“Our job is to take on the Christmas spirit: to voluntarily choose sacrifice and service, depending on his grace, and letting him decide the outcome.” Darryl Dash explains that there is a Christmas spirit among Christians.
According to Dash and a host of theologians he references, the spirit is not merely the festive norm for society in general. Here are seven ways to carry the Christmas Spirit into the New Year and beyond.
1. Practice Humility
We celebrate the birth of Christ, who came to earth as a baby. He left his throne to live among human beings, with their sickness, suffering, and sin.
He came powerless, not as a grown man but as a baby reliant on the sound direction of loving parents, faithful to God. Christ came to the weak and weary because he was needed.
What would it look like to practice this kind of humility in our own lives throughout the year? Where could we go where we do not need to be but where others need us?
Take time to pray, “Father, where are the needs? Are there people I reject and ignore as though I think I am better than they are? Or whose plight simply fills me with a sense of helplessness? Have I been making excuses for avoiding the lonely people I see around me?”
When hopelessness overwhelms, there is a temptation to retreat and hide from the anguish on both the personal and global scale.
God could have wiped us all away, overcome with indifference for people who choose to sin again and again. Instead, he came down to give us hope.
As Clint Humfrey reminds us, “From that first dawning of the incarnation of the Son, adding to himself a human nature, he brought the light of the gospel to be witnessed by those in anguish and gloom.” Jesus humbled himself by leaving his throne for this earthly mess.
2. Practice Generosity
The problems we see at Christmas carry on throughout the year, and they require our attention beyond the holidays. We can be generous with time or money.
We could hang out with widows, orphans, or refugees, bring coffee and a game of checkers to the old-age home, and provide meals, groceries, or transportation to a single mother.
Generosity could, instead, involve joining a committee dedicated to supporting refugees or giving money to trustworthy groups that disperse funds appropriately.
Is this scriptural? Micah 6:8 puts it this way: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
In other words, get out of your comfort zone and give up something to the point that it hurts just a little. This is costly, but if you are following Jesus, he will also fill you with joy when you realize the impact a small act of generosity can have on a person or a group of people.
The beloved Christmas hymn Silent Night talks of the “dawn of redeeming grace” — the light that came to men and women who sorely suffered in the darkness. We are small, weak, and sinful, yet we are given opportunities to share the dawn with others.
This light has a name — Jesus Christ. Our greatest acts of generosity always declare his goodness, whether He is accepted by others or not. If you have nothing else, Christian, you still have this most precious gift to share.
3. Practice Peace
One threat to our Christmas spirit is that needy people will reject our generosity, or they will become too needy. Does that sound familiar? Most people rejected Christ’s message of hope and salvation because there were parts they did not understand or that sounded too difficult.
The disciples sometimes needed to hear the same lessons over and over — they struggled to put Jesus’ teaching into practice. “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17). Does this mean Jesus lacked peace?
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). What is this peace? It is eiréné “God's gift of wholeness.”
God’s peace is not the cessation of strife or acceptance from men. Eiréné is wholeness from and with God through his Spirit for those with whom He is pleased.
With whom is God pleased? “The people who enjoy the peace of God that surpasses all understanding are those who in everything by prayer and supplication let their requests be made known to God,” explains John Piper. “The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God’s peace is faith in the promises of God.”
So, how do Christians experience the Lord’s peace? They walk in faith. They turn to God in good and bad times to experience his closeness, to declare his righteousness, and to enjoy Him. This Christmas peace comes from saying every day, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).
4. Practice Patience
The definition of makrothumia includes “long passion.” Strong’s Concordance explains that this is a “quality of God” and that we can only receive such a gift from God Himself. How is this a facet of the Christmas Spirit?
We need patience to deal with unfulfilled longings that we feel most keenly at Christmas: the desire that a relative would come home and even attend church, the loneliness of being unmarried, or when the sorrows of past holidays threaten to totally overshadow the celebration.
A passion is a powerful desire, a yearning, and these yearnings frustrate us to the point of giving up. After all, when we want something so badly, that longing becomes heavy, and we might even wonder if our yearning is godly.
Garrett Kell recalled, “When my wife’s unbelieving father died, she was deeply confused. She couldn’t understand why God would’ve burdened her to pray for him only to not save him.”
