What Do You Want For Christmas

As people are coming I want I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas playing with images on the screen and words.

What do you want for Christmas?

That is a question that parents across America are asking children during this season. Santa’s across every mall in America have children standing in line just to sit on Santa’s lap and hear him ask the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” I want an XM radio

I am told Dr. smallwood wants a digital camera.

What do you want?

Imagine if we always got everything we wanted.

Show video from Christmas story. Santa kicking kid down slide as he says You’ll Shoot your eye out.

Our Temptation is to think of God as some Santa in the sky. To some extent maybe it is a misunderstanding of what we have heard from pulpits all of our life. Ask and ye shall receive…but in context that Scripture is Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

All of these things are needs based things not wants. God Supplies all of our NEEDs. Ask and God will Supply your needs. I have seen a lot of poverty in America, but I have never seen REAL starvation in America

So the real question to ask this season is not what do you want, but what do you need? Even better, is there someone around you that has a need?

You hear it every Christmas from the church…Christmas has become too commercialized…Jesus is the reason for the season…Its not about what you get it is what you give…and the list goes on. It seems to me that we Christians are becoming just as guilty as the non-Christians when it comes to missing the meaning of Christmas. While it is true that the first day after thanksgiving is called Black Friday on wall street in reference to it is when many retail stores make it out of the hole…It is true that often “the world” misses the point of Christmas…We are often just as guilty. We get so busy complaining about the world, missing the point we turn it into a time of negativity instead of an opportunity to remind people of the hope of Jesus.

We forget to look around us for the needs of others. We forget that there are those who are facing catastrophic circumstances, and in the process of focusing on our own needs, and having pity parties, in our own myopia we fail to notice the hurting, and the hopeless. There is a song that has become popular in recent years, that describes one such person, and how the world seems to miss this little boy. They seem to miss that he is running out of hope.

http://www.cbs.com/specials/christmas_shoes/band.shtml

He didn’t know he needed a miracle, until one happened.

Robert Layton (Rob Lowe), a successful attorney, is on the brink of losing his marriage. Nathan Andrews (Max Morrow), an eight-year-old boy, is about to lose his young working-class mother (Kimberly Williams), to illness. When Robert crosses paths with Nathan on Christmas Eve, Robert’s life is changed forever. Something as simple as a pair of shoes was going to make all the difference in the young boy’s life. And by helping Nathan, Robert realizes the true importance of family, faith and love.

The story behind this song:

In 1999, the Christmas Shoes story began circulating on the internet. The touching story about a little boy whose mother was dying at Christmas, and his quest to find the perfect pair of shoes for her to wear in heaven, came to the attention of Eddie Carswell of NewSong. Eddie began writing a song inspired by the story.

NewSong, a Christian musical group, sent its record "The Christmas Shoes" to a top DJ in St. Louis in November 2000. When he played it, the station literally shut down: the switchboard was inundated with calls and the computers crashed from the barrage of emails. With virtually no promotion, the record had 3500 spins around the country in just one week, and shot to #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Charts in a record-setting three weeks.

The news media caught on to the phenomenon, and so did St. Martin’s Press. It commissioned Donna VanLiere to write a novel based on the song. The book was released in October 2001 with a 300,000 first printing. St. Martin’s released eight additional printings, but could not keep up with the demand. The book was entirely sold out two weeks before Christmas in 2001.