Christmas at Echoes | Daniel Goulding | 2025

there's so much that I I love about the holiday season, but there's there's a couple things that I I don't like. Again, eggnog is pretty high on that list, but right behind it is the holiday travel that often comes with it. Right? Like, I I like being places. I hate getting to places. Anybody else like me? You're just like, man, I just I would love to go there, but I just don't wanna spend the time traveling there. And there's something about it that happens every year during the holidays that the airports are more busy, the freeways are more congested.

Again, was thinking about it a couple years ago, we kinda made a tradition where my family, we get together for the holidays up in Tahoe. We were, you know, from San Diego, but we'd go up to Tahoe, something about the white Christmas and we would go up there as a family and celebrate with my sister

and we've got a big family, so my dad one time had an ID, we'd rent a motor home and all drive up together and that was a disaster. It's a story for another day, but we decided the next year, because that was terrible,

so we're gonna fly this year, right? So, you know, I think my kids at the time are three and one, and I'm cheap, so I pick a flight that's at like six in the morning, right, because it's affordable, and so I've gotta get my family up at like the crack of dawn, and it's amazing these little humans how they need like 38 suitcases to go somewhere for like two days. You're like, do we need all this stuff? But we get all the stuff, we load it up, we get parked, we fight through TSA.

And some of you, I'm giving you PTSD right now because it's described the last couple days of your life or it's a foreshadowing of what's about to be in your future. Right? And you you fight through the lines and we got to the we got to the gate only to learn that our flight had been delayed by like four hours.

What do you do with two sleep deprived toddlers in the airport for four hours? You you have a meltdown. That's what you do. And so our kids, you know, kinda just have a a meltdown. And then our the gate agent tells us like three minutes before we're supposed to board our flight, oh by the way, there's been a gate change and it's on the other side of the airport and so my whole family in tow, all 36 suitcases, were the crazy people sprinting through the airport trying to get to the new gate. We get there, the gate agent there tells us that all all the other passengers have already boarded the plane and they actually don't have enough seats for all of our party to get on it and I was like, well, that's good. I didn't want both of my kids to go on this trip anyway so we'll just take my favorite one. Right? You know you have a favorite one, you just don't admit it. Right?

Like we'll just we'll leave one behind. So my dad takes one for the team. He goes on a later flight. Well, nobody told us that we were flying not into Tahoe but into Reno

and from Reno, we were then gonna take a two hour shuttle to get to Tahoe with my two sleep deprived toddlers and all 38 suitcases and then when I got to Tahoe, my sister was gonna pick us up in a car that wasn't big enough to fit all of us, so she was gonna have to run shuttles to get us there back and forth. All in,

I could have driven there and back like three times in the time that it took us to fly there to save time And you sit back and you're like, wait, why are we doing this again? Like, why why do we go through all of the hassle? And it's it's it's an interesting to it's interesting to stop for a second and just think about it. Like, why do we almost be why are we almost willing to do whatever it takes to get home for Christmas? And there's like this question that always is asked this time of year. It's like, hey, what are you doing for the holidays? Are you going home for Christmas? Like there's this thing that's built in to the very fabric of who we are that there's something about Christmas that makes us long to go home. What's amazing is the American Psychology Association said that eighty eight percent of people during the holidays feel this deep sense of longing for a place of of home, a memory of a connection

to home. There's something about us that just wants to connect back to home. The top two Christmas songs every single year for the last fifty years have been the exact same ones. It's I'll be home for Christmas and a white Christmas.

Two songs that talk about this idealistic version of what home for the holidays is supposed to be and the truth is is sometimes we go through all the hustle, all the bustle only to realize on December 26, was

all the same. It was kind of a letdown. We thought the crazy uncle wasn't gonna do the crazy uncle thing this year, but he he did it. We thought the sibling rivalry would potentially go away

and it didn't. Here's what I'm trying to get us to see this evening. Here's what I want to kind of set up, that I believe that the longing that we have for this proverbial home during the holidays, I I don't think Christmas

creates the longing for home, but it does reveal it. I think wired inside of every single one of us is this deep longing for something that this world seems to not be able to give us, but sometimes we attach it to things. I think that every single one of us written across our hearts, we were born

with this heart that is longing for home but I want to submit to you tonight that the longing that we have for home for the holidays, it really actually is an indicator that you and I weren't built for this world and that the longing that's inside of all of us, our our parents never could satisfy

and I come from a pretty good home. I'm thankful for the parents that I have and the family that I grew up in but the truth is, man, there's things about my family that were not always the most healthy, and I bet you you'd be willing to say the same, and it it seems like no matter how amazing your family was, no matter how great your parents were, there seems to be a disconnect between the like the family that my heart longs for and the family that I have. Again, I just wonder tonight on this Christmas Eve Eve service, why why do we why do we feel this longing? Why does it always feel like there's this gap between the home that we longed for and the home that we have?

