The phrase “cotton candy preaching” is a derogatory term that implies sermons lack depth. And of course no pastor wants to be considered a “cotton candy preacher.” On the other hand I’ve heard pastors say that Christians need “meat and potatoes” preaching which they define as sermons with depth. Such pastors often begin their sermons with, “Please turn in your Bibles to today’s text.” Once they read the Scripture, they’re off to the races to give a deep, theological sermon, a meat and potatoes kind.

But after spending 15-20 hours per week preparing a sermon, how do we really know if it connected with the listener? Is the test of a good sermon simply that we delivered a deep, theological, sound talk? Is it all about good content? Is it up to the listener to get it and figure out how it applies to his or her life? Or is this the true test of a great sermon: that we truly connect to the listener’s heart and mind so that the Holy Spirit changes attitudes and behaviors?

I think it’s the latter. That’s where cotton candy preaching comes in.

In my current masters program I’m completing on the neuroscience of leadership, also called neuroleadership, I’m learning how important the brain plays in persuading others to change. In my 32 years in ministry I’ve faced my share of critics. Some have said that my sermons were too heady and that they didn’t connect with the heart. I’ve been puzzled why I seemed to get those comments. Now I understand why.

The old sage Aristotle helped us when he described three domains that affect persuasion (and preaching).

1. Logos: persuasion through reasoning and logic.
2. Pathos: persuasion by appealing to emotions.
3. Ethos: persuasion through the force of character or personality of the speaker or writer.

People in your congregation are largely persuaded through these factors. Either reasoning or emotion moves them. I tend to be more of a thinker, so I’m persuaded more by thoughtful, reasoned sermons rather than ones that I might classify as cotton candy. I’ve tended to be more of a meat and potatoes preacher. But I’m in the minority because emotions persuade many more people than does logic. Think about TV commercials. Most commercials don’t list the benefits of their products. They tell a story or evoke emotion or move the heart. Dodge Ram’s God Made a Farmer  commercial in this year’s super bowl with Paul Harvey beautifully illustrates how emotion moves the heart. I tear up every time I watch the commercial, yet it does not lack depth.

I had received those criticisms I just mentioned because I had crafted my sermons to avoid being pegged a cotton candy preacher. But I now realize that for any meat and potatoes sermon to stick, we must incorporate some cotton candy techniques, those that we may think don’t contribute much to a message’s depth.

Consider these cotton candy preaching ideas the next time you prepare and deliver a sermon.

• Remember that because most of the people in your congregation came from hectic and difficult weeks, they aren’t in a mindset to listen to you. It’s your job to help them get ready, along with the other elements of the service.
• During the week live a life of integrity and authenticity. Love people and spend time with them so that your ethos works on your behalf. People must believe you are a credible person before they will believe you have a credible message.
• Start your message with pathos and then move to logos. Use emotion, within reason, because it grabs attention. Remember, nothing is learned that is not paid attention to.
• Use novelty. The brain loves novelty (Eide, 2006). Start, illustrate, and deliver your sermons creatively. Don’t become so predictable that people can guess what you’re going to do next.
• Use humor. Humor makes people feel good and when they feel good they learn more.
• Make sure you provide lots of application. Neuroscience tells us that self-referent information (that which we can apply to ourselves) is more easily learned and retained (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977). After all, we teach and preach so that God can take His Word to change people’s lives.
• Keep your messages simple. Less is often more.

What cotton candy ideas have worked in your preaching?

Related posts:

• Are Your Sermons Hard or Easy to Listen to?
• 5 Ways to Get People to Pay Attention to Your Sermons 

Eide, D.F.A.B. (2006) Eide Neurolearning Blog: Shake Things Up - Novelty Boosts Learning. Eide Neurolearning Blog. Available from: <http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/shake-things-up-novelty-boosts.html> [Accessed 8 June 2012].

Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977) Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (35), pp. 677-688.

NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED IN THE AUDITORIUM!

