Amen.
Well, good morning. Merry Christmas! Are you feeling Christmassy? You ready for it? Ready or not, it's coming. It's coming. It's coming.
Hey, I want to offer a particular word of welcome to those of you who are new here. My name is Alex. I'm one of the pastors here, and we're delighted if you're joining us for the very first time, whether you are in person or online. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
What we are all about, especially in December and especially gearing up for Christmas, is connecting. Connecting people to God, connecting people to each other, so together we can engage our world for good. We hope you experience a little bit of all those things, again, especially if you're new and whether you're here in person or online.
If you are just joining us, our December series has been talking about the songs of the soul. What we've been doing is looking at these things that mark December: Christmas music. So much of the carols that we sing, and even if you don't love the carols and don't love the music, some of these songs have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. The reason why they've stuck for so long is that they strike a chord deep in our souls. They talk about things that we long for or hope for, and we hear these songs for generations.
They've sustained people in good days and bad days, hard situations—songs that speak of God's hope and God's love being poured out for us to meet our needs in the middle of all the challenges and crises. They've sustained people through famines and wars for generations all over the globe, and for some of us, they've kind of kept us going through some of the darkest, hardest days of our lives.
And pop stars who don't want anything to do with Jesus, who aren't at all Jesus people, are still recording songs declaring, "Christ the Savior is born." They'll be quick to say, "I don't want anything to do with this Jesus guy." Actually, they don't believe any of this. They just like the hope and the joy and the peace and the promise. They want the joy and hope and peace and the promise without the one who comes to fulfill and bring us joy, hope, peace, and promise.
But that's how deep these songs have resonated with people over the centuries. So what we've been doing over the course of the series is just pulling a couple lines from some songs we sing and then pairing them with a scripture passage that informs or roots or anchors the thing that we're singing about in a deeper, larger story of what God has done for us in Jesus.
This week, we are looking at the song we just sang, "Hark the Herald," written by Charles Wesley in the 1700s. He wrote last week's song as well. The couplet, the lines we're looking at are this one: "Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail the incarnation. The incarnate deity."
A couple months ago, I was reading a book by a psychologist—not a Christian psychologist, just a psychologist. He was talking about the problem of anxiety and helping people overcome anxiety. I was just interested in it because so many people struggle with anxiety, right? So many folks in our culture, in our world, deal with anxiety and struggle with it.
One of the things he talks about in his practice is that he has to convince people that anxiety is not your friend. Anxiety is not your friend. Because some of the people he works with have been in the same situation. They've made a ton of money, been very successful, running on anxious energy. He says, "No, no, no. Anxiety is not your friend."
For other people, anxiety is a good excuse to do things that they would like to do anyway. "I'd rather just hide behind my phone or bury myself in a book or bury myself in a video game or eat too much or drink too much." They kind of like what anxiety gives them the excuse to do. He says, "No, no, no. Anxiety is not your friend."
Because here's what anxiety does: Anxiety makes you smaller. It focuses you, right? Anxiety focuses you, which is great if you're being chased by a polar bear or a Yeti, right? If you're being chased by a polar bear or a Yeti, absolutely. Be focused. Know what you're about. But listen, you don't want to live your whole life with alarm bells going off. Alert, alert, alert, alert. It's a terrible way to live. It makes you so, so small, so focused, but so narrow. You miss so many other things going on.
He said this, and this has application whether you deal with anxiety or not, but I think it has application broadly to all of us. He said, "Listen, the healthiest version of you is not anxious and small. It's grateful. It has tinges of awe or wonder or curiosity. It's more hopeful or expectant than anxious." He said, "Listen, this is the healthiest version of you."
And I'm like, that's such a great picture of a healthy human being. And listen, I don't know if you're dealing with anxiety or not. Maybe you don't deal with anxiety. Maybe you're more angry than anxious. Or maybe you're more stubborn than anxious. Or maybe you're a little bit more proud or self-righteous than anxious. Maybe you're more ridden with feelings of guilt or shame than anxious.
But here's what I want to say: The best version of you is full of gratitude, hopefulness, expectancy, wonder, joy. And as Jesus followers, we would add, all that leads us to worship. And that's where Christmas comes in.
