The Four Emotions of Christmas

A portion of this episode came from the podcast:

"A Life of Belief"

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Dannah Gresh: Are you feeling a mixture of sadness with your excitement for the Christmas season? I understand. This year for the first time my husband and I are contemplating what it's like to mingle the joy and anticipation with some serious sadness.

I’m Dannah Gresh. Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

You may or may not know, but my husband's father went to be with the Lord just a few weeks ago. So we are approaching this Christmas wondering what those hard moments are going to feel like. I know that many have said that this time of year can be really painful and maybe depressing, maybe stressful.

There aren't always happy emotions associated with the month of December and the celebration of Jesus' birth. Well, our guest today is going to help us navigate through all of those sticky, difficult emotions that we often feel at Christmas time.

Bob Lepine is the author of The Four Emotions of Christmas. He’s no stranger to Christian radio—FamilyLife Today, Truth for Life, Mornings on Family Radio . . . and he’s also on the Revive Our Hearts board of directors. 

Thanks for joining us! 

Bob, welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Bob Lepine: Hi, Dannah, great to be with you.

Dannah: Hey, have you ever had one of those hard, sad Christmas memories pop up?

Bob: Oh, I remember really well when Maryann and I were—I think we'd been married for five years. We had a two-year-old or three-year-old daughter, Amy, and Maryann was pregnant with our second daughter, Katie. We were living in California, and we were far away from family, far away from home, and no one was coming to visit us at Christmas. And we were not traveling at Christmas because my wife was great with child. In fact, she gave birth four days after Christmas.

So here we are. We'd been in California all of two months. We didn't know hardly anybody. We got up that Christmas morning with Amy and opened presents. I mean, all that was done in maybe twenty minutes. And then we didn't have anything to do the rest of the day and any place to go and anybody to be with.

We kept waiting for family to call . . . long distance. In the old days, there was long distance, you know. And we kept waiting for them to call and say Merry Christmas, and they never did. And finally, at five o'clock, we called Maryann's mom and said, “Merry Christmas.” 

And she said, “Oh, I can't talk. Everybody's over here right now. We're having a big party, and so I can't talk. But Merry Christmas to you guys.”

And we just hung up and thought, This is the worst Christmas ever. It just did not meet our expectations at all.

Dannah: Oh, I did not know you guys had a baby four days after Christmas. I had one three days after Christmas. You just described our Christmas that year—fifteen hours away from our family. So we all have those memories, and they pop up. The good memories pop up, and so do the hard ones, right?

Bob: Yeah. 

Dannah: You have written a book. I love this book because it puts into words and also into perspective the complexity of the emotions we feel at Christmas time. You've kind of broken it down to four emotions that tend to pop up. What are those emotions and why did you pick them?

Bob: Well, I looked at the experience of Christmas and what I see going on with most folks, and I said, “Yes, there are emotions that surprise us at Christmas time, because we go into the Christmas season with the expectation of joy and happiness and warmth and love.” We build up December to be this magical time of year. “It's the most wonderful time of the year,” the song tells us, and so we think that.

And then we get into the middle of December, and we experience the stress of the season. We experience unmet expectations, which bring disappointment. And then people are often blindsided by sadness or depression that comes on during this season.

And so those three emotions are the three that I think kind of take us by surprise. What I'm suggesting in the book is that the fourth emotion, the one that we're longing for, the emotion of joy, is something that is accessible to all of us if we know how to find it.

And, Dannah, it's a short book. It's about sixty pages long. I wrote it as a gospel giveaway. The person I had in mind when I was writing this book is your neighbor who doesn't go to church but who celebrates Christmas. The hope is that you could get a copy of this book and give a plate of cookies and a copy of the book and an invitation to your church's Christmas Eve service. Just take it over and say, “Wanted to give you something for Christmas.”

People are open to that. And who knows, during the holiday season, they might be intrigued by, “What are these emotions? And I wonder if I experience them.” The whole idea is to point them to the last emotion, to joy, which is found in Christ. 

But along the way I say there are some practical ways we can deal with our sadness or our disappointment or the stress that we're going through.

Dannah: Please do tell us what those practical ways are, because we are going to be navigating them here this month.

Bob: Okay, so if we think about the fact that we go into the season with a whole set of expectations. Yu start the Christmas season thinking, I want this to be a spiritually meaningful time for my family. I want to accomplish all of the things that are on my to-do list. I want the presents to be perfectly wrapped and just exactly what the people want. I want the holiday celebrations to all go well. I want the house to look beautiful.

