← Focus on the Family with Jim Daly
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God is at work and he's calling his people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Colson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope. Visit truthrising.com today. That's truthrising.com.
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You could have marched in all your glory into the heart of Rome showed them splendor like they'd never known. But you wrote a better story in humble Bethlehem Creator in the arms of common men and you will die for our redemption and you'll rise so we can live. Glory be to you alone the king who reigns from a manger throne.
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That's Tony Wood reciting a very powerful song lyric he wrote for a song called Manger Throne. And as we approach the holiday season, we think it would be appropriate for you to lean in and for all of us to prepare our hearts and minds for the true meaning of Christmas. Welcome to a special episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller and we're so glad you've joined us.
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You know, John, Christmas, we should have our minds focused on what it means that Jesus was born. The light of the world, the gospel, the good news has arrived yet. We got to get that shopping list done and we got to get the house ready for the relatives and all the to do list. And it just seems to lose kind of the more deeper meaning because of all the busyness of it. Right. And we just want to pull back a little bit and say let's make some margin. Let's think about what God has done for us at this moment. We still will get the other things done, but let's pull back and think through God's great grace toward.
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Yeah, it's important for all of us as individuals, especially as families. I mean the kids and everything you just mentioned, Jim. It's so easy to lose sight of the reason for the season.
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And to do this, we've invited Tony Wood to join us today. He's an award winning songwriter from Nashville. I think every songwriter lives in Nashville.
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Or dreams of getting there.
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That's right. He's written a devotional book for Focus on the Family in Tyndale House that can help all of us focus on what's more important at this time of year.
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And Tony has some pretty amazing credentials. He's been a professor songwriter for some 35 years. He's written 30 number one songs in Christian music.
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That is amazing. It is.
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And more than 800 of his songs have been recorded and released in the Christian music space. You can check out some of Tony's songs in the current season of our Christmas Stories podcast, and we'll talk with Tony and play some of those. You'll find the links to the podcast and to Tony's book, Manger Throne, in the show notes.
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Tony, welcome to Focus on the Family. Great to have you.
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Thank you for having me today.
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Did that resonate with you, that whole hustle, bustle of Christmas? I mean, it's crazy. One of the things I mean, I think marital breakdown occurs mostly at Christmas time. Did you get the list? Did you buy everything I need bought?
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Well, we have four daughters, and for a number of years I was on church staff. And so that comes with its own agenda of a checklist of, you gotta do this some December night, some December. There's a list of all the things we've always done. And, oh, we've been thinking, this family did this. Maybe we want to add that in. Oh, where are we going to put that in the night in December.
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You know, on the more serious side, I think levels of depression for people are at their highest at Christmas time. I mean, it could be loneliness, separation from family. Christmas is this time to be together, to feel joy, and yet there's sorrow that can come with it.
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Well, I think the season is an intensifier because for the people that are. If you're falling in love at a new relationship, wow, what a backdrop for that. If you're a family that's just loving being together, what a, what a great time with so much fun along the way. But if you're going through a season of grief or missing someone or relationships or tense family dynamics, and you look around and, oh, everybody's having a wonderful time and you're not, then the tapes and the voices start saying, okay, something's wrong with you. And the highs are just a little bit higher and the lows are a little bit lower.
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You know, when you look at music, music, I was never really a music guy in high school. I didn't buy the albums or the cassettes. CDs may not have been around at that moment, but, you know, I just didn't connect. But later, now, after college and career and meeting Gene, and Gene's more into music, but it does move the soul. There's nothing that moves the soul like music. What drew you to becoming a composer, a writer?
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I think it started at about 15.
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That's amazing.
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Well, I started writing my first songs then I grew up in a small little farming town in Virginia. Church was kind of the center of life for everything. Church music, choir music, and kind of what was on pop radio at that point were the two influences. I decided to sit down. If anytime a guy sits down to write his first song, it's going to be this bad love song. It just is. And I wrote four or five really bad love songs. The first one, though, I did play for the girl who played piano for the youth choir, who I kind of had a crush on. And she liked it enough. We started dating for a while. So suddenly, the music.
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Your scheme worked.