That's where Christmas comes in. Because once you get your hearts and minds around what God has done at Christmas, it unleashes the gratitude and the joy you were made for. When you get your hearts and your minds around what God has done at Christmas time, it releases a whole different type of energy. It displaces anxiety or fear or ambition or worry or guilt or shame.
When you start to peer deeply into what God has done here at Christmas time, it has the power to make you this person who lives full of wonder and joy, with a disposition of gratitude and celebration. The best version of you. The version of you that God created you for. And most of all, especially, to lead you to a place of worship.
And that's exactly what Charles Wesley is doing with this song, "Hark the Herald." He says, "Listen, the lines are this: Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see." In other words, God himself has wrapped himself in a human body, poured himself into this little baby. And then there's a call to worship: "Hail the incarnate deity."
Take a look at what God has done. He has, incarnation means that God has just sort of put on flesh to become one of us. Here's what God has done. And this is crazy. If you're willing to camp out here, if you're willing to give this space in your heart and your mind, this will totally change your disposition. Totally change your life. Release all kinds of joy and hopefulness.
When you begin to understand that God has put on flesh to live a perfect life—the kind of perfect life that none of us could live. When you come to wrap your minds around the good news that God has put on flesh to redeem all flesh, to make all humanity sort of a part of God's presence, a part of God's grace and mercy, to weave us into God's good news, his redemptive work—the one perfect human being who finally obeys God all the way, even to death on a cross, for your sins and my sins.
When we begin to understand what God has done in Jesus, it makes us different kinds of people. The healthiest version of us that we can possibly be. And so this morning, there's an invitation to be people who gather around Christmas and let it mess with you.
Right? Listen, I don't know what your situation is this month. I don't know what kind of December you're having. Your December might be full of comfort and joy. You might be merry and bright. You might be down. There's always more pain in the room than anyone knows. That's the only thing I know. There's always more pain in the room than anyone knows.
Here's what I know: You take whatever you've got—ambition, hopes, dreams, or heartache and heartbreak. You take whatever you're bringing into December. You wrap that around Christmas. It'll totally reorient you.
Take your stuff. Everything. Anything. All your mistakes. Any shame, guilt, any stupid thing you've done in the last six days, the last 60 days, the last 60 years. Take everything you've got. Wrap it around Christmas. Let Jesus do something new. Let the incarnate deity release something new in your life: gratitude, hope, wonder, expectancy, joy, and especially worship.
This is what the author of Hebrews is unpacking in Hebrews 1, that passage that Greg just read for us a few minutes ago. This whole idea that God has kind of wrapped himself in a human body, in human flesh. And Hebrews 1 is inviting everyone to come and worship, come and worship, come and see what God has done.
Let's reread the opening of Hebrews 1 again. Here at the very beginning, it says this: "In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom also he made the universe."
The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
The faintest whispers began a handful of weeks ago—these whispers that maybe, just maybe, the most successful coach in NFL history was considering coming to your UNC Tar Heels. I just counted these rumors entirely. Why in the world would the most successful coach in NFL history lower himself to such a low position to come to a team mired in mediocrity for decades? This is not happening.
And then the rumors grew. And then they grew. And then they grew. Until finally, comfort and joy for UNC fans everywhere. An unexpected, crazy, out-of-the-blue person bringing all kinds of new resources, all kinds of new hope for redemption in a mediocre, broken situation to bring new resources, new hope, new power, new wisdom to turn things around.
And this one, this one, the one that we celebrate at Christmas time, has come. He's going to make everything, everything, everything new. All of it. Turn it all upside down and make it full of God's grace and truth and beauty and wisdom.
See, the author of Hebrews says this: "Hey, in the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets." Now, in the Old Testament, there were three primary offices in Israel: there's the king, there's the priests, and there's the prophets. And basically, for the last couple hundred years of the Old Testament, the kings and the priests are all corrupt. They're all terrible. Almost all of them. There's like one or two good ones.
But the prophets became the primary way by which God speaks to Israel, to God's people, to kind of correct them and call them back to himself as they're drifting all over the place and they're chasing after all the wrong gods. So the prophets became kind of a primary spokesperson for God to call people back to God.
And Hebrews says, "That was great. That was really good. But here, God has done something even better in these last days. God has spoken to us by his own Son." That God himself has come to give us the message.
