{"id":891,"date":"2017-12-23T22:20:04","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T22:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/?p=891"},"modified":"2017-12-23T22:20:04","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T22:20:04","slug":"the-christmas-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/december\/the-christmas-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The holidays are here and the momentum is increasing to the celebrations, people are out in the shopping malls or online looking for that perfect gift with the spirit of the holidays. But, the spirit of the holidays is not what is supposed to be, the origin of the celebration; though it has been paganized, is Christ’s birth. The spirit that should drive these holidays should be that of Christ; the Spirit of Christmas. With the spirit of the holidays anger, hatred, jealousy and a host of works of the flesh are active, but with the original Spirit of Christmas there is joy in the Holy Ghost. The spirit by which we should celebrate should be that of Christ. Jesus said that Spirit when he would come he would guide us to all truth and that he would show us all that things that are Christ’s (Jh16:13-14). So, when the Spirit of Christmas is active in our lives everything that is of Christ, that pertain to the kingdom of God; joy, peace, love, friendship, kindness, gentleness, goodness (Ga5:22) will become evident. The spirit of the holidays tend to things that lead to death. The total number of deaths in the US are staggering, for example, abortion yesterday was at 1067046<\/a>. “U.S. researchers examined<\/a> death certificates and discovered that people have the highest chance of death on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year\u2019s Day”. <\/span>The Spirit of Christmas tends to the things that are of life and peace (Ro8:5).<\/p>\n

Romans 8:9-11
\n9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
\n10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
\n11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.<\/p>\n

Now, Paul tells the church that we are not of the flesh, because the Spirit of God dwells in us, so we should not be lead by the spirit of the holidays. The Spirit of Christ leads us to the things that tend to life (Jh6:63). And, so when we think about the Christmas season and how it has changed we see people behaving more violent. Take for instance black Friday when news throughout the country inform us of fights in the malls, increase of theft and robberies all in the name of the holidays. When we say happy holidays and take Christ out; Merry Christmas, we release ourselves from accountability for our actions, and so we treat others without mercy. The Spirit of Christ knows all things and helps us with the things we do not know.\u00a0 Paul tells us that he, the spirit, helps us with our infirmities; be it physical, emotional or spiritual he intercedes to God on our behalf (Ro8:27).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The holidays are here and the momentum is increasing to the celebrations, people are out in the shopping malls or online looking for that perfect gift with the spirit of the holidays. But, the spirit of the holidays is not what is supposed to be, the origin of the celebration; though it has been paganized,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-december"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.log.ambassadorsofchrist.info\/aoc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}