A Prayer Asking For What Will Truly Satisfy Us At Christmas and Throughout The year

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

December 18 – One week to go until Christmas

We can’t get inside prisons these days due to the pandemic so for the local prison where we would normally visit and hold Christmas parties and chapels, we’ve prepared and delivered Christmas gift bags for the inmates. 

Because we can’t be together and sing and celebrate the season together, we prepared a virtual Christmas program on DVD.  Volunteers sent greetings.  We added in some cute jokes and songs and little stories relating to Christmas.  One of the videoes that’s been loved through the years is an old black and white one of a little girl singing,  “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, see my two front teeth!  Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth, then I could wish you ‘Merry Christmas.’" 

The words of that song give us an opportunity today to reflect on what gift we think would bring us fulfillment on Christmas morning.  We all long to be satisfied, content, fulfilled, don’t we?

The truth is, we experience fulfillment only when God’s desires become our desires.  How does this happen?  Our desires start to change when we give our will and our life over to the care of God.  Through Jesus our relationship with God is restored and we are made righteous and acceptable in God’s sight.  We become precious children of our Heavenly Father. 

As we follow God’s will for us, the power of His Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out and we grow to be more like Jesus in all our ways. Then, and only then, do we experience the joy of having life in all its fullness restored to us. 

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21

As we approach Christmas, God invites us to wholeheartedly desire to do His will in every area of our lives.  As we make this fundamental shift in our thinking and behaving, we will experience the kind of satisfaction Jesus spoke about when He said, “My food, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”  John 4:34

Jesus demonstrated through His life and death that when God’s will is our desire, the outcome is always positive.  But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time.  Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand.  Hebrews 10:12 NLT

Let’s pray to follow Jesus’ example today:

Heavenly Father, Our desire is to do Your will and to walk in Your ways.  Please strengthen us by the power of Your Holy Spirit to do what pleases You. 

Help us to be people who not only say we trust Your input and guidance for our lives, but who actually put that wisdom into practice in all our affairs.  Give us eyes to see and ears to hear Your voice.  Give us willing hearts to follow wise counsel from Your word and from others who faithfully follow You. 

We long for this Christmas of 2020 to be the most fulfilling one yet.  All we want for Christmas this year is to know You and to fulfill the purpose for which we were born and which Your birth on Christmas Day more than 2000 years ago makes available to us. 

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for humbly taking on our humanity and then our sin and brokenness so we can truly have all we ever could want at Christmas and every day of every year going forward.  Amen