I mean, we have massive expectations for what this four-week period is going to look like. I think we have to start back in November, as soon as we can, calibrating those expectations and asking this question: When it gets to December 25 and the presents are opened, and we look back and say, “This was a great month,” what are the things that are really going to make it that? Is it whether we attend this particular party, or whether we get the Christmas cookies baked, or whether the presents are all wrapped the right way and look beautiful under a perfectly ornamented tree?

Or are there more important things that are going to make this season meaningful? We were able to have family devotions and spend time in God's Word. Or we were able to reach out and serve other people and love them and bless them in some way.

I think if you can start with those expectations recalibrated, you can say, “Okay, it'll be nice if we can do some of these things. But you know what? If we can't get to that, that's okay, because these are the things that really matter, and this is what our focus is going to be during that season.”

I think that can help adjust our expectations. Sure, there's some disappointment that you'll have if you don't get to the Christmas cookies and say, “I really wish we could have done that.” But maybe you can look back and say, “But we did the things that matter.”

Dannah: What you said, though, I think that's really interesting, is when our expectations are for us—my time to bake cookies, my Christmas movie night, my Christmas party—instead of about others. How can I serve someone? How can I meet someone's need? How can I make someone who's really going through a hard time financially have Christmas gifts that they actually need, not stuff they want, but need—clothing, school supplies? That sounds like that's an important shift to make.

We have a family in our church, and I really have admired what they have done. They've got four young children, and they have had their own 12 Days of Christmas. And so for 12 days during the month of December, they target different groups of people, like the people at the fire station, or the guy who delivers the mail, or the trash people.

Like when they put out the trash on a Tuesday, they put a plate of cookies on top of the trash can and wait for the trash collectors to come by and get their bag of cookies along with the trash. They go down to the police station or the fire station on Thursday with pizza and say, “We just appreciate you guys.”

That has been the most meaningful part of the Christmas season for them—looking for ways that they can use this season to bless other people. 

Bob: And I would just add, to spread the gospel. I mean, along with that plate of cookies, take a copy of my book or a track or something that you can give to people and invite them. Listen, invite them to the Christmas Eve service or whatever special cantata you do at your church.

People are willing to come to a church service during the month of December, people who don't come any other time of the year. So find the right opportunity and invite them. And I think particularly this year . . .

Dannah: Yes, I was just gonna say, people are wide open to coming to church in December.

Bob: Yep, there's been a hunger. I've had lots of friends telling me that their church is full, more full than it has been in recent weeks. There's something the Lord is doing in hearts right now. The Holy Spirit is drawing people to the body of Christ.

I have given this book away to friends who know the Lord and also those who don't. I think when someone's going through a hard time, they are more receptive to a gift like that. And this morning, as I was thinking about talking to you, the Lord brought to my mind someone who I've had a relationship with for years, doesn't know the Lord, has had a negative experience in the church. She has said, “If every Christian were like you, I might be a Christian, but they're not”—which is not true. There are a lot of good Christians out there. She just happens to have met some that have hurt her.

And the Lord specifically brought her to my mind because this year she really started to open up with me about some things in her marriage. And I just thought, I need to give this book to her. I wonder if the Lord is bringing someone to your mind, and you're thinking, I haven't known what words to speak to them to share Christ with them.

Dannah: Well, it's really easy, because Bob Lepine has written the words down for you in a little tiny book that makes a great little Christmas gift. We would love to commend it to you as a way for us to partner together and share the gospel. The title of the book is The Four Emotions of Christmas. It's by my friend Bob Lepine, and you're going to love it as much as I do.

You know, Bob, this whole intermingling of difficult emotions with joy is nothing new. It happened on the first Christmas. I'm thinking of Mary, the mother of Jesus. What do you think she was feeling?

Bob: Yeah, of course the news from the angel took her completely by surprise. It was life-altering for her. She found herself having to wrestle with emotions that overcame her. And yet we see her response. In fact, this is something that we've heard Nancy talk about on a number of occasions so beautifully.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Now, for Mary to offer herself up in this way to God was a very costly surrender. Think about what she had to be willing to embrace if she was going to say yes to the plan of God.

She was saying, “I'm willing to become pregnant. I'm willing to carry the life of this child within me, and I'm willing to endure the inevitable misunderstanding, the ridicule, people who will never believe that this is God's child. They know I'm not married; they will think that I've been unfaithful to Joseph, my fiance, or that we have been involved immorally.”

