Trees or no trees, candy or no candy - an explanation of where Stacie Schulz is at

Stacie Schulz writes
Grace for those who do👑and Grace for those who don't👑
It's that time of year again on FB--seeing posts advocating reasons why one is for/against celebrating Halloween, Christmas, Easter--some arguing these holidays are of pagan origin & others arguing there is nothing pagan about them-nor is it wrong to celebrate them. (I want to be clear--I purposefully haven't scrolled my newsfeed--so please don't think this is directed towards any particular person/post, because it's not---just sharing my thoughts on the subject of grace & traditions✌🏼)
I honestly see both sides. Why? Because we too have taken both sides in our journey of growing up & knowing Christ...interestingly, the Lord has led our family full circle, from death into life....leading to even more grace and freedom in every season. Let me explain what I mean by full circle.
When Cade & Ava were toddlers we celebrated Halloween, dressed them up & took them trick or treating...we also celebrated Christmas, we celebrated the birth of Christ, decorated a tree, enjoyed Christmas morning with the children....(but to be honest even back then we chose to teach them that Santa wasn't real, we instructed them that while our family doesn't believe in Santa, there are other families who do & we don't want you to say anything to other children about Santa not being real *unless they ask you* & only then is when you are to tell them what you believe) & at Easter we would take the children egg hunting & go to church afterwards to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
Every person has their own individual journey with the Lord and it will look different for each person and yet the lessons learned on the journey will be similar and distinct for everyone. For our family, the journey of coming to know the Lord in a deeper way began by the Lord leading us to seperate ourselves from the traditions of man for a very long season. The Holy Spirit was doing a deep work in both Kai & I...of separating us from the Spirit of the world BY separating us UNTO Himself....this was followed by Him calling us out of the church SYSTEM (not out of the Body of Christ). The Lord saw our hunger & thirst for righteousness -that our only desire was to *do* everything to please the Father--& at that particular time in our lives, this for us included: keeping the literal Sabbath from sundown Fri. to sundown Sat., keeping the Feast days, keeping the dietary laws, abstaining from all things pagan, dressing very modestly by not wearing pants but wearing long skirts, etc.
We went from celebrating all the traditions of man TO keeping every jot & tittle of the law....but BOTH were void of the essence & substance of Christ.
Both realms --traditions & laws--are of the SHADOW....matters not if one has its origin in paganism & the other has its origin in the letter of the law, BOTH are OF DEATH and both spiritually profit nothing.
Wow! What a journey it has been!
The motive of the heart is always what the Lord looks upon. He sees each person through the lens of perfection, of perfect love & grace....and He sees why we make the choices we make & why we are motivated to do the things we do.
The wonderful thing about our Lord is that He never wastes anything...everything we go through is to teach us....and He will use everything to purge of the FALSE & EMPTY in order to give us the REAL AND TRUE.
This brings me to where He has led our family today.
"We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him...So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus....For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."(Rom.6:9;11;14)
"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me....But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."(Gal.2:20;6:14)
Hear that! Halleluyah! I'm a new creation in Christ! Gloryyyyy!
I'm dead to the world! I'm dead to the traditions of the world...I'm dead to the DEAD letter.... D E A D.
I'm alive in Christ!
I'm led by His Spirit...I'm in the world but not of it.
So what does that look like for our family TODAY?
We are dead to Halloween....we are in the world but not of it...we are free to love our neighbors and enjoy this season of their lives WITH them, blessing them, giving candy, dressing up, loving everyone & having fun. We are DEAD to the world YET love all those in the world.
What does Christmas look like NOW for us? After going 12 years without having & decorating a tree in our home---this year we will probably be putting one up...decorating our home in beautiful white lights & giving gifts (we've always given gifts to the children but have never made it a big deal about Christmas).
We are FREE TO BE.
Jesus is born IN US.
Emmanuel resides every second of every day WITHIN US, not only on Christmas.
What about Easter? Our very lives are RESURRECTED! We live, move, have our beings in Christ, THE RESURRECTION AND LIFE.
And for us, Sabbath is no longer a day of the week....it is WHO WE ARE.
We are HIS REST....and by His grace we bring His rest into the lives of all He gives to us.
We no longer concentrate on *doing* or *going*.....by His glorious grace we know only of BEING....and all of our doing flows from our being IN HIM.
Grace upon Grace to you all!❤️👑

OK , in these days of Winterval...let's do Christmas!!!

