This sermon is called “A Christ-Centered Christmas.” It’s meant to be a very practical message on how to negotiate your way through the next few weeks as a disciple of Jesus.

The Christmas season offers many of us the opportunity to be together with people, family, and friends, with whom we often don’t usually have the time just to have an extended hang out. It really is a privilege to be with people we love. Yet, for many, this can be challenging for numerous reasons. Painful histories. Current conflicts. Differing beliefs. There are some who would suggest that it is best to avoid such potentially hazardous situations. However, Christmas is a time to take up your cross and follow Jesus. It is time to grow and to show that our lives are not our own but belong to Him.

My prayer for you is that each of us would find a way to really make Christmas about Christ - not just in the songs we sing and the words that we say but in the sacrifices and the selflessness that Christ showed when He came to earth and became one of us.

Let’s pray that this Christmas would be powerfully Christi-centered.

Join us on Christmas Eve as we celebrate Jesus' birth at 5:30PM

Christmas can be one of those profoundly lonely seasons for people. Grief, abandonment, job changes, personal moral failure, political and global turmoil can leave a person feeling deeply alone and acutely isolated even in the hustle and bustle of the season. In John’s gospel, we encounter several people who feel long forgotten. For example, in John 5, the apostle John describes a man who was paralyzed. He was lying beside a pool that was supposed to provide healing waters. John writes, “One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?” Jesus saw him lying there. This is no accidental encounter. He knew that he had been there a long time. The man replied, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool…”. Do you hear that? I have no one. This man was deeply alone until Jesus showed up. Be sure of this, Jesus didn’t just show up. He came for this man … just like, He came for us. Friends, the story of Christmas, the story of the incarnation, is the remarkable truth that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God saw us. God came to us. God came for us!

As we celebrate Advent, we are going to rejoice in the glorious truth that “The Word Became Flesh.” I can assure you today that we are no longer alone, unseen, or forgotten. The message of the Incarnation declares to you that God sees you. God knows you. God, in Christ, has come for you. The theme for Advent this week is joy.

Let’s gather together in the Word becoming flesh for you and for me!

Blessings from Pastor Kevin!

Join us on Christmas Eve as we celebrate Jesus. 5:30PM

“In the beginning was the Word…”

Jesus is the One that gives everything its meaning, its purpose, its life. He is the Source, Center, the Goal, the Gift.

Jesus isn’t merely the “Reason for the season.”

Jesus is the Reason for everything.

“God knows how much we need the creation-to-destiny themes of the biblical narrative in order to make sense of our lives, so he lovingly gives those dominant themes right up front… Since God created us to be meaning-makers, he immediately presents us with the wonderful and awful realities that we need to understand in order to make proper sense of who we are and what life is really all about.” Paul David Tripp