Why does it feel like there's such a disconnect between this idealistic home that we see on Hallmark and the truth and the reality of what our our home is? Again, my submission to us is that it's it's because you were built for a different world. There's a longing inside of you that this world can never satisfy and and what I want to try to do tonight, I wish I could I wish I could solve all the problems that happen when you think about home because I know for a lot of us, the idea of home this Christmas is all we think about is the loved one that's not gonna be there with us. For others, the idea of home is like, man, that's actually the source of my pain and it's the brokenness of of home that has caused me a lot of the tension that I'm I'm living in today, but again, I still think the submission is true. Why do our parents of origin have such an ability to throw our lives into a tailspin?

Because there was a longing for belonging connection

that's deep within inside of every single soul that if we don't know where to put it, we will unhealthily attach it to the wrong things. Here is my submission to all of us that I think is baked into the original announcement of Jesus' birth two thousand years ago in Matthew chapter one and the three verses that we just read. Here's what I can do for you tonight. I I wanna try to prove to you that home,

the home that your heart is really longing for, it isn't found on a map, but it can be found in a man. The thing that your heart is searching for, the reason that millions will gather to lift up the name of Jesus who was a a nobody born into a nothing town, the reason

we still gather thousands of years later and millions upon millions of people will gather is because in him, we can find the thing that our heart is searching for, but I promise you, Christ

if you take Christ out of Christmas, it it it all just feels like pageantry and it feels like a bit of a a bit of a waste of time, but here's my cards on the table kind of moment. I think some of us need to make a decision this Christmas to come home,

not to our family of origin, but to the God who who made us. And there's an invitation tonight to every single one of us to come home regardless of what this year has looked like, regardless of what our current circumstances are. There's an invitation from heaven to say, come home. And I wanna show you a couple things that happen when you make that decision again from the three verses that we just read. Matthew chapter one verse 18, the story started like this. It says, this is how Jesus,

the Messiah was born. This was the announcement of the savior of the world. Don't miss this. His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant to the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now I know there's some of you who think you're going have an awkward conversation at Christmas dinner. I promise you it paled in comparison to the awkward conversation Mary had to have at the first Christmas dinner. She comes home and she's like, wait, are you

pregnant? You're like, your wedding's in four months. You're like, yeah, so what had happened was the Holy Spirit, it's the savior of the world, like just think about it for a second, right?

And and sometimes we we churchify the bible and we talk about God like he's this perfect being and God God is holy and God is perfect, I think sometimes what we do is we think that the story of the scriptures is like, it's just a bunch of perfect people with their halos on perfectly. Then And you read the story and you're like, wait, the savior of the world was born to a woman who was single and poor

and young. What's amazing, you go back to first century Jewish culture, a woman was literally a second class citizen. God could have chosen anyway at any moment in time to announce that the savior of the world was coming, but notice who he chooses.

He chooses a nobody girl in the middle of a nobody town that doesn't have reputation, that doesn't have status, that doesn't have wealth. She's literally a nobody and God says that's the one I'm gonna use.

He could have picked anybody. He could have chosen any woman throughout the history of time but he chose Mary and here's where this matters for you and I because this is the invitation to find your home not in a place but in a person. This is the invitation.

What God wants for every single one of us is to begin to realize that you are you're chosen. You're you're not overlooked. See, so often we feel overlooked but no, the invitation of heaven is to say that you're chosen, that God actually made you exactly how you are and the things that you think disqualify

you from being able to use by God potentially potentially those are the very things that qualify you to be used by God. When you begin to understand who God is. See, God doesn't choose the people that we would often choose.

God doesn't choose the people of status, the people of notoriety. God always goes after the people who are the most willing. I wanted to tell you tonight, friend, the invitation for you to come home to God is to begin to remember that you are chosen,

that God made you exactly how you are. God made you the person that you are. You were born into such a time as this. There might have been an accidental pregnancy, but there's never been an accidental birth under the sovereignty of God. That God knows you and you are not here randomly and God has big plans for your life and if he could use Mary, I'm telling you he can use you as well. And here's what's so even more perplexing about the invitation of faith that we find through Jesus is we don't even we're not even the ones that do the choosing.