I’ve seen these messages emblazoned in the lobbies of many churches where I’ve attended or where I’ve served. Although we allowed food and coffee at my last church, I was often miffed at how many stains our carpets incurred from coffee spills and donut smudges. The carpet looked terrible. We’d often pay extra for carpet cleaners to clean them. Since I don’t drink coffee, I secretly wished we didn’t allow anything in the auditorium except people. But apparently I’ve been very wrong to want that. Coffee stains and donut smudges may have actually helped my preaching.

I’ll average 15-20 hours preparing a sermon with the end goal that God would use it to change lives. I’ve prayed that with the Spirit’s help the message would persuade others to live more like Jesus. Often I’ve wondered to what degree my message actually stuck in their minds and hearts. Surprisingly, the number of stains may actually have indicated my sermon’s stickiness.

Recently I read about a study at Yale University that examined how eating and drinking influences a message’s persuasiveness (Janis et al., 1965). Colege student volunteers first filled out a questionnaire about their views on certain subjects. Researchers then presented four unpopular or unlikely views to them like, “it will be over 25 years before a cure to cancer is found.” The students then read articles that attempted to persuade them otherwise. One group of students was offered Pepsi and peanuts while they read the articles while the other group wasn’t offered food. Later they all completed a second questionnaire about their views on the same subjects.

The Pepsi-peanuts group consistently changed their viewpoints on those issues to more favorable ones. The non-food students’ viewpoints changed very little.

The implication?

Others eating food or drinking coffee while they listen to your semon may actually make your message stick better. So, paying a few extra dollars to clean those coffee stains and donut smudges may be worth the price. Perhaps we should actually encourage people to bring food into the service.

What is your church’s policy on food in the auditorium?

Related posts:

• Brain Based Preaching: New Age Voodoo, or the Missing Link? 
• How to Make Your Sermons Sticky 
  

I just saw the movie Les Miserables with my family.

I was blown away, had my feet knocked out from beneath me, and was overwhelmed with emotion at this incredible story of redemption, sacrifice, and courage.

I’d never seen the live production nor read Victor Hugo’s novel upon which it is based. I now know what I have missed. If you haven’t seen it, please do. And take a Kleenex.

God was nowhere hidden in this story. Images of the cross, examples of transformed lives, and sacrifice for the good of others filled the screen from the very start. Read Jennifer Graham’s opinion piece here in the Boston Globe about how well it told the Gospel. Pretty amazing. 

Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the X-men) plays the lead part. Just about everybody is nominating him for some award. I predict he’ll win most of them.

Only after my emotions came back to baseline did I realize how well the movie illustrated several ideas that can make a pastor’s sermon more sticky in the minds of our hearers. I learned these three from the movie.

1. Maximize story. Les Mis is one huge meta-story filled with multiple mini-stories. Jesus Himself was the master story telling. He couched many Biblical truths in the context of a memorable story. Story has the ability to penetrate even the hardest hearts. When you craft a sermon, include stories as much as you can. Ben Arment, a friend of mine, puts on a national conference each year called Story. It’s a great venue to learn how to use story and creativity in ministry. http://www.benarment.com
2. Engage emotions. I’m not a big crier, but a movie can bring it out in me. Les Mis never gratuitously uses emotion, but it weaves powerful emotional moments into each character interaction. In a sermon, well-placed emotion actually helps cement learning into the minds of our listeners. Neuroscientists have discovered that just the right amount of emotion (not too much or too little) can greatly enhance learning.[1]
3. Avoid premature answers. Sometimes our sermons ‘solve the problem’ too soon without allowing our listeners to wrestle with the issue themselves and generate their own solutions. In the movie, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is pursued for years for missing parole by a ruthless policeman named Javert (played by Russell Crowe). In one poignant scene Javert struggles with Jean Valjean’s show of grace. As he struggles, he paces back and forth on a ledge high above a river as he contemplates suicide. This scene lingers for some time before Javert makes his decision (NO spoiler alert here). I was left in suspense long enough to be drawn even more deeply into the movie. When crafting and delivering a sermon, set up a problem and then intentionally skirt around the answer a while to force the listener to wrestle with his answer or solution. It’s called self-referent learning. When we come up with our own applications and solutions, we more easily remember them. They ‘stick’ better in our minds. [2]

If you saw the movie, I’d love to hear the insights you learned that are applicable to ministry.

