 Ah, Christmas time. A beautiful season filled with agnog, Christmas carols, and pretending to get along with your extended family members. We all want to have a wonderful Christmas season. We all place high expectations on these couple weeks in December. Food, presents, events. Oh yeah, and Jesus. We couldn't forget about Jesus. At the end of the day, we just don't want to have a terrible Christmas. In this video, you're going to learn how to not have a terrible Christmas and how to put the most important things first this Christmas. But first, I want to give a huge shout out to my patrons on Patreon. If you are a patron, it means the world. Our Gospel partners are the people that keeps this YouTube channel and ministry going and growing. To join Patreon, go to patreon.com daily underscore disciple and become a Gospel partner with us today. Thanks. My name is Isaac and this is the Daily Disciple where I help you follow Jesus daily. So because we're in the Christmas season, I thought it'd be appropriate and festive to talk about how not to have a terrible Christmas. And I want to tell you a little story about one of the Christmases that I've had recently. Story time with Isaac. Welcome to story time with Isaac. I don't know if that's copyrighted. Hopefully it's not. Okay, I just noticed behind me. It looks like a greenery that just pretend that's a Christmas tree. I haven't done the place up. You know, we ain't got that kind of money, but that's a Christmas tree. Believe me. So I was 18 years old. I was in university. It was about to go on university break for the Christmas season. And I was ready to have the greatest Christmas of my life. I was not going to waste these two weeks of pure joy of Christmas time, the food, the events, the everything was going to be plant to a T. I had a perfect picture of what it was going to be like. Excuse me, father. Did you bring the crumpets home for Christmas? Of course I did, son. I wouldn't forget the crumpets. Oh, joyous father, we're going to have crumpets and jam. What a beautiful Christmas time. Mother, did you remember the wreaths? Of course I remembered the wreaths. More joyous news. This is going to be the perfect Christmas. I can only feel sad for all the Christmases that weren't like this one. Oh, family. I do love spending time with thee. Oh, we love spending time with you too, Isaac. Christmas is a wonderful time of family relationships where there's no conflict whatsoever. Yes, indeed. It is joyous. Okay, so I don't know what that was, but all I know is I had this thing planned out to a T. This was going to go, you know, we're going to watch this movie. We're going to have this food. Everything is going to go perfectly. And in the midst of this, I could see, yeah, Jesus, the whole message of Jesus and the gospel and, you know, him coming to the earth as a human, all that was kind of pushed to the side, not as important as how our Christmas season is going to look. And what ultimately happens is when we have so high expectations or expectations are ultimately not met in, you know, other people or circumstance, we're going to be let down and I was, wasn't a bad Christmas, but it didn't live up to my high expectations that I put on it. And that brings me to my first point in how to help you not have a terrible Christmas is don't put your happiness and your joy in your expectations being met. Having high expectations for this season is setting you up to have a terrible and miserable Christmas. Not only that is when we have high expectations of, you know, season. Often it's other people that aren't meeting our expectations. Hey, you're not acting this way. You're not doing this thing or you're doing this differently than I would do it. And that's making me angry. We get some biblical wisdom here from the Bible. So in James four, two, it says, who causes fights and curls among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire, but do not have. So you kill, you covet, but cannot get what you want. So you curl and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. You see, we have these expectations of other people often, and that's a big part of this, you know, Christmas season. We're like, we're going to watch this and this is going to go my way and it's going to be happy for me. We're thinking of ourselves. We're hoping other people aren't going to get in the way of, you know, our expectations, but often they do. And when that happens, we're like, Oh, conflict man, this is battle. You know, after saying something very similar to this, I once had somebody ask me, Isaac, okay, what should we have? Should we have expectations at all? And I think there's, it's important to have healthy expectations, right? Like being able to have good perspective, not having these massively high expectations, but just saying, yeah, okay, I'm going to have a certain amount of expectations. But the difference is, is that I'm not putting my joy and happiness into those expectations being met. It's important to have those expectations to a certain degree, not super high ones, but yeah, okay, to a certain degree. But we're not putting our joy and happiness in those expectations being met, because when ultimately, you know, eventually some, you know, along the way, maybe they'll be met, but maybe they won't be, then we won't be crushed. We won't be totally disappointed. And we won't have a terrible Christmas. Expectations pull us out