There was no way she was going to be able to make people understand. In fact, in that culture, it was possible that she would be stoned if people believed that she had been immoral. So she's really saying, “I am willing to give up my life.”

You see, we know the end of the story. We know the rest of the story. But Mary didn't. All she knew was that God had sent this messenger to say, “I have a job for you.” 

And Mary says, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. I am your servant. You say, ‘Go,’ I will go. You say, ‘Do this,” I will do this.”

She was offering up her body, in a very literal sense, to be used by God for His purposes. And just practically speaking, as a woman, that meant the possibility of days or weeks or months of morning sickness. It meant going through those nine months of the pregnancy and experiencing those times of just feeling fat and unattractive, feeling that she couldn't find a place, a way, to get comfortable in those latter months of the pregnancy.

It meant the sleepless nights—all the things that those of you who have given birth to children know are part of the process. And Mary, as a young teenage girl, was saying, “If that's what it takes to do what God has called me to do, I'm God's servant. I don't tell Him what my job responsibilities are to be. He tells me, and I just say, ‘Yes, Lord.’”

She was willing to endure the process of going through labor to deliver that child, to give birth to that child—the process of carrying that child, then as an infant, nursing the child and raising that child up in the ways of God. This was a huge responsibility, as it is, by the way, anytime God asks a woman to have a child, but particularly so in this situation. And she just said, “Yes, I am the Lord's servant. I'm available.”

Now, when the angel came to Mary on that particular day, we know for sure that this is not what Mary was planning on happening. Again, we go back and we read the story; it's so familiar to us that we lose sight of the wonder of what it is that took place.

Mary didn't wake up that morning expecting to have an angel visit her, expecting to be the one who would give birth to the Messiah. She had plans. She was engaged. Like any engaged young woman, she was planning the wedding, planning to be married to Joseph, to live happily ever after. She had her little picture in mind of what her life was going to be like.

And when God sent this messenger from heaven, it threw a real kink in her plans. It wasn't what she'd been expecting. It wasn't her agenda. But she remembered that she wasn't writing the script, that God was writing the script, and therefore she was able to say, “Yes, I'm available. I surrender to this purpose,” even when those purposes were contrary to all that she had planned or expected for her life.

And that's the attitude that I see in Mary throughout her life—just this attitude of surrender: Yes, Lord, I'm available. I'm willing.

Now, it was not only true of Mary, but it's true of us as well, that there is a price to be paid if we want to be used by God. And we face a choice. When we become aware of that price, will we say, “Yes, I'm available. I'm the handmaiden, the servant of the Lord. I'm at Your disposal. You are my Master.”

Or will we say, “Lord, I have my own plans. I hadn't intended to spend my life this way. This is not what I intended to happen with my future.” The available, surrendered woman is the woman that God can use.

Some of you are familiar with the name of Betty Stam, who was martyred, along with her husband, as a missionary in China in 1935 at the age of twenty-seven. They had a little girl, and this couple, who'd gone to give their lives to the Chinese people, ended up literally giving their lives as martyrs for the gospel of Christ.

Betty Stam wrote in a journal a prayer that I have found myself being challenged to offer up to the Lord many times. I'm so glad she wrote it down, and I'm so glad that I've had the privilege, along with many others over all these years, of being challenged by these words.

Here's what she said: 

Lord, I give up my own purposes and plans, all my own desires, hopes and ambitions, and I accept thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee, to be Thine forever. I hand over to Thy keeping all of my friendships. All the people whom I love are to take second place in my heart. Fill me now and seal me with thy Spirit. Work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost now and forever, for to me to live is Christ. Amen.

You know, many times over the years, I found myself having to go back and evaluate, Is that really the condition of my heart? That's an easy prayer to read. It's a hard prayer to pray and mean it. And God knows our heart, and when He knows our heart is to be available and surrendered, I believe He takes us up on that heart's desire.

So I would ask, as we reflect on Mary's surrender to God, have you made yourself fully available to God for whatever purposes He might want to use your life? The danger is that we would tell God how we think He ought to use our lives. We look at someone else who's being used in a particular way, and we think, I'd like to be used that way. But God has said, “No, I want you to be the mother of these three preschool children. I want you to be a praying grandmother. I want you to focus on loving to Christ this husband who is far from God. I want you to be a single servant in my service.”

I talked yesterday with a young woman who had wrestled with this whole issue of singleness, with unfulfilled longings for a husband. And she said, “I wanted to be used of God, but I wanted it to be with a husband.” And she said, “God spoke to me and challenged me in this matter of surrender and availability.” She's now on her way to the mission field, where she's making herself available to be used however God wants to use her life.

