Christmas Day is here! I hope you've all had a great day, playing with your toys, unwrapping your gifts, eating yourself silly, preparing your "Day after Christmas" shopping strategy, figuring out a way to beat the crowd in the return line at Target, etc. However, you have spent it, or continue to spend it, I wish you the happiest and brightest of days.

We're kickin' off the twelve blogs of Christmas by asking, "What kind of person are you?" All of us fall, to some degree, within one of three categories. We'll look at the first type of person today...

First there are the regressors. They're the type of people who continually want to take things back to the way they used to be. Nostalgia becomes the driving force in their lives. I simply can't sum it up any better than Tim McGraw in "Back When." Looking back at his childhood he recalls at time...

Back when a hoe was a hoe. Coke was a Coke.
And crack's what you were doing when you were cracking jokes.
Back when a screw was a screw, the wind was all that blew.
And when you said, "I'm down with that," well it meant you had the flu.
I miss back when, I miss back when, I miss back when.

The funny thing is that later in the song, Tim will lament that "they're puttin' pop in my country." Give me a break, Tim. You've done more to push country music toward the mainstream than just about anyone other than your wife, Faith Hill! Oh well, I digress...

The point is that some people are so caught up with "back when," that they can't function in the present or prepare for the future. Before some of you assume that I think that what happened in the past is somehow not worthy of remembrance or emulation, I don't think that at all. I was a history major in college! Let's celebrate the great things of the past, let's remember them for all that they're worth. But let's not let the past become the force that drives our lives. We walk with our eyes to the front to see where we're going, not to the back to see where we've been. We can't relive the past, we can't turn back time, we can't go back to another way of life. By the grace of God, which makes "all things new" (2 Corinthians 5:17), get your eyes to the front, and get on with your life...

Important words for individuals, important words for churches, important words for Gateway Community Church.

Til tomorrow!
Thayer