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This Christmas, you can shine the light of Christ into places of darkness and pain with a purchase from the Joni and Friends Christmas catalog. You are sending hope and practical care to people with disabilities, all in the name of Jesus!

Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

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A friend of mine asked her students to make a list of questions they would like to ask Mary. “What was Jesus’ first word?” “Did he ever get sick?” “Did Jesus ever misbehave?” All legitimate questions. And the fact that we can ask them raises a greater one: Why did God go so far? Why did he become a human being? A chief reason? He wants you to know that he gets you.

The Bible says in the book of Hebrews he understands how you feel and has faced what you face. “[Jesus] has been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin! So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help” (Hebrews 4:15-16 MSG). Because of Bethlehem, you can boldly go to him.

Read more Because of Bethlehem

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

With Christmas on the horizon, we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

As we begin to purchase gifts for those that we love, it is important that we spend our dollars wisely Our friends at Liberty Counsel have create a naughty and nice list which catalogs many of the stores that have censored Christmas and Christian values. The list also shares retailers that have purposefully used the word “Christmas” and Christian themes in their marketing.

You can find the naughty and nice list on our website lifeissues.org. We encourage you to be selective about which retailers you do business with and avoiding funding companies that are adversarial to Christianity or promote abortion.

https://lc.org/newsroom/details/251118-naughty-and-nice-list-2025

There's a bridge in a park not too far from here - they take carriage rides there. It's just a bridge to most folks, but not to our son and daughter-in-law. That will always be a very special spot to them. It's where he asked her to marry him. It's interesting how a plain old piece of geography becomes forever special when something special in your life happens there: the place you were born, or maybe where you had your first date or your first kiss, or where you were married, or where some significant "first" in your life took place. When a certain place is where something important started, it will always be a special place.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Place Where Heaven Comes Down."

For many of us, there's been a place and there's been a time when everything changed, because it was there that we began our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. One day on my way to an assignment in downtown Chicago, my wife and I decided at the last second to take a certain exit ramp off the expressway. The exit sign indicated the street where I spent the first six years of my life. I haven't been back there since. And, no, it is not a cave.

We drove a few blocks until we spotted the three-story brick apartment building where my Mom and Dad, my baby brother and I lived. I knew it as soon as I saw it. We turned the corner to see if the school was still there. That old brick fortress was still standing, still a school like it was when I went there for my first day of school. Then I had to drive those three blocks to the church on the corner. It was like I was four or five years old again. My baby brother had died suddenly, and my grief-stricken father decided to take his other son to church - a place none of us ever went. I could almost see my Dad now, sitting in his old car by a side door, smoking his cigarette, reading his Sunday paper waiting for his boy to come out.

There was a choir rehearsal that night my wife and I found the church, and a nice lady took me up the long stairs to the third floor room that I remembered at the top of those stairs. That's where Junior Church met, and I choked up. I turned to my honey and I said, "This is it. This is where I asked Jesus into my heart." And there on the wall was the same image of Jesus I remembered most as a child - the Shepherd with a little lamb in His arms. Later, as I learned the Scriptures, I came to realize that in that room at the top of the stairs I had, in the Bible's words, "crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

I pray that if there has not been a time and a place like that for you, there will be soon...in fact, maybe today. In Genesis 28:16, our word for today from the Word of God, Jacob talks about the spot where he'd camped for the night and God showed up to change his life. He said, "Surely the Lord is in this place...how awesome is this place!" But after all is said and done, it's not the place that really matters. It's that there is a time when you open up your life to the Savior who died to pay for your sin. Jesus said it's like being born, and the birth is a definite beginning isn't it?

Has there ever been a time when you consciously gave yourself completely to Jesus as your only hope of being right with God? If you have, you know you have, whether or not you remember the exact time or place. If you don't know you have, you probably haven't.

Scripture says, "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near" (Isaiah 55:7). That could be today for you. The place might be right where you are. God is moving in your heart now and "surely the Lord is in this place." The Shepherd has come to you to pick you up and carry you from this moment on, all the way to heaven. But you've got to say yes to Him, to tell Him with all your heart, "Jesus, I'm Yours."

Anne shares about Heaven from John 14:6.