In our exchange of gifts, we honor life that Christ lived.

The messages that Christ spoke of during His ministry centered around 2 main principles - faith and love.

We are encouraged to love everyone as we love ourselves, and we are instructed that if we have faith that our prayers will be answered then they will be answered according to our faith.

Faith is sometimes seen as a tricky thing. Either you have it or you don't. Many times, we wonder if there is any way to increase amount of faith that we have so that our prayers will be more effective in our lives.

Most people tend to pray for one of three things - health, financial abundance, or good relationships. The message of Christ was that we could have anything we wanted if we had enough faith.

In act of giving gifts, we are generally acting out of love, with faith that there will be enough financial abundance to fulfill our needs even after giving of gifts.

By giving gifts, we open ourselves to wondrous free flow of Spiritual energy into our souls, which then blesses us in many ways. Yes, we can improve our health and our prosperity by giving gifts.

With so many reasons to be giving gifts, it's really no wonder why Christmas-time became best reason in world for gift giving.

May you be blessed by giving of gifts this year.

I have winced more than once after reading one of my published stories. I feel force of loss of privacy. I worry that I might have caused someone embarrassment. I wonder if I'll be ostracized by my family and friends. I imagine them talking about me. "Can you believe she wrote about that!"

So why write it?

I do it because to many people who don't know me, I look just like Bob. When I show up for church, I float into sanctuary like I don’t have a care in world. But I don't have it together like Bob. And I want to tell truth. Readers who need Christ in their life, who are afraid to step into a church because their lives aren't as "together" as Bob's . . . they need to hear truth.

We learn from each other's testimony. That's how I connect to you and you connect to me. Once a connection is made, we feel less alone in our struggles and, together, we can build our hope in Christ. When we write from our hearts, we share our humanity. As writers, God commissions us to use our talent to make big catch in Luke 5:1-11.

Let's go back in history to "big catch" moment. Up to point of catch, Jesus was doing all of his work alone. More and more people were becoming interested in his message and he needed more messengers. Did he go to synagogue and look for a great priest? No. He looked around for every day people like you and me. Jesus is able to make kingdom workers out of imperfect people.

I'm often struggling with challenges that no one would ever imagine because I float so well. My prayer is that writing about them will be bit of encouragement someone needs. Fulfilling my commission is not necessarily pulling in every reader. If my story is difference between heaven and hell for one person, it's worth it.

Although you may never know whose life you touch by telling your story, I want to encourage you to write it. Writing from heart is more than self-expression; it's an act of obedience. Trust God when he directs you to let down your net. We are not living in a perfect world where we can afford to waste time floating. Come along with me, friend. Let's fish!