Often, the the gospel is that it's it's God that chooses us in spite of us. The real gospel message is that you and I in our own state, we just completely run away from God. We do our own thing and then at some point, the God of the universe intervenes

and he intervenes in moments like this that feel like random coincidences where you just showed up to church tonight and then it feels like God God is speaking to you. This is what the scripture say. Jesus again, he said in John chapter 15 verse 16 that you didn't choose me but I chose you.

This is Jesus's declaration that I'm not up here as somebody who's been transformed by God because I chose God and we often say things like that. It's like, found Jesus in 1985. It's like, well, where was he hiding the whole time? Know, like where'd you find him? See, gospel is that God chooses us.

He does the initiating. He does the pursuing. You don't choose him. He chooses you. And then he goes further and says, I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. Paul in Ephesians chapter one says it this way, that even before he made the world,

God loved us, and he chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. Friend, I wanna remind you tonight, the invitation to come home, what happens when you come home is you begin to realize that I'm I'm chosen. I'm not overlooked.

So often in this life, we feel overlooked. The promotions pass us by. The marriages pass us by. The blessings seem to go to somebody else, but the invitation to come home to God is one to go, hey. You are you are chosen. I don't know why when I think about chosen, I immediately go back to middle school PE.

Anybody else traumatized with being chosen in middle school PE, you get broken up and you get two captains, you're like, dear God, don't make me the last choice. Like, don't just pick me. I don't care if it's second to last. I just can't be the last pick. Right? Cause nobody wants to be last.

Why? Because inside of all of us is this deep sense of desire to belong to something and to someone, and I'm telling you that desire is there because God he made you. You and I need to reconcile with this fact this evening that we

we are created by God and for God. If you have any chance of beginning to understand this life on this side of eternity,

you gotta realize that you are a created being, I'm a created being, but you're created by a God that loves you, that has purpose built into your very DNA, and he has a life for you beyond your wildest dreams, but it begins with you making a decision

to come home. The first thing that happens when you decide to come home is you realize that you're chosen. You're you're not overlooked even though I sometimes I feel like I'm overlooked. If God could do it for Mary, I promise you he can do it for you. But now the other part of the story that is just as mind blowing is what happens for Joseph. And Mary, again, she gets a lot of the credit for the birth of Jesus. In fairness, women do most of the work in a birthing story. Like, I was I watched it, I didn't do much else when my kids were born. Right? But there is a second character in the story and it's Joseph. And we see this miraculous moment happen with Mary and the Holy Spirit comes and speaks to her and then the camera kind of pans to Joseph in verse 19. Now look how the story continues. Verse 19, it says, Joseph,

to whom she was engaged, he was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

Again, it's a side point, but Joseph was clearly a better Christian than me. If I was Joseph, I would have put Mary's business all over Instagram for all of you to judge her with me. Okay? I'm just saying.

But Joseph doesn't do that. Joseph's a better man than me. Verse 20 says, as he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream when he said, Joseph, son of David, the angel said, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child within her was conceived

by the Holy Spirit. I'm telling you, I've read this story probably thousands of time by this point in my ministry career. I've never seen this part of the story. You you realize what Joseph was about to do. Right?

Joseph was about to do what you and I will always do with our life left to our own devices. When you are lord of your life, when I'm in control of my life, our natural tendency is towards self destruction. Joseph was about to make a decision out of emotion that was going to implode his entire life.

You realize that Jesus, his birth had been foretold by prophets for thousands of years, One of the things that was told about the coming messiah is that he would come through the line of Abraham and the line of David. Now don't miss this. Again, for for that prophecy to be true, Joseph

has to be the father. Now we know he's not biologically the father, but when he adopts Jesus into his family, all the prophecies of the coming Messiah come true and Jesus is now born in the line of Abraham and David fulfilling thousands of years of prophecy that Joseph in one moment of emotion was about to destroy.

He was about to implode his whole life. He was about to ruin the entire plan for all of us. It's almost like we're back in the Garden of Eden with a female that made the wrong choice in the beginning. Right?