So are you available for whatever purposes God wants to use your life? And are you willing for Him to use your life at any cost? There will be a cost, as we have seen. But let me say this, there is no sense of true sacrifice when it's God asking us to give up something or to pay a price to be used by Him. It's really not a sacrifice.

I mean, look at what Mary was going to experience as a result of saying yes to the Lord. She was going to become the mother of the Messiah. I think there's so many blessings and ways that God wants to use us that we never perhaps fully experience, because we're still holding on to our lives, our reputation, our rights, our time, our convenience, our comfort.

And Jesus said, “If you hold on to your life, you lose it. But if you're willing to let it go, to die to your plans, to your agenda, and say, ‘Lord, I embrace Your calling and Your will in my life,’ then that's the life that will be a fruitful life.” You may be in a very obscure place and thinking, My life can't really make any difference here. But the fact is, when you surrender your life, then He takes those little fishes and loaves of bread in that little boy's lunch. He breaks them, He distributes them, and He causes a life in His hands to bless a multitude.

Dannah: That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sharing with us a little bit about the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, encouraging us to surrender to the Lord's plan when things don't go the way we hoped or thought they would.

You know, Bob, it's interesting to me that she experiences fear right out of the bat, and the angel says, “Don't be afraid,” right? And then you see her breaking into this song of joy. She chooses joy. Talk to us about the emotion of joy at Christmas time.

Bob: Well, of course, it's what Christmas is all about. It's the season of joy, and we know that intuitively, and yet, joy gets crowded out by these other emotions that we've been talking about. What I suggest in the book is that we have to understand joy and understand where it's found as we pursue it. Because people get mixed up thinking that happiness and joy are the same thing, and they're not.

I heard years ago somebody say that in England there used to be an expression where they would say to people, “May the haps be with you.” And what they were talking about was, may what happens to you be good. So it was just, “May the haps be with you.”

It was just kind of a common greeting. Well, the tying together of what happens with happiness—there’s a reason those two are connected. Happiness is circumstantial. Happiness is something you feel if things are going well. Joy is something different. Joy goes deeper. It is a settled confidence and a peace in your soul that, regardless of the circumstances, you are content, you are safe.

Paul says, “I’ve found the secret of contentment. Whatever my circumstances are, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

In this book, The Four Emotions of Christmas, I turn to joy as a way of saying, “I know this is what you’re longing for.” There’s only one place where joy is found. And joy is found—well, the Bible tells us—in His presence. “In His presence there is fullness of joy.” That’s Psalm 16.

And so, recognizing that if you're really longing for joy, the only place you'll find the joy you're looking for is to find yourself in Christ, in the presence of God.

Dannah: I love that, and that sums up the life lesson of my year, because it was not a year that I would have chosen—the things that happened to me. I didn’t experience a ton of happiness, but I experienced so much joy, because Jesus was so, so near.

And that’s what we hope and pray for you, dear friend, as you walk through this Christmas season, no matter what you might be facing. Maybe you are going to be missing someone at the Christmas table. I pray that you grieve with joy. Maybe you aren’t going to have anyone at the Christmas table, like you heard Bob describe a few moments ago, because you’re far away from home and you feel a little lonely. May you walk through that with the sweet fellowship of Jesus that brings joy.

That’s our hope for you today as you experience whatever emotions come at you this Christmas time.

Bob Lepine, thanks for joining me today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Bob: Thank you, Dannahh, great to be with you.”

Bob’s book is The Four Emotions of Christmas. It’s an easy read, a short read, a delightful read, and it’s going to help remind you of what this season really is all about. And, as we’ve said, it’s a great gift to give someone who’s still exploring Jesus and Christianity and they’re not sure where they are in their faith journey.

This weekend we think this is such an important book to put into the hands of those people that we’re making it available as a thank-you for your donation of any amount. So when you make your donation at ReviveOurHearts.com/donate, ask for The Four Emotions of Christmas. And—this is cool—any gift given in December is going to be matched dollar for dollar.

So right now, when you make a gift, not only can you get a copy of The Four Emotions of Christmas, but your gift is going to be doubled by some friends of the ministry. Help us continue calling women around the world to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Again, you can make that donation at ReviveOurHearts.com/donate. And thank you so much.

You know, today we touched on the stress that we often feel at the Christmas season. Next week on this program, we’re going to talk about ways to slow things down. That’s right—I want you to have less of a hurried holiday season. I hope you’ll join me for that.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. See you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.