Chris Hodges - The Christmas Miracle
All right, are you having a good time, everybody? It’s been great. How about giving those teams a great hand, everybody? They’ve done a great job. Thank you. Oh, they’ve worked hard for months and months putting this together just for you guys, and it’s because we love you so much. In fact, if you saw on the screens at every location, when you saw that full orchestra, over 50 piece orchestra, that was all recorded right here at our church, so that all the campuses could have an orchestra in their services. And one more time say thank you to the teams who worked so hard for you. Come on, give a good hand, everybody. It’s awesome.
And let me look straight in the camera and say hello to all of our campuses. We are all having this part of the service, this short little message and the candle lighting time together. So, I want to say a big hello to… we are one church at 26 locations here in Alabama and in Georgia, and we have the incredible honor of bringing this service and then all that we are as a church into more than 22 of Alabama’s Department of Corrections facilities. So, right now, we have the opportunity to be there, and then there are always people that are streaming live online. Maybe you’re home sick, or traveling, or wherever you are. Grants Mill, do me a favor and say the biggest hello. Come on, everybody, say hi to everybody on the other side of the camera.
And I know I have you clapping a lot, but I have to acknowledge one more group. Every year we get texts and emails from our service men and women who are deployed defending our freedoms, but they’re overseas. They’re having Christmas on a laptop or a tablet. How about the biggest hand for them, everybody? Come on. God bless you guys. We love you. We love you very much. Thank you for that. You know, we have some amazingly talented people here at our church, and I’m very, very grateful. Everything that you saw was written and produced by the Church of the Highlands team, and I’m so grateful to God for them. And it literally takes thousands and thousands of Dream Teamers to pull off these services.
We’ve been doing this since Monday night, at least two a day since Monday night, and we’re just as excited to be here today for you guys as all the others. It’s Christmas Eve, and I want to say thank you though to those that are parking cars, and making hot chocolate, and taking care of people the best we know how. And then, of course, my staff. And I want to say to you guys that are the Highlands family that your investment, you know, makes this available for our community. We’ll have more than a hundred thousand people actually physically come to our services, not to mention those that are watching online. I want to thank you for that. I love you very much. I want you to know that if you consider me your pastor, I’ve been praying for you every day and especially in this season.
I know for some people it’s not ho-ho-ho It’s a woe-woe-woe. You have you have some dark days happening, and I feel it with you, and I just want to let you know I’m standing with you, believing God for you, and I just want you to hear this, that I love you very much. I really do. And for everybody who’s here for the first time, I know you’ve already been welcomed by your campus pastor, but I want to give you my welcome and just say thank you for joining us on Christmas Eve and to these services. And if you’re looking for a church home, I hope you found one. We would love for you to be a part of this family of faith. You know, the church will be 23 years old in February, and we’ll celebrate the beginning of our church.
We had no idea this is what it was gonna be. Started at Mountain Brook High School 23 years ago. I was just here watching the SEC baseball tournament and fell in love with Birmingham. I’m a Cajun from South Louisiana, and I thought I just fell in love with Birmingham. I just wanted to move here, and we started this church without knowing a single person in town, and I’m still amazed every day. There’s literally not a single time I drive on to one of our campuses that I just either cry or pinch myself. I can’t believe all this is what turned out. I’m very grateful to God.
And people ask me, you know, «What happened? How in the world did this happen»? First of all, I don’t know. I mean, I have to give God all the glory for what He’s done. But when we came here 23 years ago, we thought we were answering a question that people were asking. And just see if this is a question you’ve ever asked yourself. And that is, «Is this all there is? Is this all there is to life, and is this all there is to God»? I mean, I think people, especially in the South, this is my story. I grew up in church, but I was looking forward to it being over. My favorite part of Sunday was Piccadilly. Come on, somebody, where y 'all at? Y’all remember that old restaurant? Yeah.
And so I was always ready to leave. I didn’t want to go to hell, so I went. You know what I’m saying? And so I was there. Of course, I was forced to go there for most of my life by my parents. And I just, you know, it was traditional for me, it was cultural, it wasn’t something that I was into at all. And then God radically changed my life, by the way, at Christmas time, 45 Christmases ago. My life got radically changed by God. And ever since then, I’ve been in ministry now 40 years, I’ve been trying to take people on the same journey that I experienced. And I believe that God always has wanted four things for people. He’s wanted, first of all, for you to know that you can actually know God.
