SimpleBiz360™ Podcast

Episode #165: FIND PEACE, REST & JOY IN THE TRUE CHRISTMAS GIFT!

December 15, 2022 Jeffrey Mason Season 4 Episode 165
SimpleBiz360™ Podcast
Episode #165: FIND PEACE, REST & JOY IN THE TRUE CHRISTMAS GIFT!
Show Notes Transcript

The last few years have been filled with wacky twists, turns, ups, downs, weirdness and strangeness. Lives and livelihoods have been altered forever. Global fear mongering has taken center-stage. Many of us are distraught, confused and crying out for the truth. Many of us need the comfort delivered by encouraging messages of hope. This episode is intended to share the truth about the real Christmas gift. God gave us a way to exchange fear with faith, and it is through this faith that we have the ability to receive God’s life-changing promises. Join us for eight minutes that can renew your life forever.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, everybody, Jeff Mason, your host of Simple Biz 360 podcast, and we are going to do a departure episode today. It's turning out that every middle of December, I, I just really feel compelled to express some words of encouragement to those out there who are going through some very difficult times. The last two and a half, three years have been extremely wacky and hard on the world, and so there's a lot of, uh, depression, anxiety. There's a lot of fear out there. There's addictions, there's marriages that are crumbling. There's, um, you know, jobs that have been lost and never regained. Uh, you, you, many of you opened up companies, put everything on the, on the line to open up your own company, and, and that's been dissolved and gone away. And I, I imagine there's just a lot of people, uh, hitting the pillow at night, crying themselves to sleep, not knowing what tomorrow brings, and, and just having this, this state of fear grip them, uh, based on the conditions of our world in the last two and a half years and today. And so, I just really want to say that on December 24th, 1987, something happened to me that I want to share with you, and it can lead to this peacefulness, this contentment, uh, rest, being able to find rest and joy that maybe you never thought you could have. And I'm really talking about the Christmas gift. Um, I was mired in a long bout of alcoholism and drug dependency, and I walked into a church, uh, in Princeton, New Jersey on December 24th, 1987, knowing I was really at, um, pretty much rock bottom. I mean, my career was going well, my marriage was stumbling. We had gone through some, um, counseling. It was rough waters as I walked into that church. Um, we had a young child who wasn't even a year old yet. And, um, the conditions just set themself up that night where I went into this church all alone. And what I did that night was just surrendered my heart to God. And I just said, Jesus, you take the wheel, you take my heart. I didn't surrender what was in my mind. I surrender what was in my heart. And, and what happened in the days following was, I, I, I know that God, you know, dealt with me in this fashion. He said, I know you're a doubting Thomas kind of guy, Jeff, I know you're stubborn, and I'm gonna show you that I'm real. I'm gonna show you, I'm here today, and I I'm gonna show you that I'm gonna be with you from this point on. So I, uh, am going to remove the urge for alcohol from you, uh, independent of anything you've ever done. And I'm gonna remove the urge, uh, for any type of drug indulgence from you as well. And it really wasn't, uh, maybe until three days later, I really noticed what had happened. And when I start and when I, when I kind of stood, still took a snapshot of my environment, what was going on, I realized it, my life had changed independent of anything I'd done. And to this day, I've been unable, uh, or I've, I've been able to not

Speaker 2:

Drink and not take any drugs since December 23rd, 1987. And I know it's a gift from God, but, but there's other gifts that came with this that I never imagined. And they were the gifts of peace, of rest of joy and contentment. I mean, if I were to tell you that you could have a peacefulness that surpasses anything, you could explain or understand, this is a gift, and this is a promise that God has for those who give him their heart. And in essence through Jesus, say, you know, I, I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me. I believe he's your son. I believe that, you know, through him I can have eternal life with, with the Father and, and in heaven, and that I just confessed this today. And that's the gift of Christmas. That's the gift that God gave us in his son Jesus. That we can have a do-over a start, a restarting of our life, a rebirth to our life, and we can start doing that life with God in control and through Jesus. And so that's what happened to me. That's what can happen to anyone. And I'm, I'm not saying your life becomes perfect, you become a Christian. No, it doesn't become perfect. I mean, 1987, I was doing well, 1992, I was penniless, literally out of work in penniless. And, you know, I was in charge of the Benevolence Committee at church, and my, uh, we had spent a year putting the food closet together. And, and who is the very first recipient of the first two, um, you know, ba grocery bags of food from this food pantry? It was my wife and I, it was a humbling experience to open that door, receive those two bags, close the door behind us after saying thank you, and just looking at each other in amazement. And it was, it was just a, a moment we'll never forget. And it just reminds us that God doesn't promise us prosperity or happiness, but he promises us that he can exchange that fear for the gifts that come with faith. So if we can say goodbye to that fear and let God take over and give our faith to God and his Christmas story, which is his son, and if we can do life through Jesus, we have things on the other side of that decision, like a peacefulness that you can't explain, we can find contentment, we can rest and, and we can have this joy. You know, God tells us that the enemy, which is the, um, in, in God's story, in our story is the devil that he comes only to kill, steal, and destroy, but God comes to give life and life more abundantly. So there's this ability to get joy from this relationship with, uh, with Jesus. So I just, I want to throw that

Speaker 3:

Out tonight to anyone listening, and this will be out forever, uh, as long as cyberspace is out there. But if you want to hit the pillow at night and be able to, to nestle into your bed and know that you're covered by the blood of Jesus, and to know that you can find peace and rest and contentment and, and most astonishingly, you can wake up and find and see and experience the joys of life that God's intended for you, if you want to do that, it's just a simple prayer. You say, you don't have to get dressed up. You don't have to get showered up. You don't have to put a suit on. You don't have to go to a church. There's nothing you need to do. You just come as you are. You just sit there wherever you are as you are, and just say, God, I give it over to you. I believe in Jesus as being your son and that he died on the cross from me. I believe in this story that I now wanna be a part of. You created me, and I wanna get closer in a relationship with you. So I give my life to you, God. That's it. And the, the, the this new life can start and it's exciting, it's exhilarating. It's, um, it really, uh, it's wonderful in the fact that you don't have to do it on your own. So again, I just say Merry Christmas to anyone listening. You can, you too can have the Christmas gift, uh, anytime you want. But, uh, how cool would it be to have it for this Christmas season? It's there for the taking. We're not equipped, uh, to, to do any counseling or anything like that. But if you, uh, have gone through this prayer or, and you have surrendered your life and you need to get, uh, into a good church around your area, feel free to contact us. You can, uh, send an email to Jeff at Simple biz three sixty.com. You can get in touch with us through our website and we'll help you find a great church in your area. But again, we're not counselors. We're not equipped to do any, um, you know, discipling through our network here, through our podcast, but we can get you set up with some people that can. So we just want to, um, leave you with those words of encouragement, and we wanna leave you with a special song. Go Tell It on the Mountain. Zach Williams from a couple years ago, really a jumpy, jumpy version of this tune. And, you know, um, that's part of our calling is people who have been affected by the message of Christmas. We gotta go tell it on the mountain, man. We gotta get up and shout it out. And that's what I'm doing today, letting you know it's there for you if you want it. Folks, Merry Christmas, happy uh, holidays, and we will see you in 168 hours.