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The music nerd had a tool in the toolbox. And I just. I kept writing. After about five or six songs, I just started writing about what I was learning in youth group at that point. The things of faith, what I was reading in the Bible.
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Why do you think it moves the soul the way it does? How did God create us to respond to music like that? I mean, you can cry over songs, you can laugh over something. It just like it is the epicenter of emotions.
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It seems to bypass some filters or some walls that we've built, and it just comes around from the backside and sneaks up on you. See, some of the hardest, toughest guys will hear an old country song or something like that, and man, it just. They stop pretending that they're not moved.
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Yeah, dog a pickup. Broken relationship, right? That's country music, grandma. You connect the stress that Joseph and Mary were experiencing during the first nativity to a significant move you made to Nashville decades ago. I'm not sure how to make that comparison, but tell me about it.
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Well, I think we all have our Bible heroes that. And for some reason, Joseph has always been this guy that I have just seen a connection to. I think Joseph was very heads down, a good guy trying to be about the right stuff, getting the jobs going, a relationship with Mary, going about things the right way. And suddenly his life just got crazy. He is suspect center number one in the town when the pregnant fiance shows up. This crazy trip. Do a census to feed the ego of this king. The panic of if this is going to go well, he's got to take care of it. I mean, just the pressure, the tension of that, I think the piece. I respect that deeply in him. I think I felt some of that as a guy thinking, okay, God, if you're really leading me into this songwriting thing. And we had to move 10 hours away from my home, from my wife's home to Nashville, which where we knew nobody. And I Didn't really even know a professional songwriter. Once we got there, our moving van drives away, and there is nobody to call up and say, hey, you want to grab a cup of coffee? So it's starting as ground zero as you can get. And so I think looking at Joseph just in the pressure of it all, and yet in the midst of that total chaos and God is working perfectly his steps, he is leading Joseph. I mean, you think they're leaving Bethlehem to go to Egypt? Here's an international flight story. Again, like, that feels like a movie scene to me. The pressure inside. A guy trying to take care of his family. And yet this is the way that God's leading.
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It's really interesting because there's not a lot written or talked about the emotions of Joseph. With Mary, his betrothed, pregnant, she kind.
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Of got the big song.
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I mean, it had to be really scandalous to some. I mean, can you imagine the village talking about what's going on there now they gotta get married, she's pregnant. I mean, you've got to assume that was going on. And I've never thought that deeply about it because we kind of move to the great story of the Lord being born. But Joseph carrying the burden of that.
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To do the honorable thing and the slow unfolding of the whole story where, no, he's going to bed tonight, sweating this.
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Tony, there was a time when upbeat Christmas carols were really your thing. And you love the spirit of that, as we all do. It kind of lifts your spirits. And maybe Jingle Bells or whatever, it might be all the happy ones. Yeah, all the happy ones. But over time, you've kind of reflected on that and gravitated more toward the contemplative songs. Describe that and why that's more meaningful for you.
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Yeah, there are a couple of carols as a kid, and even as a young man, that was like, okay, that's coming up. Skip, move on. Let's get back to Joy to the World. Come Let Us Adore. And even some of the ballads, like Silent Night and everything, I mean, they just tug at the heartstrings. But it was, oh, come O come, Emmanuel and come thou Long expected Jesus were always the ones that are like, just didn't feel it. And I think that's part of just growing. And I don't think you understand longing as much. You know, everybody that was always around the dinner table when I was a kid, when I was a young man, they're not there anymore. And there's just. There's still a whole lot of joy. To Christmas for me. But there are moments where you feel that little twinge and longing and even more at the heart of the season. I have a deeper longing these days for Jesus, for relationship, for time with him, for his nearness. I'm going to enjoy the stuff of the season, but I'm going to make sure personally that I keep him at the center of it. Wait, this is what it's about. I want to intentionally spend time with him alone so I get the longing of those songs a lot more.
