I'll Give God Me This Christmas

Apparently this is an older song, but I have never heard it until I did a youtube search as I was planning our church kids Christmas program.

I decided since I do not sing and not very musical, we would say it all together. The words were just too good for me to skip over.

I'll Give God Me This Christmas:                                                                                             I'll give God me this Christmas, it's the best gift I can give.                                                         I'll give God me this Christmas, and for Him I will live.                                                               I'll give God me this Christmas from my head down to my toes.                                               I'll give God me this Christmas, that's what He wants the most.

 "But Jesus said unto Him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead."                    Matthew 8:22 (KJV)

This tells me that we have to FOLLOW JESUS! We have to allow Him to REVEAL His plan to us. We cannot walk through life getting GOOD IDEAS through blogs, facebook, twitter, our girlfriends. Our thoughts and ideas should come FROM the Lord.

It is a pretty strong statement to say: "let the dead bury the dead." Here Jesus was saying MY plan is more important than yours. It's ALL. ABOUT. ME. I am not trying to make light of someone passing away. My grandfather passed away last November and rest assured I was everywhere the family was. But I think Jesus is trying to make us realize that we cannot let LIFE get in the way of His plan.

I think too many times we ALLOW people to pull on us. We think we have to do this or that because we do not want to let people down. We attempt to do things because we saw others post about it on their blog or facebook. BUT we have to remember that God is top priority. He IS the PRIORITY! What really matters is are we following Jesus OR are we too concerned with what others will think?

Now what with my children?

We have used this song as a conversation starter with the kids at church and in our home. We have talked about what it means to give God ourselves. How do we give Him us? What does that look like?

1. Open up YOUR heart and SHARE! That speaks volumes to your children. Let them hear your heart and ASK them what they think. Lead them to Scriptures to shows how Jesus laid down His life for us.

2. Walk it out! As the children discussed this at church, we talked about how it is easy to talk about, but harder to walk it out.

3. Tell them when you see them do what God would want them to do. For example, sharing with their brother or sister, helping someone pick up something they dropped, holding the door for someone. Tell them that God sees them and He is proud of them for following His example of giving up His life.

4. Let your children see your faults and talk with them about how you have failed too. We are sinners saved by grace. We can only get life right when God is at the center. It is HIM working through us, it is not in our own strength!

5. Most importantly pray for your children. Pray and ask God to give you wisdom and how to lead your child toward Him. Pray that God's message reaches the HEART of your child. It's easy to change our behavior aka "behavior modification" for a while but real true change comes when God changes the hearts of our children. Pray that God's Word would reach their HEARTS! Pray for guidance.

I desire for God to have me! I desire to hear His voice LOUD and CLEAR among all the other voices that seem to scream at us. This Christmas we are working on giving Jesus US! That is what He really wants.

How do you plan to give God you? Again, we have to be INTENTIONAL or it will never happen. We have to be INTENTIONAL with our children as we LEAD them to JESUS each. and. EVERY. day! It never stops. We are NEVER off duty when it comes to TRAINING them in the ways of Jesus.

As a new family tradition we are going to write letters to Jesus. Many children write letters to Santa, but we are going to write letters to Jesus. I am not sure of the details yet since it is a new tradition. I would like to keep the letters for us to look at each year. I think it would be a good way to see how God has grown us and changed us through the years. I think that each individual should share if they want their letter to be a private letter between them and Jesus or shared among the group. I will follow up here after we have done this. Of course, the way we do it each year may change. I am not sure.

 

Break Time

We are officially on the countdown until our home school break. I am excited for several reasons:

• We get a BREAK! I am in much need of a break and so are the kids. We are apart of Classical Conversations and we are in our last week before Christmas break as well. We will have a couple more weeks of music, but that is ok.


• I LOVE this time of year and I like to have time to help my children really focus on the meaning of Christmas. We will do many little fun outings and we will read Christmas books to focus on the real meaning of Christmas. We do our advent study during this time. We also do a countdown until Christ's birthday. We will also have a Birthday party for Jesus. Last year the children decided they wanted cookies and no cake. (I am ok with that because I never chose cakes for my birthday cake, I chose apple pie!)


• We have chosen to take a long break because this time of year can get busy and stressful. I desire for my family to make memories and peaceful memories. NOT memories where mama was running around all crazy. Well~ that last part still happens, but not as bad.

I will share with you what we do as a family through the Christmas holidays. We seem to do "a lot" of different things as we focus on Christ. I am sure you will think how in the world does she do all that?!? But we break it up through the day and since we are NOT doing school it is doable. And we do not always finish everything. We try our best, but we are human and not perfect ~ trying to be real here.

The things we do is an intentional effort to help my children stay focused on the real meaning of Christmas. It is hard for us adults. We love the sights and sounds of Christmas. Don't get me wrong, my children LOVE watching Hallmark movies with Santa. We do not do Santa in our home ~ that's a story for another time. Nothing against Santa ~ we just choose to focus on Christ. This helps to keep us as a family intentional about the holiday. I feel that with so many voices screaming at us to focus on gifts and Santa, we have to be intentional or we will get lost in the fun part and really never focus on the real reason for the season.

Disclaimer: We still leave out cookies and milk for Santa. My daughter knows it's mama and daddy, but it's fun for us and them. AND I do have pictures of my children with Santa each year (unless we just couldn't get them to sit in his lap). We will continue to do that until they do not want to.

My challenge to you as you are approaching the holiday season: How will you be intentional this Christmas season? Do you have a plan? Give yourself a break: doing something is better than nothing. You do not have to do it all. Ask God to direct you to the resources He wants you to use this Christmas season in your home.

*I forgot to mention: Our home school break starts Friday and we will resume a few days after the New Year, depending on what day Daddy goes back to work. We did start in June.