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Worship is the weekly refreshing of our memories in the story of who God is and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

Worship weaves the fabric of life into a unified whole. Affections, emotions, passions, and desires are brought into harmony with a mind and will surrendered to Christ. We are thus taught and enabled to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

There are times when the gestures, kindness, and gifts of another obligate in some way. Such is the case with the mercy of God. Having become the recipients and beneficiaries of mercy, we are urged to live lives of worshipful response, "to present our bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, and acceptable to God." (Romans 12:1)

The Gospel invites confidence. A church that has lost its confidence in the Gospel has lost its purpose and its reason for being. We may be confident in the presentation of the Gospel for we are called to this by God and because it is God's power to salvation.

How is one to be right before and with God? Since no amount of good we do can undo even the smallest of sins, how can the broken relationship be restored? God by grace makes us right by the offering of Jesus Christ. This is received by faith.

Faith is only as good as its object. For Christians, faith is the heart's rest in the power and reliability of God. For us who are justified by faith, our object is God who is able and who is faithful to keep his promise and to accept us through Jesus Christ.

Abraham, having believed God, is described a a friend of God (James 2:23). We too are made a friend of God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

The Psalmist asked,"Who is wise? Let him give heed to these things and consider the lovingkindnesses of the Lord."(Psalm 107:43) His point is that wisdom recognizes the interventions of God and ascribes thanksgiving.

As a season, Advent reminds us to prepare not only for the celebration of Jesus' coming at Christmas, but for his coming again. As a people looking for the second advent of our Lord, we seek to grow in love and holiness.

Often, the work God is doing takes time, time to grow, time to answer prayer, time to work in history to prepare for Jesus Christ's coming, time to make of us all he desires us to be. The continuation of God's good work gives us reason to be hopeful and patient toward one another.

God has a time; God has a plan; and God's work inlcudes the subtle arrangement of time, circumstance, and people that his good purposes be fulfilled.

The symbol of the tree tells the story of salvation.

From Matthew 2:1-23, the presence of the Messianic King compels a decision. The Magi could not simply admire Jesus, they chose Jesus over the pretensions of Herod's court.

Jesus Christ inaugurates and effects the regime of grace so that all who surrender to his rule may no longer be slaves in the regime of sin and death. Instead, we become slaves of a better freedom, those who live under the reign of grace.

While the grace of God in Jesus Christ has power to forgive sin, grace cannot be used as a justification or a license to sin. Grace is a reign or rule which gives us power to live as we ought. In that sense, grace gives us true and genuine freedom.

The reign of grace sets us free from sin's tyranny by uniting us with Christ in both his death and resurrection. By the grace of God in Jesus Christ, we have power to live as we ought to live.

Jesus Christ set us free from the tyranny of sin in order that we might enjoy the life under the rule of grace.

You and I are spiritually helpless. We can neither save ourselves nor enable right living. But there is good news in the midst of our weakness. God is able to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. By the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ we are not condemned, we are emancipated, and a new way of living is open before us.

Through the Holy Spirit, God gives victory in the mind over the tyranny of the flesh.

Under the reign of grace, the Holy Spirit testifies to our new status as children. With a mind set on the Spirit, we no longer live under the old narrative of slavery. We live with the confidence of being children of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Christian's approach to life and decisions is not determined by the frustrations and sufferings of the present, but by the hope of future glory. Suffering is tempered by the expectation of glory, and glory is made deeper and more profound by the experience of suffering.

Christians lives are guided and encouraged by the expectation of the future God promises to us. That which God has accomplished in Christ will be fulfilled. This gives us hope.

Prayer is instinctively a mark of the believer's life in Jesus Christ. Since we are weak, prayer expresses our dependence upon God. Assisting our human weakness, the Holy Spirit represents our needs to God the Father.

Christians know that God in faithfulness, power, wisdom, and love works within all circumstances to the benefit of those who God.

What God has done in and through Jesus Christ has established a bond of love that cannot be broken. From this bond, three truths encourage us in adversity. First, God is for us. Second, God will not betray what he has done in Jesus Christ. Third, God's love is stronger than any assailant or adversity.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ effects a change in us as well. Mary's grief is transformed to joy. Peter's guilt is met with forgiveness. The Disciples' fear is replaced with peace. Thomas' doubt becomes the strongest confession of faith in John's Gospel, "My Lord and my God."

In our life in Christ, there is a gracious God-side in which God has acted to save us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is an adherent-side wherein one repents and surrenders by faith to Jesus Christ. There is also a church-side. On the Church-side, there are four commitments we hold in common: We commit to Jesus Christ, to growing Christlikeness, to the body of Christ, and to service in ministry.

As those who share in the fourfold commitments of all Christians, we seek to display our faith by transformed living.

Discipleship is lived and expressed by means of a Christian citizenry. While ever mindful of the divine purposes for the institution of government, Christians who are also citizens of a more enduring kingdom, live respectfully and rightly for the common good. However, we must not and cannot abide by an unjust law contrary to God's law.

Recent studies indicate that 70% of those born between 1982 and 1992 who have been active in church for at least one year during high school, drop out church by age 22. Of those who drop out, only one third return even sporatically by age 30. With this we should not be satisfied. We should not give up our young adults without a fight. We must be intentionally and spiritually equipped to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ in "Jerusalem," i.e. among our own children and youth.

God the Holy Trinity is a perfect of relationship of love between the persons of the Trinity. Still by creation and redemption God seeks to enfold us into a relationship of love. Confessing the Trinity, we seek for love not to be ingrown and self-absorbed, but like God, we seek to enfold others.

The call to discipleship includes a call to living as Christians in society. Disciples live for the community's good. We do good as those seeking to have a missionary encounter with our own culture.

Satan's accusation was both against God and Job. Satan accused that Job was not free, and, if he was, he would curse God. Love and devotion require freedom. In ease and in suffering, Job chose God.

When pain and suffering are out of proportion or attack the innocent, many offer explanations. However, not all answers are useful, good, and true. In the voice of Job's wife, two unusable answers are discerned. While we must live without easy answers to suffering, we always live by faith.

When difficulties and/or distractions invade our lives, we should continue intentionally and deliberately in faith as we recognize the danger of becoming spiritually sluggish or in shrinking back. Faith obeys God as one rests in God's reliability

While at times we are unable to solve rightly the puzzles of life's difficulties, we always live by faith. In the puzzle, faith seeks an encounter with God in Christ; faith seeks to know Christ.

The Lord has a call upon our lives and our church that cannot be obviated or averted by the broken roads of our lives.