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You know, I have a good friend, Randy. I won't give his last name, but I know you're there, Randy. And he differentiates corporate music from non corporate music. Like bands, sometimes they're shaped into generating revenue because that's the business model. So you end up with lyrics and songs that kind of appeal to a broad mass. He always says, yeah, I love the off corporate stuff. The stuff that really moves my soul. Have you seen that with writing Christian music, There are the catchy beats and they go big and they're number one. You've had 30 number one songs. That right there is amazing. But do you feel that those 30, for example, that hit number one, are they all your favorites or can you feel that difference between writing a corporate song that generates clicks or revenue versus a heartfelt song that I don't really care if it does anything. It means a lot to me.
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Well, I think there's a struggle. I've heard a number of songwriters put it this way, that you make peace at some point, that if you were writing 100, 150 songs or more a year for some guys, you have to make peace with, you're going to die with some of your favorite songs never heard by anyone but your wife and your publisher. And some people don't want the heavy songs. They're really are some people that want to get in the car at the end of the day, something feels good and makes them feel positive and oh, a little reminder that, yeah, that's right, God's in the picture with me.
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That's okay. I'm just saying there is a difference for the artist.
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There is. And I love that under the Christian music umbrella of songs, there are all styles. Every style that's in the world musically is represented for the most part in the Christian world. And people can find what. There's nobody who goes, oh, I love it all. But you find what really connects and what tells your story.
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Family relationships, like we talked about lightly can get really strained. I mean, I'll just say in laws and everybody Goes, yep, yep, that's our story. But Christmas is the feast, and people come over often, and you're spending time together. How do you make sure that you can navigate those family settings? Well.
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Well, it's funny. I think the best thing I ever heard was, like, if your family is fractured and not talking to one another, you just write a really nice Christmas card to everybody, include a family photo with one extra child you've borrowed that they know nothing about. Then suddenly, they're all talking to one.
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You get the theme. At least you're on theme.
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But every family has their own mess, their own dynamics, their own history. And every glorious picture we see of Christmas is the family coming through the door. All the hugs, the kisses, the presents, the time around the table. We're holding hands, praying. And, you know, sometimes in those families, people just can barely stand to be in the room with one another.
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So this is a good one. So you're in Target doing your Christmas shopping. Hey, you're the one that wrote about this.
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I did, but all of us can relate.
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You started to get frustrated, and the Lord said something to you. What did he reveal to you at Target?
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Well, it was one. It was one of those trips where I was going to get a gift for somebody, kind of extended my side. It was kind of my duty. One of those. I realized I'm going to get a token. And I am walking down the aisle of Target sports stuff ahead. Kids department to the right. Toys over here. And as I turn the corner in the back aisle, there are, like 40 other people. It's a beehive, just moving. And I start looking at their carts. And I thought, are they getting tokens, too? I mean, and then the verse, God loves a cheerful giver just kind of, you know, pierces in the back of my head to just dump a little bit of guilt on me. It's like, oh, I know, I know, I know. And I thought so many times, we're getting tokens. Who wants a token? Nobody wants to give a token. Nobody wants to receive a token. And it just made me think about the gifts that we give. I mean, why not give what somebody really needs for some people? And I think I wrote, suppose that lady over there put back those gloves for her sister and instead just wrote a card and said, here's what you really mean to me.
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Oh, that's great.
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What if the guy getting the TV in the cart realized, your wife really does not want pricey electronics this year. She just wants you to be more present with her. What if that guy in the muddy work boots, put back that piece of fishing gear that he was getting and just told his dad, I forgive you. What if that was the gift, the real gift that people gave some years.
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See, you're expressing the creative brain right there. I mean, I'm the business major. I go in. Yeah, token's fine for me. Let's see. Let's get him this, let's get him that. But it is interesting. The creative person, you think differently, you think in those terms of what's really going to make a difference in this person's life. That's. I mean, I'm thinking that's 2, 3% of the population that thinks that way, because the rest of us are, hey, I got to get this and get out of here.
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So the reflection is kind of built in.
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How do we slow down to catch that? Because it is beautiful. I think it's the way God created us. But we're looking for the expedited answer to everything. To our hungry stomach, fast food. To our quick Christmas gift, which I gave no thought of. And I just bought it for you. Hope you enjoy it. It's a cash card to wherever. No thought whatsoever. How do we stop and think? What would this person really like? How do we do it?
