Treasuring all the good things of God!

“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” – Luke 2:15-20

We held the last of our Redefine Sunday evening Bible study groups last night. It was so much fun. Everyone had been given a fancy dress challenge for the night: they had to come dressed up as a Christmas ‘thing’ and not a Christmas character. Not an easy challenge but the young people rose to the occasion. We had two Christmas trees, one of which had dyed her hair green and put baubles and fairy lights in her hair for effect; a Christmas Pudding; A Christmas Garland; A Christmas present; and Advent Calendar; A Blanket of snow; the Star of Bethlehem; A Yorkshire Santa and a Christmas carrot! As you can tell at Llandudno Youth for Christ we don’t do things by half measures, we fully commit to all our endeavours.

We had a very festive evening.

We played a game using remote controlled cars, where 1 car was the police car and it had to chase down 4 other car with criminals in it and whoever had the fastest time in catching all of the run away thieves won. This was really great fun, with many times the cars narrowly missing each other or getting stuck on the course and thereby eliminating themselves.

We gave out Christmas cards and gifts to all of the young people and we also had a sparsely decorated Christmas Tree upon which various prizes were festooned and everyone had an opportunity to select a prize ranging from a Christmas Gherkin Bauble to a Festival Mug.

We finished the night with a short talk about Jesus being the light of the world. This has been our theme during the lead up to Christmas, focussing on how Jesus is the light of the world for us and how we as God’s image bearers and followers of Jesus are also called to be light in the darkness of the world.

I wrote the title to this blog post for my prayer is that nights such as last Sunday will be things that the young people will treasure up in their hearts and will remember all the fun and friendship that they had, and also the truths that they have been told, namely how great Jesus is and that by following Him in their lives they will not walk in darkness but have the light of life.

Please do be praying for the young people over the Christmas period. Pray that they would be able to celebrate Christmas with thankful hearts knowing all that God has accomplished for them by sending His Son into the world to be our Saviour.

Thank you for your support and have a blessed Christmas yourselves remembering all the good times of 2020 and looking forward to a better 2021!