Command the Month: Inspiration and Breakthrough Prayers for December and Christmas 2017.

Now Out

Prophetic Declaration and Breakthrough Prayers for 2018: Pursue, Overtake, Recover All: 21 Days Fasting Guide, Prayers, and Prophetic Declarations for All-round Victory, Restoration, and Breakthrough in 2018.

Reflection

Wow! It’s Christmas.

It’s that time again when we spend time with family, friends, and invest a lot in shopping, giving and receiving gifts.

I’m sure you have a lot planned out already. And that’s great.

It is the will of God for us to be joyful and celebrate always.

However, beyond the gifts, visitations, shopping, and decorations, let us ensure that this season is maximally invested for the LORD.

Why?

Simple.

If Christ is the reason for the season, then our activities and lives must reflect His commandments.

5 Creative and Spiritual Ways to Celebrate Christmas

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16

There are many things we normally do as part of ways to celebrate Christmas, some of them are:

• Caroling
• Sharing and giving gifts
• Visiting and vacationing
• Travelling and reuniting with family
• Attending all kinds of events or even hosting some

These are all excellent ways to celebrate the season. But I’d like to call your attention to a few spiritually smart, creative and enriching things you can add to your celebration as well.

1. Believe in Jesus Christ

First things first.

Jesus Christ, the reason for the celebration season, came to the world to save us from sin and satan.

So if we are not saved from sin, celebrating Christmas ends up becoming just a ritual.

Reflect upon this:

• How’s your faith in Christ standing?
• Have you received Him into Your heart by believing and confessing His Lordship?
• Have you been consistent with your spiritual commitments all this while?

Jesus wants to have a relationship with you forever and ever, and not just this season. Let this season be an opportunity for reflection and renewal of your commitment to follow Christ.

2. Experience the Power of Contentment

“…godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6).

Let us not fall into the trap of comparing ourselves with others. The Bible says that when we do that, we are not acting in wisdom (2 Corinthians 10:12).

Our society lives in a constant state of discontentment. We’re not happy with our leaders, with our spouse, our children, or the things that we have.

• Our house is too small,
• Our TV is old
• Our smartphone doesn’t have the latest 4G technology.
• How are we going to get the latest iPhone?
• The curtains need to be changed
• Money is not enough

We’re in an endless circle of wants.

Unfortunately, even if we end up crossing everything on the shopping list, it still doesn’t guarantee fulfillment. It’s only a matter of days before we want more things.

Many of us are trying to fill a void of some kind in our lives with things that can’t satisfy. We look to fill the void with vacations, events, possessions or money. We try to fill it with relationships or sex. Sadly, we only end up wanting more. We end up feeling even more empty than when we started.

We need to realize that true happiness, joy, and contentment isn’t found in things, people or circumstances. It can only be learned in our convictions that Christ’s power, purpose, and provision is sufficient for every circumstance.

We have to choose to rest on God’s good promises, refuse to compare ourselves with others and appreciate God for who we are, what we are and what we have.

3. Personal Health Improvement Challenge

As I said in my book, How to Exercise Authority Over Sickness, “God wants us to be healed and live a healthy life. But it’s not good that we should be the ones creating our health problems through some bad health habits. We must prayerfully surrender any negative health habit that we discover in our lives to the LORD and seek His wisdom to overcome them.”

Google bad health habits and you’d be surprised at what you’ll see. These are things we easily ignore and say, “It doesn’t matter.” However, when they are repeated over and over, such that they become habits, they could become detrimental to our health, either now or later.

One thing you can do this season is to give yourself a personal health improvement challenge. Decide to make some changes to your eating, drinking and other habits and improve your health. This is the will of God for you.

4. Make Peace

It’s Christmas season.

There is joy in the air.

The birds are singing.

It’s a season of peace.

So “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor, animosity, resentment, strife, fault-finding and slander be put away from you, along with every kind of malice, all spitefulness, verbal abuse, malevolence.”