When I mean know God, I’m talking about really relate to him, talk to him. And guess what? And enjoy it. Like, you can actually enjoy church, enjoy the Bible, enjoy prayer. You can actually know God. And when you come to that level of relationship with God, he gives you the power to do the second step in your life, and that is to find freedom. And I’m talking about freedom from the areas of your life that if it wasn’t in your life, your life would be better. It’s the part you don’t even like about you. It’s the part of your past. I call it the pain, past problems, and people. You know, the things that just kind of mess up your life. And for some of you, listen to me, you’ve settled that this is who I am and this is what it’s gonna look like. And that’s a lie from the pit of hell. You do not have to look like that. God can set you free.
Can I have a good amen, somebody in this room, right? Like you can actually be free, find freedom. And then once you settle yesterday, you get to go to the third part of the spiritual journey, which is to discover your purpose. And you can’t, there’s no way to discover why you’re really on the planet through a college, or a career, or anything, any ambition, 'cause only God knows it. God formed you, God created you. And all the days ordained for you are written in his book before one of them ever came to be, which means you can’t discover your purpose without coming close to God, which is why I love my job so much, because you have to go to God if you really want to know why you’re on the planet.
And then once you discover it, you can do what you are really created to do, and that is not pay bills and survive. You’re here to actually make a difference. You’re here to touch the lives of others. To me, the happiest people on the planet aren’t the ones with less problems than you. They are the people who do things every day that impact the lives of others. So, even with their problems, they have this sense of fulfillment. And that’s what I’ve always wanted for you. And I’m inviting you to be a part of that journey with us. In fact, there’s no better time to start that journey than the beginning of a brand-new year. I love the brand-new year, and it’s always a very exciting time around Highlands here.
Next Sunday, actually, we’ll have another service, the New Year’s Eve service at every location. You’re going to love it. We have some very special things planned for you next Sunday. But I wanna invite you personally to come join us on January 7th for the first Sunday of the brand-new year, and I’m gonna begin a brand-new series that I’ve been working on for several months, and then we’re also gonna begin our 21 days of prayer and fasting. And just watch what God will do. The way I say it is this, and that is it’ll be the best year of your life, if it’s the best year of your life spiritually. And just watch and see. So, I’m inviting you to come be a part of that.
Today, I want to bring a very short message. I want to be sensitive to the fact that we have kiddos in the room, and I do not want to test their limits. Can I get a better amen, somebody? All right, okay. I realize that, that they’re here today, and I welcome them. But I wanted to give you a little short little talk around the thought of a Christmas miracle, a Christmas miracle. Every one of you, even if you’re not a person of faith, you’ve heard the phrase, «It’s a Christmas miracle». It’s a miraculous event that is so amazingly spectacular that it could have only happened at Christmas time. That’s what a Christmas miracle is. They say, «Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this. It’s a Christmas miracle».
And it could be the reuniting of a family. It could be hope in the middle of despair. It could be the raise that you weren’t expecting. It’s a Christmas miracle. In fact, we have heard this phrase quite a bit recently, because we’re in this season that we call Legacy, where our church give very, very generously above their normal giving, and we give it away. So, literally, we’ve been able to give away millions of dollars the last month or so to ministries and people and families and right down to the individual whose life is so desperate, you would not believe some of the stories we hear. I get at least three a day from our teams of people who’s saying, «Man, what you guys did for us is a Christmas miracle».
And I wanna give you the one I just got this morning, just give you an example. And I get these every day, but this is a story that came from our Shoals Campus. And I want you to hear this story. It says, «Dear Church of the Highlands,» they actually wrote a card, wrote a Christmas card, and asked me to deliver it to you. So, I’m reading it to you on their behalf. «You recently helped me, my mother, and my grandmother give my children a Christmas this year. My family lived in an apartment that burned down, so they all moved in with me. Suddenly, I found out that my landlord wants to sell the home that we live in».
And by the way, they had to the end of January to get out, we found out. «So, we found ourselves in a challenging situation. So, when I say we were not going to have a Christmas, no, I mean we weren’t going to have a Christmas. And the church…» Listen to this phrase. She doesn’t mention the gift. She says, «The church helped me see light in the darkness». So, it became a spiritual moment for them. «We were able to have Christmas because of you. I just want to say how grateful we are, truly thankful from the bottom of my heart. Here’s a Christmas card from us to you. You helped my children have a Christmas. Thank you so much». Come on, put your hands together and just celebrate that with me today. And they said, they said it’s a Christmas miracle.