Remember back in like fifth grade, you learned about primary sources and secondary sources, right? A secondary source is, "Hey, I talked to someone who was a witness to the event, and kind of, I got information from them that I'm passing along to you." That was a secondary source. Those were the prophets. Those were good.
There's a primary source now. God himself has sent his very own Son to give us his word, to tell us what's true, what's right, what's good. Tell us what's true about God, about humanity, about what's wrong in the world, and how God is going to make it right. He's going to talk about it. He's going to live it out. He's going to demonstrate what it means to be God's man, God's person.
Now, the author knows that his mostly Jewish audience is going to take some convincing, right? Because the prophets were held in super high esteem, and they should have been, by the first-century people of Israel and the Jews. And so he starts to give us the Son's resume.
Here's the Son's crazy resume. Here's why it's worth it for you to wrap your whole life around Christmas: His Son, God's Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom God also made the whole universe.
So in the first century, the person who was the heir or the inheritance was the firstborn son, the oldest son, right? So basically what the author of Hebrews is saying is, "Listen, the Son is the one who's going to inherit all of this. The whole thing is pointing to him. The whole thing is ending in him."
He stands at the end of the timeline of human history, of the world. He stands at the end of the timeline. He's going to get every single thing, every molecule—from the sun to the moon to the stars to everything about it. It's going to all be inherited by him. He stands at the end of all things.
There's a Greek word used elsewhere that talks about how Jesus is the telos. He's the telescope. He's the thing that the whole thing's pointing to, the telescope of history. All points to Jesus. He's going to inherit all the things.
And then the author of Hebrews goes from the very end of the timeline back to the very beginning of the timeline and says, "Through whom, through whom, through Jesus, he also created everything." That is, that the Son existed before time began, before humanity began. This Son was the one through whom the Father speaks.
He was the living word that spoke words of life, that created all things, that created all the stars, all the sun, all the moon, every black hole, everything, everything, everything was created by Jesus for the sake of Jesus. He is at the beginning of the timeline, the preexistent one.
Before time began, so through whom he made the universe. He's at the end of everything, and he stands at the end of everything. It's like one of those—remember those old film strips? Like in fifth grade, you held these film strips, you could hold it in your hand, right?
The Son stands outside of time. He creates the film. He creates the whole film strip. He sees the end of the film. He sees the end of time. He stands outside of it. He can see the whole thing beginning to end.
And the author of Hebrews says, "Here's this crazy thing. The one who created the whole thing, the one to whom the whole thing is going to, he inserts himself into the film, into the timeline, to redeem the whole mess."
Because the thing that God started in the very beginning, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
And so, what has God done about it? What has God done about the brokenness of the universe, the brokenness of the world? He has inserted his Son into the world to redeem the world, to turn things around, and to make things new.
The author of Hebrews continues. He continues to unpack who this Son is, what the Son has done, and what the Son shows us. The author of Hebrews says this: "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being."
Every so often, I'll meet one of your kids and be like, "I know who you are. I know who you belong to. I know who you came from," right? Like, you can meet people, right? And know, "Oh, man, you look just like your mom, just like your dad. You act just like your mom, just like your dad."
Like, my poor kids are saddled with some of my mannerisms. Some of them talk as fast as I can. I do. Bless their hearts.
The Son is the exact representation of the character of God. He is the radiance of God's glory. Like, God's the sun, and the Son himself is like one of the beams coming off the sun. It's rooted exactly in him. It shows us what God's character is like, what God's nature is like.
Listen, I got really, really good news for you this morning. If you want to know what God looks like and sounds like, look at Jesus. He shows you exactly what he looks like. There is no mean God behind Jesus. There is no ambivalent God behind Jesus. There's no detached God behind Jesus. There's no clockmaker God behind Jesus. Jesus shows us exactly what God is like.
If you want to know what God looks like, look to Jesus. Now, it's really important you look at all of Jesus because Jesus demonstrates a life of grace and mercy and love, and he talks about judgment more than anyone else.
Like, literally, the person who talks about hell more than anyone else in the Bible is Jesus. Like, that's where most of our teaching on hell comes from. So, we got to take all that seriously, the whole of it seriously.
