Christmas can often be viewed as a season of hope. We have hope from Christ along with hope for our future in Him.

Romans 15:13 (NLT) puts it this way, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Confident hope. Have you ever noticed that when a person has confidence in something their attitude and demeanor are completely different than if they were weary and uncertain? Think of a baby learning to walk. Those first steps are so very shaky, but as the baby’s parents help the child to walk each step gains confidence until one day the baby is walking without thinking about every step.

Trust goes hand in hand with hope. It is hard to have hope when you do not have trust. However we can trust in God in the same way a child trusts its parents when learning how to walk or learning about the world surrounding them. That Christmas morning so many years ago God held true to his word and sent Jesus: the Hope the world was waiting for. We can have a confident hope in Christ that we are redeemed through Him and the trust that goes along with that hope.

Christmas is celebrated in so many different ways. Through the different traditions each of our families hold, one thing should remain constant: confident hope.

As you prepare for Christmas in your family, take time to discover together the following thoughts and questions:

1. What does this hope mean to us as a family? Individual? (Take time for each family member to share. If you have younger children, help them with examples of what hope in Christ looked like when you were their age.)
2. How can we share the hope we have in Christ with others this Christmas season?
3. Share that hope.

One of the greatest things that can come from having a confident hope in Christ and being filled with joy and peace is that it becomes contagious. When you see somebody else smiling it’s hard to not smile with them. The hope we have in Christ can be the same way. So find a way to not just live in that hope, but to share that hope with others as we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas.