Christmas Moments - #9 The First Rule Of Christmas

... calls for action and now, Alvin. Alvin!

Okay! Want a plane that loops the loop? I still want a hula hoop. We can hardly stand the wait. Please, Christmas, don't be late. The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine and forced him to land behind the enemy lines. Snoopy was certain that this was the end when the Baron cried out... Merry Christmas, my friend! Christmas bells, those Christmas bells Ringing through the land Bringing peace to all the world And good will to man The first rule of Christmas today on the Christian Car Guys show. And Danny, my producer, he's trying to figure out, Robbie, what is the first rule of Christmas?

And I bet you're wondering that too, but if you thought carefully about my intro music, I always spend a lot of time picking things that kind of give you that theme of what we're talking about. So, Robbie, what is the first rule of Christmas? Well, I have to share the story about my granddaughter in order to get you there. And so about three or four years ago, my father took myself, my daughter, my granddaughter fishing in Colorado. Now, the only person who'd ever taken my granddaughter at the time was seven fishing was me. So anybody that had taught her what she told me later on was the first rule of fishing. It had to come from me, but I don't recall for the life of me when I told her the first rule of fishing.

That's part of being a grandpa. So we are out there. We've flown to Colorado. We spend like two days trying to catch fish and Lila hadn't caught anything. And the only fish that she actually had caught, I had actually hooked and handed her the thing. But this was, my daughter hadn't fished in years and my granddaughter was amateur to say the least. And so they both were snagging all the time and Lila wouldn't leave her bait in the water long enough to catch a fish. And so, you know, two seconds after it went in the water, she'd go, I got one, I got one.

And she would reel it in, she'd get another snag and I'd end up redoing the line again. And this went on time and time and time again, and no fish were getting caught. And I was beginning to get more and more and more aggravated.

You can see where this may relate to Christmas in a minute. So, you know, one more time, you know, I got one, I got one, I got one. And I said, Lila, you have got to leave your bait in the water long enough to catch a fish.

And I probably even said it harsher than what I just said on the air. And she looked at me and she says, Papa, you have violated the first rule of fishing. And I went, what? And she goes, have fun. Oh, man.

Right on. Out of the mouths of babes, right? And so I looked at her and I said, Lila, let's do this. Let's pray. I said, I'm going to pray that God will give me more patience with you, that I'll have fun. And I'm going to pray that, you know, God gives you the patience to leave your bait in the water long enough to catch a fish. Or even while we're at it, why don't we pray that you'll catch some fish? And so, you know, we prayed. It was lovely. We stood there on the bank of this river by this waterfall and never forget it as long as I ever lived with my seven-year-old granddaughter.

We're both praying for patience. Immediately after, I look out the corner of my eye and I see my daughter's down the river and she's got another snag and she's flailing her pole back and forth like somebody would that got a snag. And I start walking that direction and no sooner that I take two steps and Lila goes with her familiar, I got one, I got one. When I turned around this time, expecting to see what I had seen for other thousand times, instead this time, Lila had a huge trout and she at this thing was all over the river. And she was like, I got you, you little dickens. And she brought in that fish and actually she caught four fish like almost immediately thereafter, like everybody on the river was trying to figure out how this little girl was catching all these fish. The answer was, she was having fun. The answer was, she was praying. And so this morning, it was an interesting thing, you know, I'd been working all week on this, that, and the other, and as you may know me, I asked Jesus, what are you praying for me today as I begin to prepare the show?

This was really, really early this morning. And Jesus says to me, now if he says this to me immediately, I know exactly what he's saying. He's saying, Robbie, I want you to have fun.

And so I began to process what he was telling me. And I realized as I began to look up the actual word fun in Hebrew and some other things that you would probably translate that word rejoice. But my struggle is that that word rejoice has some religious drapery on it that I really, my heart needs to get rid of. I'm not talking about for you, I'm talking about for me. Rejoice just doesn't sound like fun.

I mean, it should, I know, but for some reason, it doesn't. So I decided to come out with the RSV version, which is the Robbie Simple version, which is Philippians 4-4. Have fun in the Father, always. And again, I say, have fun. And as a theme for like, man, the first rule of Christmas. Because if you think about a father's heart, like, how fun is it to watch your kids have a blast at Christmas? Well, you don't think God feels that way?