Let us “be kind and helpful to one another, tender-hearted, compassionate, understanding, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave us” (Ephesians 4:31-32 – AMP).

Let us “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14)

Forgive those who have hurt you in the past and pray for them. Not because they have repented, but because your sincere forgiveness of them will release you from their enclosure and the power of the devil, and command God’s healing and restoration in your life.

Make a conscious effort to make peace in your home and your relationships this season. Let the Lord guide you and His grace and power will bring you great joy and celebration.

5. Give Yourself a Break from Social Media

This is a tall order. And yes, I don’t really mean it.

I just wanted to call your attention to social media and its impact in your spiritual life and relationship with God.

As we celebrate Christ this season, we need to be a bit creative.

No doubt, social media is advancing our lives in many positive ways. Unfortunately, it also presents its own distractions and dangers.

Apart from the addiction of social media, it also exposes us to filthy, graphic and unwholesome content, and is now one of the biggest time wasters. I realized social media drained a lot from me and shifted my mind to many unnecessary issues. So I began praying in earnest for grace to regulate my usage of it.

That’s the point.

Is social media adding to you or taking from you?

This season offers you the opportunity to personally review how far you’ve done with social media.

So yes! In addition to how you would normally celebrate Christmas, this season should be an opportunity for spiritual renewal and encounter with the person of the season.

Prayers Points for This Month and for Christmas

1. Heavenly Father, I thank You for this month of December. Thank You for Your hand of protection upon my life and family from January until this day, in Jesus name.
2. Father, thank You for sending Jesus Christ for the salvation of humanity. How great is Your Love that You made manifest in Christ to reconcile us to Yourself. Thank You for this revelation in Jesus name.
3. Today, O LORD, I join the hosts of heaven to sing and praise You for the manifold mystery of Your love and mercy towards us, in Jesus name.
4. Father LORD, I surrender this month to Thee. Guide me in all my ways in Jesus name.
5. O LORD, make my life an example to others this month. Empower me by Your Spirit to live and walk in Your will this month, in Jesus name.
6. O LORD, I come before You this day, for myself, for my family and for my country. I confess that we have missed the essence of celebrating Christmas. We have turned this season into a season of immorality, drunkenness, and gluttony. We have taken away the Message from the season and turned it into satanic claptrap.

LORD, I ask for forgiveness for myself, my family and my country. Let Your mercy prevail over us in Jesus name.

7. LORD Jesus, as we celebrate this season, help me to come closer to YOU more and more, every day, both now and forever, in Jesus name.
8. O LORD, open the eyes of all members of my family to draw closer to YOU this month and this season, and lead them into personal relationship and encounter with the Holy Spirit, in Jesus name.
9. I pray O LORD, may our lives bring You only Glory all through this month and all through this Christmas season, in Jesus name.
10. O LORD, baptize us with supernatural joy and contentment that as we share in the songs of the angels, the delight of the shepherds, and the fervor of the wise men, our happiness will not be based on physical things and possesssions, but on Your Love, in Jesus name.
11. Father, this month and this season, close the doors of hate and open the doors of love all over the world. Cause the message of Christ’s birth to bring salvation in the hearts of men, across the World. Let this season come with the unquestionable revelation of YOUR love in my heart and the hearts of all the members of my family, in Jesus name.
12. May every plan of the devil for my family, my neighborhood and my country during this season, be destroyed, in Jesus name.
13. I decree that our going out shall be a blessing and our coming back shall be a blessing, in Jesus name.
14. O LORD, deliver us from evil, by the blessing that Christ brings, and teach us to celebrate and be merry with reverence to YOUR name, in Jesus name.
15. May the Christmas morning make us happy to be saved and be thy children, And the Christmas evening bring us to our bed with grateful thoughts, forgiving and being forgiven, for Jesus sake, in Jesus name.
16. Thank You once again LORD for all the good works You are doing in my life, in Jesus name.