Related posts:

• Sticky Sermons: Neuroscience Insights that will Improve them 
• 9 Aspects about Adult Learning every Pastor should Know

I’m enrolled in a master’s degree program in neuroleadership. Yep, that word’s a mouthful. Click on my home page on "Waht is a neuroleader" to see a cool video that explains the term neuroleadership.

I’m learning some fascinating insights about the brain that can help us pastors lead, speak, and live more effectively. In today’s blog, I’d like you to ask yourself this question: Would most people say my sermons are hard to listen to or easy to? Take a moment and stop reading and answer that question for yourself.

Well, we all hope that people would say easy to listen to, right?

I’ve included below a short checklist, based on neuroscience insight, that might give you a clue.

Before I give you the checklist, I want set the stage with a few facts about the brain.

1. The executive functions that occur like concentration, abstract reasoning, problem solving, and attention occur primarily in the pre-frontal cortex, the area roughly behind your forehead. This is the part of the brain you hope your sermons engage. If your listeners don’t engage this part of the brain, your sermon “went in one ear and out the other.”
2. This part of the brain processes information in a serial fashion (one thing at a time). Think of a conveyer belt with one item on it followed by another followed by another, etc. You may recall Lucille Ball’s famous candy conveyor belt episode. If something happens at the front end of that conveyer belt and all the items get clogged up, then nothing moves forward. The same thing happens in the brain. It will only process one thing at a time and if overloaded, it processes very little information. Multi-tasking is a misnomer. See my blog post on multi-tasking here.
3. The pre-frontal cortex tires easily. If a speaker does not give breaks for the listener’s brain to rest, it will take its own breaks.
4. Five fundamental processes summarize what the brain does: it understands, decides, recalls, memorizes, and inhibits (that is, blocks out distractions).

You can see that many complex processes are going on the brains of our listeners. So, how can we maximally engage their brains so that the Holy Spirit has lots of biblical truth to work with to ultimately bring about life transformation?

I’ve included a few ideas below based on neuroscience.

• Start out telling the people where you’re going with your sermon. Give an outline or a metaphor that points in a specific direction. The term is called pre-encoding. Learning is the encoding part. Pre-encoding sets up the listener to learn.
• Don’t aimlessly ramble. If you constantly chase rabbits, their brains will check out.
• Don’t use complex terms and long sentences. When you do, the listener’s brain will tune you out to try to figure out what you just said. They essentially won’t hear what you say next.
• A close cousin: be careful about using abstract ideas. Again, the brain will try to process abstract ideas and tune out what you say next.
• If you do present a complex idea, stop and give a few seconds to allow people to process it and think about it. In other words, mix up the rate at which you deliver your sermons. Pauses are good.
• Simplify your power points. Use only a few words per slide. Pictures that explain your points are even better.
• Don't get long-winded. You may have the ability to keep people’s attention for more than 30 or so minutes. If you do, you don’t need to read this blog. But, in an age when attention spans are rapidly decreasing, shorter sermons will stick better.

What insights have you discovered that help your listeners absorb more?

Related Posts.

Your Brain’s Leadership X-factor   

5 Ways to get People to Pay Attention to Your Sermons 

http://www.charlesstone.com

One of the most disconcerting feelings we pastors experience is when we prepare a sermon and pour our heart into it, yet feel that it didn’t make a difference in people’s lives. It’s equally frustrating when we preach to see somebody tuning us out.

What can we do to help people pay more attention to our sermons? For when they do, there’s a greater chance what we say will stick in their minds to give the Holy Spirit time to ultimately change their hearts.

Neuroscience is teaching us a lot about how people remember things. Two mental processes related to attention simultaneously activate in the minds of those sitting in the pews on Sundays.

• Focus: the ability to attend to what you are saying.
• Inhibiting distractions: the ability to tune out competing information. Those distractions can be external like a baby crying or internal like self-talk or mulling over memories of what happened on the way to church.

So what can we do when we preach to help increase attention? I’ve listed 5 neuroscience insights to keep in mind as you prepare your sermons.