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Golly. I mean, it requires getting to know them and an honest assessment of where the relationship is. I mean, sometimes you are at a good place with somebody and a book or a pair of shoes or something really is the thing. But sometimes where there's tension, you know, that pair of shoes is just gonna kind of brush past the pain and, oh, we got that. Oh, we got Christmas over with.
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But it's being in tune with what's real. That's what I love about it.
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Being honest.
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Yeah.
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Well, you're listening to Tony Wood today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And obviously a Christmas themed program as we talk about Tony's songwriting reflection on life and this new devotional called Manger Throne. Get a copy of this book and walk through this holiday season with some new ideas and meanings and songs. We've got the book here. Get a copy from us. When you click the link in the.
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Show notes, you wrote this book, Manger Throne. It is the dichotomy. It's an oxymoronic statement, right?
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It is.
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Manger is nothing. In fact, when you go to Israel, it's more like a cliff ledge that has a little depth to it. That would be the manger, where you have a little protection, but pretty much wide open. Ray van der Lijnae, who Did that the World May Know with Us explains that if you ever travel or you'll see it in that series, I mean, it's not like a deep cave or something like that. It's just enough for shelter. And you think about that. And that was what the Lord chose to be born in.
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The whole tension of the High King of heaven set foot upon planet earth in such a place as that. You think of how he should have come versus how he did come. Indeed. The meekness, the lowliness of all of that.
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You talk about. Freeze the Frame, a song you wrote. What were you getting at? Relationship to the manger To Freeze the frame.
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Freeze the Frame is really more about the family component of everybody being together. I mean, it's just such a great part of the season. I've got four daughters that I love dearly, three sons in law that I love so much. A few years back at Christmas time, one of my daughters was pregnant with my first grandson. So it was a little bit of excitement going on. Just a little. A little bit. And so we're pulling up to the table to sit down and I think next year, next year at Christmas time, we're going to have a baby here at the table. And I'm so excited about that. And as we took one of those hands, say the blessing, my daughter was sitting just to my left and I.
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Kind of look and see her belly.
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There at the table. And I'm like, that boy is here tonight. Wait a minute.
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Already here.
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He is already here. And Jim, it just washed over me. I'm an easy cry. No shock to my kids when that happens. So I just made a blubbering mess of the blessing that night. And they just laugh at me. And we go on with life. That's life around our table. There was a quote that says, be aware of the things that bring you to tears or bring a lump to your throat. For sometimes it means the holy is drawing near. And I know that in those moments of life. Okay, I'm going to be sitting up tonight, scratching down on a legal pad, processing this, trying to make it rhyme. Because I'm not a journaler or anything. I just put it down on paper, try to make it rhyme and make a song out of it if I can. So I did that sitting up. Got verse, chorus, second verse, kind of, I think. I mean, it's deeply personal to me. Hope somebody else likes it. But that's the life of any writer right there. You never know. A couple months later, I took it to my publishers in the office and said, Hey, I really. I like this one a little bit more than maybe some other songs that I've written. Let's be mindful in the coming months, if somebody's going to be doing a Christmas record, if this is something we could get to them. So middle of summer, I'm in a writing session. You know, just like a normal Thursday morning in my life. Small, little cramped room somewhere in Nashville on Music Row, a couple other people, we're writing a song. A text pops up on my phone, a local number that I don't know. And so, you know, I stop and look up and it says, hey, Tony Michael W. Smith here. Thanks for trusting me with your lyric. Hope you like this melody for it. And I just kind of stopped. I was like, hey, guys, gotta take a bathroom break. I'm having a moment too. Oh, gosh. And talk about an artist that I have just such a respect for. A long, faithful career, long obedience and wonder and great music. He has done it so well. And he loves Christmas, so. So this song made it on his fifth Christmas record. So he loves Christmas. Sweet. So an artist that I love, kind of memorializing a really special family time of mine. It's good. Yeah.
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You mentioned cars, and in the book, you talk about Christmas trips, the vacation, but yours were like 20 hour car trips. I mean, were you insane?
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Well, that was. That was just what it meant because we had the kids and we moved away. Like I said, all of our family was back in Virginia, so we had to make that 10 hour trip one way, 10 hour trip back for 25 Christmases.