See, here's the thing that we've got to see. Here's the invitation. Here's what I'm trying to point out to you, but God God doesn't let Joseph make a mess of his life and this is the invitation. This is the invitation of heaven to us tonight. What what happens when you come home to God? You begin to realize like, I'm chosen,

that I'm not here randomly, that God has purpose for who I am and secondly,

what God wants to begin to do is he wants to he actually wants to lead you. He wants to come alongside of you and help you avoid the pitfalls that you and I are going to step into. The second thing that happens when you begin to come home is you realize that I'm I'm led. I'm not left alone,

and so often, a lot of the trauma that we feel as kids is we just felt like we were we were just left alone. We were left to our own devices, and then why didn't somebody do something? And I'm here tonight to tell you that if 2026

is gonna be any other any different than any other year you've had in your life, I'm telling you the only way things change is if you make a decision to have somebody else take the reins of your life because if you and I are the ones that are in control, our natural tendency is always towards self destruction,

but what is a principle all throughout the scriptures of what God wants to be able to do for us and with us, again, is something we see all over, but Isaiah chapter 30 verse 21 says it this way. It says, whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way.

Walk in it. The invitation to come home and begin to submit your life to God is to have the God of the universe who's holding all of this in perfect balance to begin to actually be involved in the day to day doings of our life.

He will help you avoid financial pitfalls. He will help you avoid relational train wrecks. There's a God in heaven that cares about what we're doing and I'm I'm telling you, if you want 2026 to be any different, you've got to at some point make a decision to to be led by something other than you. Jesus in John chapter 16 verse 13 said it this way about the Holy Spirit. Says, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but he will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you all about the future.

Jesus talked about a day where the spirit of God was going to not just be on the earth. Again, Jesus was physically here but think about it, he could only speak to so many people in a day. That's why his disciples were freaking out like, wait, if you leave us, who's going to guide us? Who's going to lead us? Who's going to tell us the pitfalls to avoid? Who's gonna tell us not to date that girl? Like, we need you to be here. And Jesus says, no. No. No. I'm gonna send you a helper, the spirit of God who's available to you and I today. See the invitation to come home is to have the spirit of God not just around you but actually begin to live within you that will

that will lead you,

but you've got to make a decision to come home. This is the tension because God is a God's a gentleman. He's not going to force his way into your life. He's not going to like, literally white knuckle and force you into a relationship with him, but he is sitting back saying, I I I promise you, if you would let me lead you,

I can help you avoid some pitfalls next year. Again, I've got stories I could tell about this for days about things I was about to do that would have led me down passive destruction, but God intervened.

The the most recent one is even as we were picking a facility as a church. Again, we were a couple years ago praying about what God was gonna do through Echo's church, and we were we were we were seeking facilities. We probably toured 30 or 40 of them. We got told no by every single one of them, and eventually, we found a small little elementary school in the back of Queen Creek called Faith Sossaman Elementary,

and we felt like a bunch of dominoes lined up, and God was in it. We felt like, okay. This is a yes from heaven. We started to tell our team. We started to rally people around it. We started to get excited about it only to find out the next day when we went to sign the contract, it felt like a door closed in the middle of our face. And the lady said, actually, a a different group of people signed the contract and it's no longer available.

I'm like, I just told everybody that's where we're going. Like, what are we gonna do now?

And all of a sudden, we went through this process like, okay. Look. I've I've learned this enough that a a no is typically a read it's a divine redirection to a better yes, and so we just kept praying, And all of a sudden, God led us here, and here's why this matters. This room seats about 800 people.

That room sat about a 175 people, but the vision that we had for what God was going to do through Echo's church was nothing compared to what God had in his heart. Had we said yes to Faith Dosserman Elementary School, it would have been the death kneel of us as a church.

I'm here to tell you that there's a God in heaven that if you will let him, he will lead your life in ways that will blow your mind. God has better in store for you next year, but it requires you to make a decision to come home. But here's the most exciting thing about making that decision. What happens when you come home to God? You begin to realize that you're

You have a father in heaven that's leading you, and here's the most important one. Here's the most significant one. The third one is that you also begin to realize that you're forgiven and you're not condemned.

Your past is no longer the thing that defines you. Your job is not the primary marker of your identity. It's just what you do for a living. Last verse, last verse that I have for you, after Mary, after Joseph's encounter with the Holy Spirit, here's the culmination in verse 21,

and she she will have a son and you are to name him Jesus. Here's why Jesus was born two thousand years ago. Jesus had a singular purpose for coming to this earth for he will save his people from their sins. See what's amazing is that nobody has nobody has a problem with Jesus.

Oh, hippie Jesus is awesome. I like him, man. He's got some good ideas. He about loving your neighbors. I like the idea of taking care of the widows and the orphans. All that stuff is good. None of that is why Jesus came primarily.