But the way it all fits together is that God's no, his judgment always serves the larger yes of grace, mercy, truth, righteousness, justice, love. God has made himself known in Jesus.
Every so often, someone comes to me and be like, "Hey, I think I had a dream last night that God gave me a direction or I'm sensing a nudge or a tug or a pull to go do something kind of crazy, kind of new." And they're like, "Is that just me? Is that the hot dog I ate last night? Or is that actually God? Is God actually calling me to do something maybe a little bit crazy?"
And one of the things I'll tell them is like, "Well, I'll tell you what, why don't you go just go read some Jesus? Go look at the Gospels. Does it sound like him? Look like him? Does it match pitch with that voice, that good shepherd? That's how you know if it's Jesus or not."
God has sent his Son to show us what God's character is like. He is the one who shows us all of God's goodness, all of God's love. He is the radiance of God's glory. He's the exact spitting image representation of everything that God has for us.
He's the one who shows us all of God's goodness, all of God's love. God is like, so he's at the beginning of the—he's at the beginning of things, he's at the end of all things.
And then the author of Hebrews keeps going on. He sustains all things by his powerful word. This means not only does Jesus stand before the beginning of time, and not only does Jesus stand at the end of time, and not only does Jesus insert himself right in the middle of time, he stands outside of time and he holds everything together.
My friends, I've got really, really good news for you. We live in a Jesus-saturated reality. There's nothing that exists apart from him. No sun, no moon, no stars, no black hole, no atom, no molecule. You don't exist apart from Jesus. Your family doesn't exist apart from Jesus.
Even people that hate Jesus want nothing to do with God, they only exist because Jesus sustains them every millisecond of every single day, saturated with the powerful word of Jesus, the reality of Jesus. He invented the laws of physics. He invented gravity. He invented love. He invented bodies. He invented organs. He invented molecules. He invented matter.
Everything, all that is not only his invention, he holds it all together, and he, every second of every day, is filled, filled, filled with the presence of Jesus, who holds and props every single moment up by his goodness and love.
Here's what I want you to do. Just for a second, just close your eyes for just a second. Just close your eyes for a second. Right now, he fills the space between you and the person. He fills the space between you and the person. Jesus fills this space. Your heart only beats because Jesus is propping it up, holding it together.
Breath in your life, in your lungs, that's Jesus.
Lord Jesus, we receive you and all your fullness, the one who sustains all things by your powerful word. Open our eyes that we might see and receive your grace and mercy. Amen.
The author of Hebrews can't get enough of Jesus. He keeps—in fact, one of the mantras throughout Hebrews is Jesus is better, Jesus is better, Jesus is better, better than the prophets, better than the angels. He's the final great high priest.
In fact, that's something that the author of Hebrews kind of tags here as we continue to read in Hebrews 1, continues to unpack the Son's resume and who he is and what he's done. The Son's done this: "After Jesus had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven."
So the author's referring to Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. And a good Jewish reader in the first century, they totally get that sort of that sacrifice on the cross and that purification, that sacrifice for sins because one of the highest holy days in ancient Judaism was Yom Kippur.
On Yom Kippur, the great high priest, one high priest, would go into the Holy of Holies there in the temple only once a year and make one sacrifice for the sins of the whole nation—all the sins for the whole nation for the whole year on one great high holy day. It was a somber day. It was a holy day.
The people who are reading this totally understand, "Oh yeah, that great sacrifice of one high priest." But the author of Hebrews is saying that Jesus does something different that the other high priest doesn't do, that after he made that sacrifice, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.
I was talking with someone the other day who loves to throw great parties. She threw a big party last weekend, and she said, "One of the great things about the party was I worked so hard ahead of time that when the guests finally arrived, I could sit down and enjoy it."
Isn't that great? Have you ever had to work so hard for a party you never sat down to enjoy? Because you're too busy making things happen, that kind of thing? She was able to sit down and enjoy it.
One of the weird themes throughout the book of Hebrews is that Jesus is the great high priest who sits down. It's like, that's kind of weird. Why is that such a big deal?
Here's why it's a big deal. In the Old Testament, if you ever try to read through the Bible plans and you give up in Exodus and Leviticus, you know why. It's a lot of details. And part of the details is the details about the temple are like to the moon, like nth degree, super detailed about what the temple is supposed to have—tables and lampstands and forks and spoons and bowls. I mean, it's crazy detailed about what the temple is supposed to be like.
