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Communications Team

2019-12-24 Message- 5 Lenses of Christmas, Macro Lens, Census Close-Up and You

By Intersections, Sermons

The National Retail Federation estimated the value of returned holiday gifts at up to $95 billion. Wow! That’s a lot of returns! You’d think that if we knew each other better, we’d give gifts that the recipient would really want!

What a gift worth to the giver may be different than the value of the gift to the recipient. In a classroom in New York, a room full of kids were given candy treats for free, distributed randomly. Then they asked the kids how they felt about their free gift. The results were not promising. But when they were asked to do some clever exchanges, the value increased because each kid got more of what they would really enjoy, what they valued.

God gave a gift and you can return it, sure. But God knows you more than you know yourself, and whats more, God loves you, just the way you are. Right now!

What is the gift of a living, present, Savior, Jesus, worth to you?

Loving us and sending Jesus to live in our midst show us love in action, to take upon himself our sins and our failures but also our hopes and dreams, and then with him, to rise to new life. Sending Jesus was God’s way of loving us and showing us how to love like Jesus. To receive Jesus. To follow Jesus. To be like Jesus. God shows us how to love.

That was God’s way of making the world not just better but redeemed, transformed, different.

That was God’s way of bringing joy to your world. What is yours?

2019-12-24 Message for Kids- Meet Me At the Manger

By Intersections, Sermons

Are you ready for Christmas? Tell me how you have been showing acts of kindness, giving gifts to others! Great. At the manger we add Jesus to the scene as we recall that Jesus was born as a gift to us! You are a gift to us, too! God loves you just the way you are and because we follow Jesus, (who is no longer a baby!) we can share his love with others every day. Merry Christmas!

2019-12-22 Message- 5 Lenses Of Christmas, 4- Telephoto, Zooming Into The Future

By Intersections, Sermons

Are people coming to your home for the holiday? As usual, you need your house to look like, you know, NOT your house as usual? Is your refrigerator stuffed with food items? And how’s the gift wrapping going? Oh, right, do you have last minute shopping to do? While Christmas falls on the same date every year, there always seems to be unexpected disturbances to our Christmas Force testing our best efforts to make the holiday memorable for our family and friends. Whew!

But this is a holy season that is driven by a holy purpose and a divine timeline. It’s “God’s time” — the end of Advent, the moment just before the miracle of Emmanuel’s birth into the world is upon us. Ready or not, here God comes. Into our best and worst of Christmas planning experiences, Sunday’s Gospel reading from Matthew 1:18-25 is all about God moving into our story through the mundane and chaos of our lives. Pastor Kevin  continues his camera metaphor as we pick up the telephoto lens in a message titled, “Zooming Towards the Future,” all about Joseph who takes center stage this fourth Sunday of Advent. God’s ways of redemption and reconciliation, relationship and righteousness do not align with our own, no matter how faithful and stalwart and well-intended we may be. God uses whomever God wants to further divine plans and often in ways none of us would readily choose. All this in this story and we have not even made it to the angel’s appearance!

When have you experienced divine guidance? What form did it take? What was it? What kind of guidance do you seek today? This week, we consider Joseph who took a risk and embraced God’s dream for an incredible future. Get ready to zoom into God’s story with you!