Raise your hand if you like Christmas. 
Raise hand even higher if you enjoy all the decorations, all the gift-giving, and all the gatherings.
Maybe raise both of your hands if Christmas most definitely is your favorite holiday, your absolutely most favorite time of the whole year.
Now that we are standing up and our hands are raised up high, may I offer us something we should do as a daily expression of our love—-SACRIFICE.
That’s Right.
Sacrifice IS an Expression of our Love.
That’s Right.
We find the truth of what we most love through our sacrifice. 

Consider these—-
If we LOVE our jobs, our careers, then we will sacrifice time away from our families to spend more time doing our jobs and improving within our careers.
If we LOVE another person more than God, then we will sacrifice our time as we spend every wakeful moment with that person, hoarding up the minutes, greedy for more and more and more time with that person.
If we LOVE our play time and our hobbies and our activities most, then we sacrifice our wakeful moments and do  everything possible to hurry through our work, hurry through our Bible study, and hurry away from family to go, to do, to spend all of our time possible doing that hobby or interest or activity. 
And If we LOVE God most, then we will STOP doing what we know we should not do, & STOP hoarding that which we cannot control, & STOP sacrificing lives for something or for someone other than God. We must STOP sacrificing what we know will burn away at the end of our lives because it is temporal and not eternal..

“The more they called them,
The more they went from them;
They kept sacrificing to the Baals
And burning incense to idols.”

(Hosea 11: 2)

It matters to God that we spend time with Him every day.
It matters to God that we sing praises to Him and offer our prayers to Him, thanking Him for the mighty and many ways He blesses our lives.
It matters that we offer up our tithes and offerings as an expression of our thankfulness to God.
It matters to God that we recognize how our LORD provides for our lives, for all of our circumstances. 
It matters to God.

Yes, that is right.
The way we live—move & think & hope & seek & and spend & focus & serve & love & forgive & build relationships & pray & help & walk—-IT MATTERS TO GOD!
How are we doing with that?

It’s such a personal question and one that we should stop looking at others and comparing or judging them based on how we think they (the others) are doing.
We have enough to focus upon if we only look at our own selves. 
That’s right—I only need to look to Jesus and compare my actions, my obedience, my thoughts, my service, and my sacrifice to Him—to JESUS CHRIST. 
Let us keep our eyes upon Jesus this Christmas season, as we focus upon the Advent—the giving of the Son to all of humanity from Almighty God—The ULTIMATE SACRIFICE!

“For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven,
Inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.
For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.
Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.
Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the LORD—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the LORD. 
Therefore we also have our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed [repaid] for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

(2 Corinthians 5: 1-10)

May we give God our whole life as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.