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And so how did those things go? Did you enjoy the car trips or were they monotonous.
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Or both?
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D All of the above. I'll tell you a thing that I'm not totally proud of that came out of that. My wife and I invented the Christmas song game where before the trip, we would take out 10 envelopes and put a dollar in some $2, $3, maybe a $10 bill in one of them. Them. And I would number them 1 through 10, shuffle them, put them on above the visor in the car.
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I like this.
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Hey. So we're just gonna listen to Christmas music for a while. I mean, four daughters in the back. It was chaos. But at some point, a couple hours in, we're just gonna listen. Everybody pick a song. Pick a song. And if it comes on the radio, you get to pick an envelope and. Wow. We did that for. For a number of Christmases.
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There's a cheaper way to go. Adventures in Odyssey can do that for you. But that's great. I mean, what an entertaining way. Are your girls interested in music?
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I have a daughter that writes. I have a daughter that had a book that was published and is beginning to write songs. And I had one daughter that she was in high school, and she had an idea for a song, and we wrote it and got it recorded. And she got a little bit of money for that and was like, okay, moving along to the next thing, to the next area of interest.
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Tony, right here at the end. I want to close with the concept you share about having a barn knife. 1. I love doing these kind of things when my boys were younger. Sleep out under the stars, come up with some reason to do it. But the barn night concept, tell me what it was and how you did it.
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Started that when I was a student pastor and looking for something at Christmas. I wanted to give them a sensory experience of what Christmas was like and talk about somebody whose lives are just busy, noisy, frantic, going all the time. So I would find somebody in the area who had a working barn. Messier the better. Load up the church bus some night late In December, take 30, 40 kids out to this barn. Always cold, sometimes rainy, muddy, always nasty. Better years are when there were a couple of animals present just to make people nervous and edgy. And you know, a year where, like, a cow is leaning over, kids are sitting on hay bales all around complaining because they've just ruined their nice sho. And we would sit in the darkness, couple of candles or flashlights, and I would read the story from Luke 2.
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Wow.
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And acapella, or maybe one guitar, very simply, sing a couple of Christmas carols and talk about this is the world into which he came. This is the darkness, this is the foulness of the world we had created through our rebellion to him. And yet that is where his love toward us. That is, he was willing to humble himself. And the way I'm going to judge whether bar night is successful is if I can create three minutes of silence at the end. The first minute is they're all nervous and twitching a little bit. But minute two, it settles. And in minute three, I trust God. Okay. In this whole month of December, maybe you're meeting them just right there and there.
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Yeah. What a great reminder, Tony. And, you know, it's just that pause to say, in the busyness of Christmas, which it's going to be, can we create a life to really think deeply about what the Lord has done and what Mary and Joseph went through? And I think it's a beautiful way to capture the moment in a little different way, you know, and to think about the Lord in perhaps a unique and different way. And I'd encourage you to get a copy of this book, Manger Throne. It's just a brilliant way to think differently about Christmas. You can do that by entering into ministry with us for a gift of any amount, send you a copy of the book just to say thank you for helping others in that way. And what's great right now we have a matching gift where we have major donors who are going to make your $20 gift a $40 gift. It's a fun way just to help double the revenue for Focus if possible. So please take them up on that offer. Let's turn 20 into 40, 50 into 100. It's just again, a fun way to spur on the budget for Focus on the Family.
- [26:59]
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Donate today as you can and request Tony's money book. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word family, 800-232-6459. Or you can donate and get resources by clicking the link in the show notes. And while you're at our website, be sure to look for our Christmas Stories podcast. It's Season nine featuring Tony Wood. It's going to be a great combination of music we'll be playing some songs at Tony is written and some devotional thoughts as well. That's the Christmas Stories podcast and the link is on our website. Well, have a great weekend with your family and your church family as well, and then join us again on Monday. You'll hear about practical ways to improve your relationship with your spouse. Conflict is meant for connection. Conflict is something we don't need to run away from. We actually need to run toward it. Conflict is the opportunity to turn me into what. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
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God is at work and he's calling his people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Colson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope. Visit truthrising.com today. That's truthrising.com.