Good Morning Washed-White-As-Snow Bloggers! I love snowy mornings like this as they always remind me of God's amazing grace, loving mercy and sacrificial forgiveness! Yes, by God's grace, we are washed white as snow! PTL! and Amen! It's sometimes hard to believe that He would love me so much as to make a way to be forgiven and allowed into His presence. But it's true! What love we know and get to share! Start there with your worship today and this week. Amazing grace how sweet the sound...and reality! PTL!
This morning began with an awakening from the dogs and then them waking Karen early. This allowed God to redeem this time by allowing us to share a couples devotional we were going to start yesterday. I love beginning the day with God, Karen, Love and yeah, even sometimes dogs! Then it started to snow while I was engaged in my own quiet time in my prayer closet and Karen the same in her quiet space. God has been speaking as I stilled myself at Jesus' feet for a spell. That respite has continued for three hours and has led me through a great time with Karen, God and now to sharing what I heard with you. Isn't God great and loving and ever-present!
So where has He led today? As always there is a thread through my devotionals that I use and it is a thread that some of you are to process as well. Do you realize how intimately God is involved with your life and with our church Body? He is always speaking and directing. He uses us just as He created us and has gathered us to encourage each other, build up His Church and to team up to go love and make disciples like Jesus. I often contemplate that Good News Delivery Company idea that God led me to develop and I continue to allow Him to tweak. We are gathered for His purposes and we all matter. We all have custom made roles to play according to how we are created, custom gifted, and according to our season in life and circumstances. Thinking about that should lead to the idea of Jesus' promised easy yoke for all who come to Him. It leads me to worship, praise and deeper exploration of what He has for us now and next? As always during a new year, I tend to spend more time exploring, asking, listening and receiving from God what His plans are and then for how to plan, who is included and what are the next baby steps for some of you, me and some of us together. How does He want to use each of us to move towards our fuller potential in His Good News Delivery Co.? I know He wants to develop some new small groups and ministries in the next few weeks/months and I continue to seek Him for who, what, where and when. Please pray into this and ask How He may want you to partner with some to move to the fuller potential and greater things He has for you and your team and our Body. Then talk to me or Sarah and let's start pursuing this earnestly. This is the next step in becoming a dynamic movement and for coming alive in '25! Thanks Lord! Stir us. Lead us to dreams, visions and ideas and unite us in small groups and as a Body to keep seeking, discerning and following You well. Bring us alive in '25! Amen! Be earnest in your pursuit of Him and His plans and open and supple in His hands and watch what He will do!
So how does this thread through our devotionals below? See for yourself. Be still, humble and open as you engage with God prayerfully through them. He is speaking to you and may have a word for our Body or your small group as well. Thanks Lord! Expect the unexpected and start praying for BIG GOD things that may seem impossible for nothing is too hard or impossible for God! He is ABLE! Interesting to note that I thought I had plans laid out for our preaching calendar until Easter, BUT GOD. Two weeks ago He led me to change things. Yesterday we discussed Simeon and Anna and the people of faith God gathered that day to proclaim the Messiah had come and to prophesy some things. There were actually 5 gathered who were people filled with, touched and led by the Holy Spirit before the Holy Spirit was given to man. Simeon, Anna, Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Today two devos discuss he Epiphany or the coming of the wise men and next Sunday, instead of the plans I had, God has led to our discussing these events. (I was supple, God redirected and now affirmed to me that I was listening and chose to adjust from my plans to His. May we all be better at that!) The Holy Spirit comes to us as we step into faith in Jesus and He gifts, empowers, corrects and leads us to God's best. He leads us to go live and love more like Jesus and make disciples and teaches us to pray and fulfill our purposes in His Good News Delivery Co. PTL! Thank You Holy Spirit! Come and lead us to the best and perfect plans and our unique purposes and all for God's glory! Amen. We are united by God for His purposes and to reflect His love and light today! Let us be about His business as we take that Good News and His love to many! Come Lord! Have Your way with us and unite us in love and lead us to go love like You. Bring revival and new life alive all around us! Thanks! Amen!
Upper Room: The Unexpected
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. - Isaiah 55:8 (NIV)
The magi traveled far looking for “the one who has been born king of the Jews.” They sought him in Jerusalem, but King Herod sent them to Bethlehem where the chief priests and teachers of the law said the Messiah was to be born. There they found the baby Jesus, not in a palace but in a house, with his mother. Had I been one of them, I might have been disillusioned, but scripture gives no indication that they were disappointed by the humble scene.
When God’s answers are not what we expect, it can be disappointing. Our church experienced this during the long process of finding a new senior pastor. The church elders scheduled guest preachers for a couple of months and then arranged for an interim pastor to serve for a year while a search was conducted. But two weeks before the interim pastor was to arrive, he informed us that he would not be coming. We were back to square one!
This was not what we had expected, but it was a wonderful opportunity to practice trusting God. God’s answers may not be what we expect, but they are always perfect. Like the magi, we can receive them with joy.
Today's Prayer
Dear Lord, thank you for your awesome power and for your perfect, unexpected answers to our prayers. Amen.Sarah Evans:
Our Daily Bread:
|
Phillips Brooks wrote the lyrics to the beloved carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” after visiting Bethlehem. Brooks, pastor of a church in the United States, was so moved by his experience that he wrote this to his Sunday school students: “I remember . . . on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the ‘Wonderful Night’ of the Savior’s birth.”
In 1868, Brooks put his thoughts into a poem, and his church organist set it to music. The song spoke stillness and peace into the unsettling aftermath of the American Civil War: “O little town of Bethlehem / How still we see thee lie! / . . . The hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight.”
Matthew wrote of our Savior’s birth in Bethlehem in Matthew 2. When the “Magi from the east” (v. 1) followed the star to Bethlehem (see Micah 5:2), “they were overjoyed” to find Jesus (Matthew 2:10).
Today, as we celebrate Epiphany, we too need the glorious news of our Savior’s birth. As the hymn reminds us, He came to “cast out our sin and enter in” and “be born in us.” In Him, we find peace.
By Alyson Kieda
REFLECT & PRAY
|
|
Where in your life do you need the peace the Savior offers? What aspect of Jesus’ story touches you most?
Dear Jesus, thank You for the hope and peace You’ve brought to me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Matthew’s gospel emphasizes gentile (non-Jewish) inclusion into God’s redemption story. His genealogy, for example, highlights three gentile women—Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth (Matthew 1:3, 5). And Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, was previously married to a gentile, Uriah the Hittite (v. 6). In Matthew 2, gentiles—the magi (who may have been members of the Persian royal court)—come to worship Jesus (vv. 1-2). By highlighting gentile inclusion in Christ’s story, Matthew leads his readers to the good news that God’s redemption is for all people and His followers are called to “make disciples of all nations” (28:19).
Monica La Rose |
|
|
|
|
|
The Word for You Today:
PrayerStarters
LISTEN ONLINE