So I actually went looking up the word, I got fascinated by the thought of Christmas miracle, and I actually found a secular definition, okay, and here it is, check it out, it’s on the screen. And that is, «It’s a surprising and welcome event that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws, and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency». In other words, only God. Okay, look at my eyes. I’ve got a word for you this year. So, when I say I have a word for you, I started in October praying for this service. And I asked God, «Give me a word. I don’t want just a normal word, and I don’t want to pull something out of a hat. I really, God, what are you trying to say to people»?
And here’s my word for you: and that is that God, God is a miracle-working God, and he still does miracles. I want to say it one more time, so it catches on to everybody. I got three amens on this right side over here, okay? I said, God is a miracle-working God, and he still does miracles, Church. He still does them. Yeah, he still does them. And if you’re in need of a miracle, if you’re going through a particularly difficult situation, I want you to know that God has a miracle for you. If you’re looking forward to December 26th more than you are tomorrow, I want you to know that God has something for you. He has a miracle for you, and that’s the setting of the Christmas story.
The Christmas story is in a setting of a lot of darkness and a lot of difficulty, and it really it really begins with this little girl named Mary. Some scholars believe that she was a teenager. And she was engaged, of course, to Joseph. And you can imagine in her heart, she’s all excited about the wedding planning, there’s joy in the family, she’s getting married, she’s imagining her happy life with Joseph; when all of a sudden, this angel appears, listen to me, and disrupts her world in an amazing way. And the angel said, «You’re going to conceive and give birth to a Son, and you’re going to call him Jesus. And he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever. His kingdom will never end».
And she says, «How is that gonna happen»? What I want you to notice is that when God was doing the miracle of the conception, Mary conceiving Jesus, she didn’t respond with faith. She responded with questions. She wasn’t welcoming it. She was questioning it. And I say that to you because Mary actually responds the way I think a lot of us respond in those situations. «I don’t understand how this is gonna happen because I’m a virgin». And you’ve got to imagine with me what she might have been thinking through and dealing with.
I want you to imagine with me the fact that she was probably thinking, «Okay, if I get pregnant without ever having become intimate, you know, my friends are gonna think that Joseph and I were actually, you know, kind of getting ahead of the wedding a little bit here». And she says, «And Joseph’s no doubt gonna think I was unfaithful to him». And then on top of that, you gotta think she was thinking, «And the religious leaders are gonna drag me out in the street and stone me for getting pregnant before marriage, before the wedding would happen».
And what I’m trying to say to you is that in the middle of her miracle, God wanting to do something miraculous in her life and therefore in our lives, too, you’ve got to realize that this was not something that she could easily embrace. But then she said something, and this is my simple message for every one of you, because I think we make miracles too difficult. She could have said no. She could have said, «You picked the wrong girl, find somebody else,» but she didn’t. She said what I’m encouraging you to say and that is, «I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled. I don’t know if I really want this. I definitely don’t need this, and it’s gonna carry with it some baggage that’s gonna be very uncomfortable for me, but I’m gonna say yes to you».
And here’s my thought, and I want you to hear this straight to your heart. I want to make this as simple as I can. God does miracles, but he does them when we say yes. Miracles happen when we say yes to God. You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to totally comprehend it all. I’m just saying yes. And I had this thought that what would your life look like if all the God moments, the little knocks on your heart, you know what I’m talking about. God tries to get all of your attentions. You know that. You know you’re going through life, and God’s dealing with you, and you think about, man, maybe I shouldn’t do that, or maybe I should do this, and God’s constantly trying to get our attention. What if all your God moments were, «I don’t know if I understand it, but it’s, yes, I’m gonna follow you»?
And here’s what I believe, that if you do, your life is going to be marked by miracles. Like, you’re gonna see the miracle in your life that you saw in that video with that couple. It certainly happened in my life 45 Christmases ago when I just, I didn’t know what I was saying yes to. I just said yes. And I pray and pray, if you know anything about Highlands, you know that I usually like to announce the focus for the coming year in these Christmas services. And I don’t take these lightly. I take this very seriously and pray. In fact, I even checked this particular word with our elders and our trustees and our overseers.