You know the reason that Jesus came? The reason he was born into a manger two thousand years ago? He came so that the baby born into a wooden manger would eventually thirty three years later die strung up on a wooden cross.

Jesus had to be born to a manger so that he could die for our sins. From the very beginning, he was coming to remedy the problem that humanity has been plagued with from the Garden of Eden, sin.

The reason you struggle with addiction, the reason there's tension in your home, the reason that there's strife in this world, the reason that there's wars happening all around the world is because of this thing called sin.

It has plagued humans from day one. You can't control it. You can't fix it on your own. If you leave it to its own devices, it will grow. It will get bigger. You can't solve it on your own. You realize Jesus was born into the first century Jewish culture where their remedy for sin, it it sounds crazy when you think about it. All they could do was sacrificially,

they would take a lamb. They would bring it to church, and they would sacrifice that lamb, and that blood of the animal would temporarily

pay the price for their sin. But the problem was they were just like you and I. They would come to church with great intentions, walk out the door, and do the very thing that they swore they would never do again.

Have to come back with another animal and they were stuck in the rhythm of just sinning and paying for their sacrifice and sinning and getting an animal to pay for their sacrifice until two thousand years ago, Jesus born to a virgin,

born to a mother and father with chaos all around, stepped in to become the final substitutionary penalty for our sin. It's why at 30 years old when he stepped on the scene for ministry, his his cousin, his best friend looked and said, that's Jesus.

The one who takes away our sins. The lamb of God who takes away our sins. He was telling us, Jesus came. He was born as a baby so that he could die and conquer death so that you and I sitting here tonight could be set free. You know what the greatest Christmas miracle is?

The greatest Christmas miracle sitting here available to every single one of us is a God in heaven that is is desperately in pursuit of you. You could walk in the door here tonight burdened with shame, overcome with guilt, struggling

with all types of addictions, and with one moment, one moment of faith, you can walk out of here set free. So the question is is what do we need to do? If you're sitting here tonight going, man, I need to come home. What do we do? Last verse I have for you. The Bible says in first John chapter one verse nine. Here's what we do. If we confess our sins,

he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins, and he will purify us from all unrighteousness. Here's what the scripture says you have to do to come home to God. You don't have to clean up your life. You don't have to fix the addictions. You you don't have to stop looking at pornography.

What you have to start doing is having faith in Jesus, believing that he's the son of God, and that it's not a fairy tale. And that two thousand years ago, God, the perfect one in heaven, who was probably being worshipped by millions of angels simultaneously, he made a decision to leave perfection,

to be born into a manger. Think about it. The God of the universe wore diapers. He became he became vulnerable, so that you and I had the opportunity to be set free. And tonight,

tonight the invitation is simple. The scripture say if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, that you can be saved. I'm telling you, some of you, you are not here randomly. Today was the day that was marked before the beginning of time.

God arranged this moment so that today could be the day that you come home, not not to a parent's house, but to your home in heaven.

And I think that that's the Christmas miracle that some of us need the most desperately. Miss, here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. I'm gonna ask everybody if you would just close your eyes and bow your heads with me as we start to close our service.

I believe again this is a moment where some of you know I'm talking to you right now. It feels like this whole message has been geared to you. It's because the spirit of God is in pursuit of you.

And I just wanna give you a moment right here. Everybody's eyes closed, heads bowed, private moment between you and God to just respond to what God is doing in your heart. I'm gonna ask you to just throw your hand up in the in just a second just so I can know who I'm praying with. And I am believing that hundreds of people are gonna cross the line of faith through our Christmas services. If that's you tonight, you wanna say yes to Jesus. If you wanna come home to Jesus.

If that's you on the count of three, just throw your hand up. One, you know who you are. Two, don't let the enemy talk you out of this. Three, if that's you, throw your hand up right where you are. Don't be ashamed. There's hands going up all over this auditorium. You can throw them up high. Hands responding,

hearts saying yes to Jesus. Father, we thank you for moving. Father, we thank you for speaking. I see your hands going up all over this room. You can put your hands down.

If you would, just pray a prayer like this with me in the quietness of your heart. Again, it's the posture of your heart that does the work, not the words. Say Jesus with all the faith that I have, on this Christmas, I acknowledge you as my savior and as my king. Father, I give you my sin. I give you my life.

I ask for you now to come into my heart to be my Lord, to be my savior, to set me free. In Jesus name, all God's people said, amen and amen. Hey, can we just celebrate, man? There's dozens of people said yes to Jesus tonight.