Saturday, 12 December 2009 at 22:15 Note by Chris Welch on Facebook. Peter Stott preached almost the identical message the next day in Havant. If I thought he'd read the Facebook note I'd have sued him! In love!.
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Robin White just sent me an invitation to call a Christmas Tree a Christmas Tree and not a holiday tree. Last week I sent a note through to Stephanie Macentire about celebrating the real Christmas...the one where the King of all Kings appears sidelined in an outlying shed possibly surrounded by animals, laid in a manger. In this note I thought this could be expanded. Anyone who has been through many Christian groups and movements will have experienced every strand of belief concerning Christmas. It is not Biblical. So some ignore it. Those in offshoot structures of the older denominations would be shocked that these others exist, since it is a given in Catholicism and Anglicanism that Christians do Christmas. If you are British Christmas is in your bloodstream. And it's fun. It's familial.It's extremely festive.Probably the most festive us Brits ever get! God's view on festivities is slightly different from the Brits. He does them BIG TIME.Generously.Over the toppishly. He made sure the Jews had at least 3 major ones and was probably quite pleased that they do a few others like Purim as well. Now each of the three major ones mean a lot. They are all BIG...whereas apart from the odd day here and there, Brits only really manage Christmas as a lengthier do. Then ofcourse you've got Jewish weddings. In fact most other nations do weddings seriously! We just charge seriously! All the factors that you could get thrown in for free in a Christian community...including your own house built if you are Amish....we godless brits have now to spend the first 10 years of our married life paying off. (In general, secular life is expensive, soulless until drunk,overhyped with little return, where you pay for friendship that should be given free. In a God filled community...and i mean that term very exactly...not what you have probably twisted it to mean...religious , boring, and long dead...nope a God filled community do all this stuff for nothing...or minimal charge and that's where you get this word which means God is in them....Enthusiastically...En- theos- ASTICALLY) So as everybody seeks to encroach on our festival of Christmas and wintervalise it....why don't we do it properly? I haven't got the Word of the Lord on this...because God's nearest festival to Christmas is the Feast of tabernacles. And He'd probably prefer us to do that one. At Christmas time those who attend church hear sermons about how Christ was God Incarnate. God made flesh.God come amongst us. Emmanuel. Well imagine those last phrases with 500 hundred watt spotlights on, and probably needing 3D glasses. Because dear reader...we've been lulled to sleep. Probably by all the candles.
Regardless of all the clear Biblical script saying Jesus laid His glory aside, the Catholic church has continually lifted Jesus' humanity somehow just that little bit out of reach.And the Anglicans caught the sickness by transference. Contagion. Especially high Anglicans. Now these churches do awe very well. And that is good. But they haven't a clue about the words "Jesus laid His glory aside". The first really flash thing that Jesus did was after being baptised in the Spirit. And he was only baptised in the Spirit after first being water baptised "to fulfil all righteousness". He was pedantically marking out a course for us without excuse. He who was perfect, yet totally unglorified human - He'd laid His glory aside in the heavenly vestibule- remember....insisted on doing all the things we would have to do to fully enter and move in the Kingdom. But the point of Christmas and His coming was that He got to succeed as an Adam, where the first one failed. He was Adam 2.0 injected into the human race, into our line. Adam was made fully grown. This Adam 2.0 had to grow from birth.Tested in every point, there came a day when He could freely announce at the time of the final Passover week,"The devil has nothing in me". So fully road tested, He allowed Himself to go into the ground as a seed, so that as He rose He could then transplant this same totally victorious life into anyone who would receive it by faith. As the carol says "Be born in us today". And in the same way that Jesus' life began in an unpromising cattleshed...totally unrecognised by anyone...except God's specially informed welcoming committee the shepherds..... So the minute we ask Jesus into our heart in unpromising circumstances, totally unrecognised by "our equivalent of the Jewish community", totally unrecognised by our "equivalent of Herod's rulership", yet this is His same life. Transplanted in us. With the same throne bound destiny. And we have to learn Him in the same day to day way, that He learned the Father. No different. Nope. No different at all. So with a godly ruthlessness we should assert ourselves. If we are going to do Christmas. Let's do the real one. Not shyly. Not twee twee Jesus meek and mild...all surrounded by haloes. Right there.Right there you just lost your salvation. Because in claiming Jesus to be something other. Something that was a Life with just a little speck of extra glory about it...you are calling God a liar, when he said He laid His glory aside. You are making your salvation far off. Special.And ultimately destroying your last hope of ever getting out of this religious pigsty we have lived in for centuries. What pigsty, you say. I say the pigsty where you get seminary trained men waddling around in penguin costumes, while secretly molesting children, having foul characters with an outward show of piety, blocking people's admission to the free Kingdom that the real Christmas opened up.Not all churchmen are ofcourse ungodly. But enough of them have come to light to seriously damage the reputation of this glorious way of salvation. Here's to an over the top Christmas