Be Proactive and Maintain Focus
Here’s how you can survive Christmas as a family and not have your focus completely taken away: start early. Don’t wait until December 15th. Start talking about the fact that Christmas is coming and what this time of the year is really about.
Stay focused. There are going to be all kinds of activities that can take your mind away from the glory of Christ and the humbling reality that Jesus came to rescue us from all the false gods that would capture our hearts. Be sure to look for ways to emphasize the spiritual over the material. This has become such an obsessively materialistic time of year.
Look for ways to emphasize the spiritual over the material.
It really is spiritual warfare. How can you always point your children and family to the spiritual content of this time of year? One of the things you can do is think about how to remind your family of the Gospel at every Christmas gathering. Look for ways to remind your family of the beauty of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Another wonderful to do as a family is to memorize Scripture. How about use this season to memorize Luke 2? We did that as a family, and every Christmas, we would recite that passage together. That burned into our brains the core of the beauty of the coming of Jesus as our Savior.
This is a guest article by Paul David Tripp, author of Come Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent. This post originally appeared on crossway.org; used with permission.
Paul David Tripp (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, author, and international conference speaker. He is also the president of Paul Tripp Ministries. He has written a number of popular books on Christian living, including What Did You Expect?, Dangerous Calling, Parenting, and New Morning Mercies. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Luella and they have four grown children.