And I said, «What do you think about this»? And I truly believe, get ready for it, that 2024 is gonna be a year of miracles. I think we’re gonna see the hand of God move. Come on, give God praise for that, if you believe it. I believe it. I believe we’re gonna see the hand of God move in our lives like we’ve never seen before. And I’m not just talking about like the miracles of the dead raised and blind eyes, like the biblical miracles. I do think we’ll see that. But what I’m really talking about is like we’re gonna see God move in our lives in ways that we’ve never seen before, and only God could have pulled it off.
Only God could have changed my marriage, saved my life, rescued me in that situation. And in fact, I’m not trying to be negative. I’m not a negative person. I think we’re actually gonna need them in 2024. My sense, and I’m not a prophet, so don’t take this too seriously. This is just my sense, is that 2024 is going to be an interesting year. With the economy going the way it is, with the world stage as frantic and crazy as it’s ever been in my lifetime, with a national election… aren’t those always fun, everybody?
Yeah, those are a lot of fun. I just think it may be difficult, but not for the people of God. I think in a day where everybody else is polarized and picking a side, we’re going to see the miracle of unity. Come on, say amen right there. In a day where there’s so much fear and uncertainty, and you watch the news, I watch the news and go, «Oh, my goodness, it’s all over». God’s going to give us the miracle of supernatural peace. When everybody else’s situation is turning down, I believe we’re gonna see the miracle of God’s blessing. I truly believe that, and I want you guys to be on the ride with us together. But here’s the catch, here’s the secret, and this is my simple message: you have to say yes to it. Like, you have to say, «You know what? I’m gonna go on that ride».
And I’m personally inviting you to be a part of that journey. And I’ve said it in this way, and I like saying it, especially at Christmas and I’ve been saying this for 23 years, and now people quote me on this particular statement. And for 23 years, I’ve looked at people and said this, and that is, «Give us a year of your life. Give us one year where you kind of go all in, where you attend church as much as you can, you get in a Small Group, you go to the Growth Track and find your purpose, and get on a Dream Team and serve others. Like, run the play and see that if you constantly said yes to God that your life would not be so dramatically better».
In fact, I promise people, if your life isn’t so dramatically better, I’ll go to another church with you. Like, we’ll just find us another spot, right? And I’ve never had to do that. Because when you constantly say yes to God, you’re not putting up the barriers of questions or fears or concerns. When you go all in with God, God does something great in your life. So, I want to close the message this way, and that is because you not only had the miracle of her conceiving Jesus, because just because she said yes, «May your word be done as you have said,» but now we’re at the Christmas Day itself.
And I want to read, I like to read it out of the King James Version, and it says this: «And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn». My final little thought is, imagine with me Mary on that day. So, she said yes the day the angel visited her, but now she’s nine months pregnant, on a several miles journey, on the back of a donkey. Then get to the hotel, and they have no more room.
And you would think at some point she would say, «Okay, well, this doesn’t look like what you promised». But she kept saying yes. In fact, you can imagine, my mind does, I can imagine her nearing Bethlehem, dusty road, nine months pregnant, on the back of a donkey. And you know she was thinking, man, I wonder what this would have looked like, and I think she was imagining, you know, the celebration of a pregnancy under any other circumstances would have been a party, right? Not for her. And she was probably thinking, «Man, it sure would be great if I could have this in a comfortable bed, with mom holding my hand, and a midwife,» right?
I can only imagine her thinking these thoughts. And maybe she didn’t, but I think I’m right. I think she struggled with having a good attitude. But the miracle was she kept saying yes. So then Joseph comes back and says, «Honey, I’ve got bad news. We’re going to spend the night in a stable,» which probably, by the way, wasn’t the manger you have at your house. It was a cave. Those were caves back in those days.
And so Mary clears out a spot in the straw, think about it, Church, and begins to take on the task of having God. She’s going to bring God into the world. And as the ache in her back faded away and the hand of Jesus clutches her finger, the miracle becomes a reality. And the Savior was born, and not just for her sins and our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. Christ was born, because she kept saying yes all the way to a cave. And my point is, is that if we’ll keep saying yes to God, God will do something great inside of us.
So, I got invited to a Christmas service 45 Christmases ago, and my life was incredibly dark. I’m going to tell you something. Something was different that year for me. I came into a service like this, and I felt God’s presence. And I didn’t understand anything. I was just a religious kid living a dark life. And I remember all I said was, «Okay, I’m going to do this». And God changed my life, and it’s my prayer for you this year, too, that all your God moments are simply responded to with, «Yes».