✌🏼 I Thought I Needed A Christmas Miracle
Yet I already had one.
Part of me is happy to see 2025 winding down. It’s been… a year. This morning, as I was spending my reading and praying time, thoughts of this time last year flooded my mind.
As Christmas approached last year, it was clear that, without a miracle, we would need to move from the town where we had invested the last 8 years in planting Today.Church. No miracle, so we packed up to live like the Green Acres sitcom in the little town of East Tawakoni, Texas.
I’ve often made the joke, “living in a van down by the river,” as we’ve been living in a borrowed RV in the front yard of our house that still needs major work. In the past few weeks, some progress has been made, but it’s still far from livable.
Once again, Christmas looms, and just like last year, without a miracle, I’m not sure what we are going to do.
My morning prayer time turned into a little pity party about all the things I can’t do, the gifts we weren’t able to buy.
“How are we going to survive the next week, God?”
I should have typed that in all caps because inside, I was pretty much yelling at God.
Then suddenly, I heard my own voice. It was a prayer I prayed almost 30 years ago at the lowest moment of my life. The circumstances are another story, but at the end of my rope, I cried out:
“Okay God, if I can know You, really know You, I will give You everything.”
I heard that memory in my own voice just as clear as if it were audible. My mind could see the details of the circumstances of that night decades ago. And then I heard this in my spirit.
“But do you know Me?”
That stopped everything. All the questions. All the uncertainty. All the remorse and regret became… tears. Overwhelming emotion. Not sorrow. Extreme, exuberant joy.
“YES! YES, I KNOW YOU!”
I thought that what I needed was more stuff. More security. More stability. Why God? When all this time, all these circumstances, He’s still answering that prayer. And this prayer that I borrowed from Paul.
Philippians 3:10-11 (NET)
10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death,
11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
In my flesh, I thought I needed another Christmas miracle. But I have everything I need already. I can unequivocally, and without a doubt, say that I know Him. That I know Jesus, and He knows me.
I have no idea what 2026 will bring. I’m itching to preach. I’ve had the right information for many years. I’m not a novice in the knowledge of scripture. But I won’t be preaching, posting, or podcasting from a place of information. It’s about transformation. It’s about knowing.
I had a Buddy the Elf moment this morning that is so real it will be contagious. But not about Santa or tradition. It’s all about Jesus.
“I know Him! I know Him!”
If you don’t want to hear about Jesus, if you don’t want to know Him, you probably shouldn’t hang around me. If you want to know what knowing Jesus is like, follow me as I follow Jesus… not as I follow Aubrey.
That is my Christmas miracle. And because I know Him, I know He will take care of the rest.
Philippians 4:19 (NET)
And my God will supply your every need according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Hello new creature. 2026, let’s do this!