1. Mood matters. Scientists have discovered that when people are in a good mood they pay better attention. We can’t change what happened to a family on the way to church (ie-a fight), but we can take some steps to help put them in a good mood. Humor is a great tool that does that. Don’t begin your sermon with something heavy. Rather, try to interject some humor. Smile and put people at ease.
2. The head cannot take more than the seat can endure is true. Our brains need downtime. They can’t concentrate for long periods of time. In fact, the brain will make downtime for itself when it gets tired. So, build ebb and flow into your sermons. Alternate intensity (something that may require intensive concentration) with points or stories that don’t take much concentration.
3. See your sermons like firing a gun. Three distinct processes take place in the brain for attention to occur. It’s firing a gun: load, aim, fire. To load is when the brain is alerted to take notice. Aim is when it looks for more information. Fire is when it actually acts. So develop your sermon with this in mind. Build each point around the load—aim—fire process.
4. Include novelty in your sermons. Attention increases with something novel or new. Include a couple of surprises. Perhaps you pull out a “show and tell” item unexpectedly to illustrate a point. Maybe you move to a different location from where you usually preach (ie-off the stage and into an aisle).
5. Make it relevant. Preaching is connecting the then and there to the here and now. We must try to help people apply the message to their lives. The brain pays much more attention when it senses relevance. Don’t just wait until the end for application. Provide application points throughout the sermon.

Ultimately, we want our sermons to stick in the listener’s long-term memory. The more they stick, the greater the chance for the Holy Spirit to bring about life transformation.

What presentation techniques you found that helps sermons stick?

Relates Posts:

• How Much Time Should a Pastor Spend on Sermon Prep 
• How an Improv Class Improved My Preaching

Every Sunday something happens over 400,000 times in the US.

 A pastor preaches a sermon. 

If an average sermon lasts about 30 minutes and if roughly 56 million people attend on an average Sunday, then church attenders in America’s churches spend this amount of time listening to our sermons each week.

• 23,000,000 man hours
• which equals 958,000 days
• which equals 136,904 weeks
• which equals 2,632 years

And if the average pastor spends 10 hours preparing a sermon, all told pastors will spend the following amount of time in weekly sermon prep.

• 4,000,000 man hours
• which equals 166,666 days
• which equals 23,800 weeks
• which equals 457 years

Putting it all together, each week sermons gobble up three centuries of  man-hours. If you multiply that over a year’s time . . . well, you do the math.

When I calculated this number, it boggled my mind. That statistic then begged this question.

What spiritual return is our preaching giving us?

I know we can’t measure the eternal impact from our sermons. However, the amount of time we invest in them and the time people invest in listening to them should cause us to pause and evaluate. These numbers caused me to think.

Take a few moments and consider these ten questions. As you read them ask yourself if the Lord is prompting you to make some changes to maximize your sermons’ spiritual impact.

1. Do I spend sufficient time preparing my heart to preach (ie: spiritual disciplines, stillness, character development)?
2. Do I spend sufficient time with people to understand the issues they face that need a word from God?
3. Am I being true to what the biblical writers intended when I preach?
4. Am I willing to get honest feedback from people who can help me improve my preaching?
5. Do I make my preaching more about Him and less about me and what others may think about my preaching?
6. What am I doing to improve my study and presentation skills?
7. Am I willing to preach on unpopular subjects about which the Scripture speaks?
8. Do I spend sufficient time thinking about ways that could maximize the listener’s attention so as to increase their retention of my sermons?
9. Do I always tie my sermons to the overarching redemptive theme of the Gospel?
10. Do I approach preaching as a hallowed trust?

Perhaps the venerable Haddon Robinson captured the essence of preaching when we wrote this in his excellent book, Biblical Preaching.

When you get right down to it, preaching is like farming. I often say, “Lord, here I am. As far as I can tell, I’ve tried to fill my sack with good seed. I’ve done my homework, I think my attitude is right, and it’s the best, most interesting seed I’ve got. I’m going to scatter it now, Lord. So here goes. We’ll see what comes up in the field.” Then, once I’ve sown the seed, I do what farmers do: I go home and rest.