Seeking Christ’s ways, listening, and obeying, our hearts are burdened in ways that honor God. That does not mean the Lord will give us what we desire or change our longings; instead, he might give us something we never thought to ask for.
“His wise plan may require him to decline our pleas. Unanswered prayer can be confusing for us, but not for him. He knows what we don’t and sees what we don’t” (Ibid.). Does this mean we should give up on our prayers? No, we are learning to trust Him.
5. Practice Faithfulness
God’s faithfulness appears obvious amid the color, light, and merriment of Christmas. For those who can celebrate the holiday season, it seems as though God is saying “yes” everywhere.
As the celebrations end and decorations are put away once more, however, we might struggle to believe that God is faithful and to be faithful to Him with our lives.
Glenna Marshall observed, “A lifetime marked by steadfast faith doesn’t happen overnight. It’s built upon years and months of many ordinary days of ordinary perseverance. Though beautiful when traced in decades of retrospect, faithfulness is unremarkable in real-time practice.”
Faith is a steadiness, a belief lived out day by day, that God is good, He is real, He is for you, He is coming back, and we do not need to have all the answers. God is trustworthy with our prayers and our sanctification, and He is close.
We can trust God in both the big adventures of Christian life (like becoming a long-term missionary) and the dull minutes (laundry, traffic, caring for sick kids, or paying bills). We can trust God for energy and discernment, patience, and generosity of spirit.
We can trust God to show us mercy when we lack patience, empathy, or joy but to also discipline and sanctify us. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
Yet, simply moving towards Easter, pursuing Christ from the manger to Calvary, trusting and declaring God’s goodness, is an act of faith.
6. Practice Kindness
Christians supposedly do kind things. They express their love for Jesus by encouraging sad people and trying to lift broken spirits. Even many non-Christians can behave kindly for a few weeks of the year, and they are most likely to do so at Christmas.
Christian kindness observes sadness and despair, remembering in the months after Christmas that those problems do not go away when the tree and decorations come down. Christian kindness asks God to reveal needy and broken hearts.
God declares, “Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:24).
Like generosity, kindness can feel sacrificial. It is easy to be kind to loved ones but not to enemies or strangers. As a challenge, make a list of people whom you would otherwise ignore or whom you dislike and ask yourself, “How can I show kindness to this person today?”
Remember that, in his kindness, Jesus was not merely “nice,” which is a weak descriptor for our Lord and Savior, the Victor over death. He was honest but lovingly so. Sometimes, your kindness will mean lovingly speaking the truth, planting a seed that comes to fruition later.
For example, when someone is rejecting God and His instructions, yet fooled into thinking philanthropy will open the gates of heaven, it is kind to explain that no amount of money donations will buy that person’s way into heaven. “Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life” (Psalm 49:7).
7. Practice Joy
As Christmas carols play, gifts are exchanged, wine flows, and tables groan under the weight of good food, you would think joy would be easy. There are those who love this season so much that they prepare 364 days of the year for December 25.
But joy is possible at an empty table and in a lonely room. Joy is a discipline and a sacrifice, available to the hurting and the poor, the hungry and the lonely. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
Jesus’ joy came from obeying the Lord and from securing a place in the Kingdom of Heaven for all believers with their Father.
With every step he took under the weight of that burdensome cross, his forehead dripping with blood, Christ rejoiced that those who believed in Him alone for salvation would be restored to God.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, we, too, can approach the most difficult circumstances of life with a sense of joy. We lose it sometimes, but fear not — God is doing a transformative, sanctifying work in the heart of every believer.
When we are spiritually impoverished, when we grieve our sins, and when we are weak, Christ comes close. He is most obviously present when we are so far from the warmth of a crackling Christmas fire that there is frost at the rim of its shadow.
While it seems as though a fruitful faith overflows from a joyful Christmas, really, it is the other way around.
The joy of Christmas, which can be so elusive to many people, becomes more accessible to those who are growing in faith and being sanctified year-round.
In fact, the most powerful testimony of God’s glory is often seen in lives where Christ is all they have to give or receive and where Christ is enough.
For further reading:
4 Ways to Prepare Yourself for the Christmas Spirit
How Do We Inwardly Prepare for Christmas?
7 Ways Christians Can Keep Christmas Visitors
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/SDI Productions
