Spring of Hope

Buy  my books   " Joy in the Journey "  and  " Song in the Night" on Amazon now 20% goes to missions               Experiencing sound quality issues?  Please Click here   Beauty for ashes and joy for mourning Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 2:8-12 As we celebrate Joy Sunday today, the candle that we lit—the pink candle—is traditionally known as the Joy Candle. I am not entirely sure why it is pink while all the others are purple, but that one candle teaches us many things about our lives in this world. It reminds us how we can be filled with joy even in the midst of the troubles, grief, and pain that surround us. Over the four Sundays of Advent, I shared that on the first Sunday we celebrated Hope, then last Sunday we celebrated Peace. Today we celebrate Joy, and next Sunday we will celebrate Love. These are four essential qualities of Christian living in this world—im...

Buy  my books   " Joy in the Journey "  and  " Song in the Night" on Amazon now 20% goes to missions               Experiencing sound quality issues?  Please Click here   Immanuel, God with us   Matthew 1:16-25  The Christmas season—particularly the four Sundays before Christmas that we call the Advent season—invites us to reflect on key aspects of our Christian faith: hope, peace, joy, and love. The word Advent means “expectation,” a longing and waiting for something to happen. For us as Christians, that “something” is the coming of the Messiah, the birth of Jesus Christ. As we celebrate this season, we revisit the stories of Christmas in ways that speak these messages into our lives. Today, we look at the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 1. Matthew is one of the two Gospel writers, along with Luke, who provides a detailed description of the birth of J...

Buy  my books   " Joy in the Journey "  and  " Song in the Night" on Amazon now 20% goes to missions               Experiencing sound quality issues?  Please Click here   Spirit, Water and the Blood   1 John 5:1-12 We continue as we are coming to the close of the study that we started on the non-Pauline letters—letters that were not written by Paul. So this is the last one, the letter written by John, who also wrote the Gospel of John. He wrote three letters, and here we come to the first letter, and we close our study with that before we go to the Christmas story starting next week. I wanted to close our study on the doctrines that we began several weeks ago, focusing on how our doctrines and our faith are rooted in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and He is God, and He has always been God, and He is eternally the Son of God. Th...

Buy  my books   " Joy in the Journey "  and  " Song in the Night" on Amazon now 20% goes to missions               Experiencing sound quality issues?  Please Click here   He Who is in you is greater   1 John 4:4 We have been studying the non-Pauline letters—those New Testament letters not written by Paul. While the majority of the New Testament letters are indeed Paul's, there are several written by other authors, and today we look at one written by John. John also wrote the Gospel according to John and the book of Revelation. Over the next few weeks, before we begin the Advent season next Sunday, we will continue exploring some of these books. In this particular passage, John addresses the false teachings and doctrines spreading among the small and growing churches of that time. These believers were struggling to remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus Ch...