What questions would you add to this list?

In my next post I offer several practical techniques you can build into your sermon to help people pay closer attention. 

Related posts:

• 5 Reasons to Do Sermon Prep Outside the Office
• Sticky Sermons: Neuroscience Insights that Make them Sticky

I've been a pastor 30 years and only in the last few have I discovered the value of studying outside my church and home office. I'll go either  to McDonalds (cheap food) or Panera (good atmosphere and the place I prefer). Both provide free Wi-Fi. I don't recommend spending all your time away from the office, but I've found that doing so at least once a week benefits me and the ministry in these ways.

1. Productivity: Less interruptions from others.
2. Creativity: A different environment spurs it.
3. Focus: Less distractions help me concentrate better (like cleaning up our office or playing with something on our desks that can distract us in our offices).
4. Energy: A different ambiance/atmosphere gives me more.
5. Stress management: I feel less of it in a neutral environment.

One other suggestion. To block out noise, I use ear buds plugged into my iPhone and listen to nature sounds on the Ambiance app.

Have you discovered any other advantages of studying outside the office?

Related posts: The iPhone App that Improved my Concentration

I've posted a few blogs about my journey using the iPad to preach (see related posts below).

Thus far I've loved using it. I own the original iPad and I'm waiting to upgrade until next year's version releases.

Here's my current sermon prep and delivery process.

1. Write sermons on a Word doc on my Airbook.
2. Convert doc to a PDF.
3. Drop PDF into Dropbox on my Mac.
4. Open Dropbox on my iPad.
5. Open the PDF in Noterize.
6. Mark up my PDF.
7. Enthrall millions with my eloquent preaching (oops, Freudian slip there...I meant preach to a few hundred) :)

Here's a snapshot of what one page looked look from last week's talk on spiritual gifts.

This week I'm trying something new.

I'm using an app called AirSketch which allows me to actually create a virtual whiteboard. By linking my iPad to a computer in our sound booth through our local network, I can project each page of my PDF on our video screens without dragging around a cable. It works amazingly well (at least in practice).

I can then scroll through each page as I preach and use either my finger or my stylus to annotate and draw. MacWorld reviews 12 styluses [or is it styli] here.

Here's a snapshot of the first page of this week's sermon on  spiritual warfare. When it projects onscreen, you don't see the stuff at the bottom however. The red shows where I've practiced annotating.

Next week I'll blog on how things went.

If you want to get that blog and future ones as well, you can sign up  to automatically to receive them by clicking the RSS feed button in the right-hand column on this page.

Related Posts:

1. How an iPad improved my Devotional Life.
2. How Pastors can Benefit from an iPad
3. How and iPad improved my Preaching.

How much time should a pastor spend preparing a sermon?

Recently I watched a video where a rather famous pastor answered that question. His response, "I study and read all the time and it takes me about one to two hours to put a sermon together."

Yikes! When I heard that I felt guilty because there's no way I can prepare a sermon that quickly. I'm sure this pastor's heart was right, but I wish he had qualified himself more. I doubt very many of us are that speedy.

In Haddon Robinson's book, Biblical Sermons, he wrote that experienced preachers he surveyed spent an average of 16 hours preparing. That sounds more like it to me. That's probably my average and I've been preaching for 25 years.

So, how much time should you spend? It depends.

It depends on...

1. how long you've been in ministry. If you been in ministry several years, you have a backlog of study material. If you haven't you will probably need to set aside more study time. I did in my early ministry years.
2. how well you've kept your previous study notes, sermons, and materials upon which to refer back
3. how well you manage your time
4. what's happening around you. Sometimes unexpected family and ministry demands arise that require our time that we other wise would have spent on sermon prep. No need to wallow in guilt when that happens
5. your personality...some pastors have the gift of gab and can 'make up stuff on the fly' :), some of us don't; some personalities require the preacher to process what he wants to say more thoroughly

Here are a few thoughts to consider as you answer this question for yourself.