of reality and stops us from enjoying the unexpected and unplanned joys. Living in the present requires attentiveness to find the joy and blessing in every situation. We interrupt this program to bring you a special segment. During the Christmas season, you know, we don't want to be spending tons of money on gifts. And you know what? We want to be generous, but we can't break the bank. So I want to give you some Christmas gift ideas right now. Number one is my book available. Link in description. I'm just kidding. Don't buy this. Actually buy the book play. Number two, number two, number two is a hat. You know, even if they already have a hat, double hat, double hat it up. Number three is a personalized Christmas song. Here we go. Let's play. Okay. So what you got to do, this is very easy. You just get the person's name. Let's say the name is Phil. Okay. And then you just kind of throw some chords together and you make it a little bit Christmas theme. So something like this here. Just kidding. You're going to steal my song. I want you to make an original song. Stop stealing other people's songs. Last but not least, make something for your family. I like to make food for my family. So I will just take other people's ingredients and I'll just make something out of it. And it doesn't have to be good because, you know, you give somebody Christmas cookies, they're not going to look at your faces. Oh, this is the most disgusting Christmas cookie I've ever seen. They're not going to say that unless they're really mean and there might be the Grinch. I don't know. This is the most, this is who is, who's this impression? This is the most disgusting Christmas cookie I've ever seen. M.I.B. Bernie Sanders right now. We need to redistribute the Christmas cookies. Okay. Now back to the show. Okay. The second way to not have a terrible Christmas is put others first. It sounds cliche. Oh, the Christmas season isn't about what you can get. It's about what you can give. But how often do we hear that? And it just kind of goes in one ear out the other and we're just like, I can't wait for this Christmas. I wonder what presents I'm going to get. I wonder what good stuff can happen to me. I wonder what people are going to do for me, as opposed to going into Christmas thinking about all the ways that we can give, give our time, give our help. You know, if we were to go into Christmas thinking, hey, how can I give as opposed to how can I get, you know, it's cliche, but it's actually true because when you go into it just kind of selfishly thinking, I wonder what I'm going to get. You're going to be disappointed. You're going to have a terrible Christmas. In Philippians two forces let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. God's kind of reorienting our focus off of ourselves and onto other people. If we actually look into serving other people this Christmas, I think there's going to be great joy that comes from that and really a lot of disappointment if we only go into it thinking what we can get. Oh father, this is a wonderful ukulele, but I was helping that I might have gotten something a bit bigger. So my encouragement to you this Christmas is to look and ask yourself the question, where can I give where I usually receive? When we serve others, we act as a living picture of the Christmas and gospel message. So father, could you exchange this for something else? What on this earth? A book? Okay, I've been doing this the last couple of videos, but I encourage you guys, hey pick up the book for Christmas. It's a great gift for your family members, maybe you got somebody that is interested in kind of hearing a lot of the things that young men don't say out loud because we don't verbalize a lot of stuff that we should. It really digs into the questions, doubts and struggles that young men face and encourages fathers to get off the sidelines and make a real and meaningful impact in their son's lives. So if that interests you, go into the link in description, pick it up. We've had fathers read this book, mothers, sons, daughters, so you know even if you're not a father, I think you'll get something from it. Now back to the show. So the third way of not having a terrible Christmas is don't get lost in consumerism. You know there's Black Friday sales, there's all sorts of like Christmas boxing day in Canada here, and it can just get out of control and you can be like, oh I need this or I need this or this looks good. Put a hold on that stuff and really step back and evaluate, hey what have I usually done? How have I approached this kind of materialism before? And how can I maybe reframe that into a focus on other people? Because we're here for relationships. The Christmas season really is about relationships. It's not about our expectations of everything going perfectly. It's not about us and it's not about stuff. It's really about relationships. So if you don't want to have a terrible Christmas, focus on relationships. That's something my mom taught me. So from all of us at Daily Disciple Ministry, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and I want to play you a little Christmas song here. Just you know, come on, why not? Wait, what? Yeah, they want to hear a Christmas song. You don't think I should play? Why not? Come on, I'm good. I'm good! Are you serious? Okay, we're not going to do a Christmas song. They don't, I'm good. I just played a little bit. Here we go.