For many years my favorite joy of Christmas was watching our daughter and son open their gifts, but they grew up.\u00a0 A few years went by and I entered a phase two of Christmas joy \u2013 watching our granddaughter and grandson open their gifts, but they too grew up. After a few years, I entered my phase three of Christmas joy and this year I get to watch our great-grandson and two great-granddaughters open their gifts. I\u2019m taking it all in, because I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to be around for phase four of Christmas joy. \u00a0I think I finally understand the joy of the heavenly Father, who not only gave His only Son, but rejoices when He sees one of His children receive His gift.\u00a0 If you have never received the Son, Jesus as your own personal Lord and Savior, I pray you will strongly consider doing so this Christmas, and in so doing, make the heavenly Father\u2019s joy complete. Receiving is good.\u00a0 Giving is better. \u00a0Afterall, \u201cRemember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, \u2018It is more blessed to give than to receive.\u2019\u201d (Acts 20:25). Whatever phase you are in, I wish you much joy this Christmas.<\/p>\n
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For many years my favorite joy of Christmas was watching our daughter and son open their gifts, but they grew up.\u00a0 A few years went by and I entered a phase two of Christmas joy \u2013 watching our granddaughter and grandson open their gifts, but they too grew up. After a few years, I entered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3605,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions\/3605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}