1. Schedule your study and prep time during your best, most alert hours.
2. Set reasonable expectations. An hour or two is too little time for most just as 35 hours is probably too much
3. Use computer tools readily available. I own a Mac and use both Accordance and Logos. I rarely use paper books. These tools have made my study time more efficient.
4. Trust God to use your faithful preparation. Seldom do ministry demands allow us to study as much as we'd like. We must do our best and trust the Holy Spirit to fill in the gaps.

How much time do you spend preparing your sermon?

Related posts:

• How an Improv Class Improved my Preaching
• Retro Preaching in a hi-tech world: How I used a Flannelgraph

I'm convinced God gave me a 'Geek' gene.

From my monopoly on science fair first prizes in high school to my toy tank that fires bb's to my radio-controlled helicopter that shoots plastic missiles, I love any gadget that runs on electricity. I'm also among an elite 50,000 who bought the very first Macintosh in 1984. I sold a life insurance policy and used the cash value to pay for it. Since then I've owned over 20 different Macs and I now sport a brand new MacBook Air. I also use an iPhone 4 and an iPad.

Like I said, God gave me a geek gene.

At the same time Mac blood has flowed through my veins, God infused into my bones a passion to teach God's Word. I've preached over a thousands sermons and I've seen my preaching evolve over the years in this progression.

1. write sermon notes in the margin of a wide column bible (my eyes can't see teeny-tiny print now :) )
2. type out the sermon on one half-page and insert into my bible
3. type up the full text and insert small pages into the bible so that it looks like I'm not using notes
4. print out the full text and place the full sized pages on the lectern
5. Preach from an iPad

I love using the iPad now. It took a few weeks to getting used to it, but I don't think I will ever change. I see three advantages in using an iPad.

1. Easily mark up and highlight on the fly
2. Keep all your sermons in one place
3. You look really cool, especially when the house and stage lights are off...it casts a holy glow on your face :)

Here's how I now prepare my sermons and get them to the iPad.

1. I write my sermons on my Mac with Word. Accordance (easy to use and trusty) and Logos (quite expansive yet rather slow and cumbersome at times) are my primary study tools. Note: My iPad still has not replaced my laptop and I don't expect it to.
2. I save my Word doc as a PDF file
3. I drop the PDF into Dropbox (a free app that allows you to easily move a pc file to the iPad via shared wi-fi)
4. I open up the PDF in Dropbox and then open it in Noterize ($2.99). Many PDF markup programs exist. This one tends to be a bit slow in turning the pages, but thus far it works best for me. I would love to use Apple's Pages program, but at this point they don't offer highlighting options.
5. I then mark up, highlight, and make changes as needed. Our service production team always has a paper copy available in case my iPad goes down.

Here's a screen shot of what an iPad page looks like.

If you are an iPad user, what apps do you use for preaching? Any tricks you've learned?

Related posts:

• How an iPad improved my devotional life
• How Pastors can benefit from an iPad

This is an abbreviated text of my 2009 Christmas message I gave during our annual Christmas program.

Note: our entire Christmas program was written by Kyle Zehr, our church’s worship leader. It follows the story of a girl named Emma who was given up for adoption at birth and her search for her birth dad. It takes place on the set of a community acting troupe performing a version of the play ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Also, this text has not been proofed for perfect grammar.

Pastors always feel a bit anxious when Christmas comes around for this reason. We wonder how can we bring a fresh take on the Christmas story. The program you are experiencing tonight gives us fresh lens through which we can see the Christmas story—through the lens of adoption.

Adoption is big in our culture. Sandra Bullock starred in the movie, The Blind Side that has as its theme adoption. A new ABC reality show called Find my Family, reunites families separated by adoption.

The bible often speaks about adoption. Of the three examples in the OT, the most tender one that pictures the love and grace of God when He adopts someone into His family is seen when King David adopted a crippled boy as his son. The NT mentions adoptions several times as well.

In the ancient Roman world where the Christian faith began, adoption was common and primarily for the parents sake unlike today when the purpose is for the benefit of the child. Then adoption occurred primarily to carry on the family’s names, pass on the inheritance, and have someone to take care of parents in old age. The common person understood the concept. The Apostle Paul writes about it here.