And do you know what's not in the temple? A conspicuously missing piece of furniture in the temple: There's no chair for the high priest to sit down because his work's never done. The high priest can't ever sit.
There's always more sacrifices to make. Always more work to do. Always more sins to cover and be forgiven. The high priest can never sit down because there was always more to do.
But here, finally, the author of Hebrews says this crazy, wonderful thing: "You know what? Merry Christmas. Jesus is the high priest who can finally sit down." You know why? No more sacrifice for sins.
Like, listen, not from the priests, not even from you. Like, some of us are so buried in shame and guilt. And you have these voices in your head on repeat that just condemn you over and over and over again.
I got really, really good news for you. Jesus, the high priest, made the last great sacrifice for sin so that you don't have to be enslaved to those voices anymore. No more shame. No more guilt. Jesus is Lord. He has made the sacrifice once and for all to deliver you and me from our biggest enemy, from sin, which results in death.
You and I have both been delivered from sin and death forever and ever and ever. Amen. And if you will allow that to take root in your heart and you gather around that there at the manger on Christmas morning, it will release in you humility, gratitude, awe, wonder, rejoicing, worship.
You are free. Because the great high priest made the final great sacrifice to take away all your sin forever and ever. Forever and ever. Amen. That's God's Christmas gift to you.
The one who sets you free to be the man and woman God designed you to be, living lives of gratefulness, expectancy, hope, freedom, and especially worship to the Most High King.
Because Jesus is Lord and he has made the one last final great sacrifice for you and for me.
Let's see if we can gather all this up because the author of Hebrews has done a lot of work to try to help us to get oriented to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
The author of Hebrews says this: "Well, this is what happened in the past. In the past, God spoke to us through the prophets. That was good. That was helpful. He also forgave sins to the high priests. All these are good things. There's nothing bad or wrong about these things."
But the author of Hebrews says that what God has done in Jesus sort of is greater than all of these things. Now, God has spoken to us through his only Son. He is the source of all creation. He is the goal, the telescope, the telos of all creation. He is the sustainer of all creation holding everything together right now, every moment of every day.
He is the radiance of God's glory. He is the exact representation of God's being, God's character. You want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. He shows you exactly what God is like.
He's the last great high priest who makes the final perfect sacrifice for sins. Good news. Great joy. Jesus is born.
There's an old prayer that refers to and reflects on Christmas morning. And the prayer says something like this: "In Jesus Christ, heaven has given so much that heaven can give no more."
In Jesus Christ, heaven, God himself, has given so much that this is the greatest gift he could possibly give any of us. He gives us forgiveness, grace, and mercy.
Later, the apostle Paul will write, "If God will give us his only Son, how will he not also give us all these other things that we care about?" God who gave us his only Son, he's not going to withhold any blessing from us.
We can trust him. We can trust him. We can trust him to bring all our hurts, all our pains, all our hopes and fears of all the years are met right here in this baby, this infant, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.
Come and see the one who is the exact representation of God's being. Hail the incarnate deity. A call to worship. Don't miss him. Don't miss him. Don't miss him this Christmas.
Don't get too busy. Don't get too distracted. Don't miss what God has done here in Jesus.
I don't know what kind of Christmas you're having, what kind of December you're having. I don't know what you're bringing in today. I don't know if you're mostly anxious or mostly angry or mostly stubborn or mostly ambivalent.
But all I know is you are the best version of you when you're living a life that is grateful, expectant, hopeful, full of wonder and joy, and especially when all our worship is organized and oriented not around our jobs, not around our families, not around money, not around people's approval or success, not around control, not around grasping for approval, or trying to work off our own problems.
You are your best version of yourself when your worship is organized around the one who came to save us and rescue us in Jesus Christ, King of glory, the hope of all the earth.
That's where we're laying today with wildly important take-homes.
Wildly important take-home number one: The best version of you—wonder, joy, curiosity, gratitude, and especially worship. What God has done at Christmas time invites all of us into that place no matter where you're coming from this Christmas.
