Heavenly Father I praise You for today. I praise You for helping my wife and me get through this season and find some joy and peace even after losing Philip in 2020. I praise You for assisting people to be able to donate to making the next three books. I praise You for just being able to get up, go to work, and then go home and do normal things. Help me this morning to take command of my morning and day and shake the evil and temptations out of it with the assistance of Your Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit help me today to enjoy this time of year again. Help me to be less cynical and find hope, peace, and joy as was intended when Christ was born. Help me not to get caught up with the exact date, timing, or all the trimmings we have put around Your birthday and just enjoy that You are Immanuel. Help me to appreciate the sacrifice a carpenter and teenage girl had to make to be the chosen ones to help usher Christ into our world and into time itself. Their reputations and responsibilities for protecting Christ were very high expectations for that period. Both were able to listen and obey. Let us learn that life will not be easy, trials may seem overwhelming but if we trust and obey we will be counted as faithful. Help me to cherish my children and their children and instill in them the wonder of who You are.
And this is my prayer: let my love abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that I may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. Amen. Philippians 1:9-11