Rom. 8.15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”

A Roman slave owner could adopt a slave. The result was that the slave was freed from the bondage of slavery and the fear of his master. Now, no longer a fearful slave, but a son. The Scripture I just read says that this new relationship was so intimate the term Abba was used, an endearing term for father, papa. You don’t call someone you are afraid of, papa.

This practice in Romans days parallels what happens when God adopts us. Because of sin we are alienated/separated from God (slavery to sin). When God adopts us he makes us his son or daughter, frees us from this bondage to sin and fear and addictions and we now have this new warm relationship with him so close we can approach Him as PaPa without fear. We then experience his love just like adopted children experience the love of their new parents.

Also, if I lived in that day and had no son I could adopt the son of in another family if they had two sons (and they gave permission). In doing so, I would release from that son any future debt he would be responsible for from that family. The adoption would wipe away any debt.

This practice illustrates spiritual adoption, God’s adoption of us. The bible says that sin puts us in debt to God and this debt carries with it eternal consequences—eternity apart from Him. Yet, when God adopts someone, the debt of sin and penalty of that sin is wiped clean, done away with. When God adopts us, he removes this debt of sin.

So just as a Roman through could free someone from the bondage of slavery and remove their debt through adoption, from a spiritual perspective, when God adopts us, he frees us from this slavery to our sin, fears, and addictions, removes the debt of sin that eternally separates us from Him, and gives us a new intimate relationship with Him, our PaPa.

So, how does God adopt someone? That’s where Christmas comes in.

I did some research on adoption and learned this. Those of you who have adopted already know this: it is expensive and time consuming---background checks, home visits by adoption agency, applications that must filled out and on and on.

Adoption is also one way. 100% the work, effort, and cost is born by the parents who want to adopt that child. The orphan does not earn adoption nor perform to get it or pay for the privilege of it. The power and the reason for adoption is all bound up in the heart of the parents to be.

Parents will go to literally the ends of the earth to adopt a child, pay tens of thousands of dollars, invest thousands of hours of effort so that they can adopt a child… for one reason: love. A parent wants to give away the love in their heart to a child.

That same reason has motivated God to make a way for us to be His child, only God’s love is so deep that it’s difficult to fathom what He did to make our adoption possible. The bible puts in this way.

Gal. 4.4 But when the right time came, (Roman world was like U.S., advanced civilization, but in moral crisis) God sent his Son, (Christmas-Jesus birth, God becoming a man) born of a woman (fully human, He knows what it’s like living with  pain and hurt and sorrow, he’s not aloof from it) subject to the law.  5 God sent him to buy freedom for us (remember that parents pay the full price, not the orphan) who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.

One of the privileges of adoption is that the adopted child will eventually share in the inheritance as if he were related by blood. But for an inheritance to be put into effect, usually death has to occur.

A death, a payment had to happen in order for God to make spiritual adoption possible.

God took the initiative to graciously and lovingly seek out unworthy humanity (you and me) to offer to us the greatest gift possible—to become God’s child, to be adopted into His family, to be freed from the slavery, penalty, and debt of sin, to be free from our fears and our addictions, not on the basis our merit (remember an orphan doesn’t earn adoption but must simply receive it), but on the basis of what God has done out of his love for us. We must receive God's offer to become His child.

Just as a parent goes to great lengths to adopt a child, God went to the unfathomable length of sending his son Jesus to earth (Christmas) to go die on a cross to pay for our sins (good Friday) and then to be raised from the dead to give us life eternal (Easter).

God did that so that we might be his child, have our sins forgiven, and share in this wonder spiritual inheritance-a bounty of blessings in this life and the next.

God made us to want this relationship with Him. Pascal, one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived and a follower of Jesus said that there is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of all of us.

Emma’s search for her father reflects the desire in all of us to belong, have a family that accepts us, a father who loves us, a place of safety, security … a place our hearts can call home.

Jesus makes this possible.

At Christmas, at least for a moment, the word tunes to the spiritual. For many people at Christmas hearts and souls warm up to God a bit.

I hope that your heart will open up tonight and that you will consider becoming a child of God, being adopted into His family because of what Jesus did.