Walking With Christ

It’s Christmas.  It’s also a good time to reflect on what this season truly means.  We will be back to the Practical Christianity series after Christmas with a new topic.

⚓ Floatie:  Christmas on a Battlefield

Luke 2:14  “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”(ESV)

We memorize “peace on earth,” but we forget what peace implies—the existence of war.  Christmas is not tranquil sentiment.  It is a declaration—an invasion—into enemy-occupied territory.  Peace only matters if you understand you were living in a warzone.

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✒️ Forge:  The Warzone We Forgot

1. The Battle Didn’t Begin in Bethlehem

Genesis 3:15 — the proto-evangelium

Genesis 3:15  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”(ESV)

The first Christmas is not the start of conflict—it is the counteroffensive.

2. Humanity Adapted to Hostility

Here’s where psychology helps:
Humans normalize danger.

• The amygdala (the brain’s threat-detection center) becomes tuned to constant alert during long-term stress or trauma—a process well-documented in trauma psychology and easily verifiable through standard resources on PTSD and hypervigilance.
• Neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself—means that living in a hostile environment literally trains the brain to treat danger as normal.

Result?  A person can hate the war but still fear the peace—because their brain has adapted to conflict.  This is why combat veterans often describe civilian life as surreal rather than comforting.  It’s why trauma survivors experience hypervigilance even when safe.  It’s why prisoners often fear release more than captivity.

3. Spiritual War Becomes Psychological Normal

Ephesians 6:12  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.(ESV)

We lived so long under the dominion of darkness (Colossians 1:13) that we mistook violence for background noise.  Peace becomes alien.  Safety feels suspicious.  Sin reshaped the battlefield—and the human mind acclimated to it.

4. Christmas Is the Ceasefire — and the Invasion

Isaiah 9:6 — Prince of Peace

Isaiah 9:6  For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.(ESV)

Yet peace is not passive.

1 John 3:8  Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.  The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.(ESV)

Christmas is:

• peace declared
• war answered
• hostilities challenged

The manger is the breach in enemy lines.

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⚒️ Anvil:  Confronting Our War-Shaped Minds

If you’ve lived in darkness, light hurts your eyes.  If you’ve lived in conflict, peace feels like disarmament.  Psychologists call this threat familiarity bias—the tendency to choose the familiar danger over unfamiliar peace.  (This concept is widely discussed in trauma and cognitive behavior literature; it is not fringe.  I highly recommend researching this topic further.)

Spiritually, this shows up as:

• preferring sin we know over righteousness we fear
• rejecting salvation because surrender feels like death
• clinging to patterns that harm us because they feel predictable

John 3:19 explains the root:

John 3:19  And this is the judgment:  the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.(ESV)

We reject peace because war is familiar.  We reject freedom because bondage is predictable.

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🔥 Ember:  The uncomfortable truth

Christmas didn’t just reveal a Savior—it revealed our condition.  It exposed how deeply we had normalized the war.  Some welcomed Him.  Others feared Him.  Herod tried to kill Him.  Not because He threatened violence—but because He threatened the status quo.

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🌿 Covenant Triumph:  Peace Offered in a Warzone

Colossians 1:20  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.(ESV)

The birth in Bethlehem was the start of the end.  The invasion that leads to liberation.  The peace that was bought at war’s highest cost.  And here is the psychological reality that must be recognized:  some will choose to remain in the warzone—not because they love it, but because they cannot imagine life beyond it.

The gospel demands this realization:

• I was at war.
• I adapted to war.
• And Christ came to liberate me from it.

Peace is not the absence of conflict.  It is the victory of the One who entered our battlespace to reclaim us.

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[⚓ Floatie] [✒️ Forge] [⚒️ Anvil] [🔥 Ember] [🌿 Covenant Triumph]
This post follows the Forge Baseline Rule—layered truth for the discerning remnant.