, remember I kind of referred to the story as a little bit scandalous. I mean, just the whole concept of this virgin birth, you know, a baby being conceived without a man involved. But listen as Mary rejoices. And what I notice about this first thing is that it almost seems scandalous. That here Mary is still pregnant. Her circumstances hasn't changed. She's still carrying a baby that was conceived before she got married. She's still standing in the midst of the cultural chaos of her life, where she's being condemned, critiqued every day. She's still quite possibly the family drama queen. Those things haven't changed for her. And yet we see that she receives joy, security, significance, and legacy through her surrender to God's greater plan. In spite of the fact that this evening, for you and for me, what we're hearing tonight doesn't necessarily change the fact that we still have a ton of demands on us this Christmas season. We still have gifts to buy. I saw how many of you stood up and said you still had a whole lot of gifts to buy. That doesn't necessarily change, does it? Just because you came, that's not gonna instantaneously be done. Just because you've come tonight does not mean that when you go to your family Christmases, there's not gonna be hard family members that are hard to deal with, and they're dealing with hard stuff that we don't really even know how to respond. That doesn't necessarily change just because you've come tonight. Perhaps God is asking you to surrender your fear and share the hope of Christ this Christmas. Tonight doesn't necessarily change the fact that you probably still have 10 Christmas parties to go to in the next 12 days. Can't change that for you. But perhaps we together can commit tonight to not allow the superficial to choke out the sacred this season. Just like Mary, we have the opportunity to surrender to the Lord's plan for our lives. Surrender looks like this it's like that trust fall that you did when you were a kid. Did you do that? How many of you done that? It's literally like holding your hands out and just trusting that whoever's behind you is actually gonna catch you. It's trusting. When you're carrying the superficial, it's like you're doing it alone. And it's like you're trying to just balance a burden. Carrying the superficial feels like a burden. Surrender feels like freedom. Like Mary, we have the opportunity to surrender to the Lord's plan. Our reward is joy. When we surrender and trust God that no matter what, he's in control, we get to walk away with joy and with freedom. Knowing that Christ is the reason for this season and that he deserves all praise, we can have security in the fact that our Father knows us and he loves us, and that can bring significance to our lives. It does bring significance to our lives. We don't have to wander around life wondering if someone does love us, notice us. You're noticed, you're loved. He sees you, and that brings significance. We don't have to rely on the approval of others. It's nice, isn't it? It's nice to know that someone's noticed, that maybe someone's actually said something to you, but that's not what we're made for. We already have his approval and his applause. We are actually leaving a legacy with our families, our children, and generations to come when we show them what really matters in life. Christ is the sacred of the season, and Christ is the sacred in every season of our lives. When we elevate him and when we surrender to the superficial, we are doing what really matters in life. May our lives be lived to impress him and surrender to him. My prayer and hope for you tonight is just even in encouraging you and imparting some of those words of truth from God's word and reflecting on Mary's life and how she surrendered. Our desire is just to help relieve, ease some of the burden that maybe you're carrying this Christmas season. We hope that you come tonight and enjoyed good food, good conversation, getting a lot of prizes, and that you can leave here truly feeling like I was able to leave something there, the burden that I was carrying, elevating the superficial instead of the sacred. One of the ways that we hope to kind of solidify just one or two simple truths that have been spoken tonight is kind of by talking about it. I know that's uncomfortable for some of you. I clearly don't mind talking, but some of you that's a really uncomfortable thing. And so we've actually just created the next like 10 or 15 minutes for you to do what you've already enjoyed doing tonight. Just being at your table, having a conversation with some of the ladies at your table. But I'm gonna challenge you to really maybe share something that has encouraged you or challenged you, or maybe just listen to what others are saying. But in this next 10 or 15 minutes, don't leave. Okay. For one, it'll make me start feeling insecure, and then I'm gonna have to go talk to Jesus about that because I've just told you that we don't have to be insecure. No. I'm just joking. But don't leave because we have these six great prizes that haven't been given away yet. And they're coming up next. So enjoy a few minutes of conversation, and then Haley will be right back up here.