This is an invitation to all of us to bring, to wrap every situation, every disposition, no matter how much baggage, no matter how much background, no matter what your childhood was like, no matter what's happening right now, no matter if your family is falling apart or melting down, you're falling apart, melting down—even if life is wonderful and you are awesome—come and bring that to Jesus.
Come and bring that to the Lord. Wrap that around Christmas. Let him reorganize, reorder your heart, your mind, your spirit. You can trust him; he is good.
You can trust him; he is good. Jesus shows us that we can trust God. He's a good father. He invites us to come and adore him and to find you becoming the person God made you to be.
In fact, here's the Son in all his glory, right? Source of creation, goal of creation, sustainer, radiance of God's glory, great high priest, exact representation of God's being, great high priest makes a final perfect sacrifice for sin.
In Jesus Christ, heaven has given so much that heaven can give no more. And so there's some invitation here.
Hey, Christmas is just a few days away. There's some invitation to respond to that. One, let's go see what God has done. Let's go and see what God has done.
There's a call to worship, right? Hail the incarnate deity. Come and worship. Come and worship. Don't miss him. Don't miss him. Come and see what God has done.
Let's go. Let's make that a priority. Let's go and camp out there, and there might be some letting go that you have to do. You might need to let go of some of your resistance. You might need to let go of lesser energies—your anxiety, your anger, your fear, your ambivalence.
For some of you, the biggest thing that's blocking you from eternal joy is your own ambivalence. What a terrible thing to block you from joy. For some of you, what's blocking you from peace, from forgiveness is your own pride, your own stubbornness. What a terrible thing to block you from knowing peace and joy and forgiveness.
You might need to let go of some lesser things in order to come to the Son, to the gift that you might be a person marked by freedom and joy and worship.
I want to invite this. I want to invite you to make this home, not a temporary stop. I want to invite you to let Christmas disrupt you, to like camp out, right?
Listen, don't go through the motions and check off tidings of comfort and joy, check, check, check, Christmas, and then move on. Like, the invitation is to camp out here, to let Christmas disrupt you, to let Christmas reorder you, that you might actually know the wonders of God's great love and allow that to shape not just the next few days, but might be the driving factor, the center of your life as you build a life around the wonders of God's great love at Christmastime.
And then finally, we go and tell others what God has done for us, right? Just like the shepherds did, we looked at that a couple weeks ago, like the angels proclaimed it, like the author of Hebrews is proclaiming it. We go and tell, go and tell, go and tell, go and invite other people to come and step into what God has done for us, for all of us here at Christmastime.
It's our last Sunday here. We've got these little business cards, little invite cards. In the next 48 hours, we're going to do four different services here, three more down in Pittsburgh. We're running like seven different opportunities to invite all our neighbors and friends and family.
We're going to be streaming the 4:30 service online. It is not too late for God's great love to intersect someone you love. It's not too late for the wonders of Christmas to go out and say, "Hey, come and see, just come and see, just come and see what God has done in Jesus."
I invite you to be an instrument of declaring God's good news, great joy for all people. May you and I gather around what God has done at Christmas. May that release in us gratitude, openness, wonder, joy, hope, expectancy, no matter where you've been, no matter what you're doing, no matter what you're up against or what you're into, the Lord has come.
May that lead you and I to lives of worship. That's what you were made for.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, thank you for coming to show us what the Father looks like. Thank you for coming to reveal to us God's heart for the world. Thank you, good Son, for pouring yourself into a baby who became a man who followed his good Father all the way to death on a cross.
Holy Spirit, would you help us to camp out here, to open up our hearts here, to receive the good news, great joy for each one of us.
Lord Jesus, I pray for my friends who are here who have resistance. They got different energies. They got different things that they're living out of. They got different plans, different projects, different ambitions. They're buried in shame or guilt or that can't be for me. I'm not good enough, or they're just buried in kind of ambivalence and shrugging their shoulders.
Oh, Lord Jesus, we invite you to come and disrupt us. We invite you to come and mess with us. Come and awaken us to the wonders of your great love and give us the courage and the strength to open up our hearts and our minds and our spirits to the God who created us, who sustains all things, who will redeem all things, and one day who will make all things new.
Would our hearts be open to that God making us new too? We ask all this in Jesus' strong mighty name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
on Dec 22, 2024
