Speaker: Heath McCoy

Life has a way of being disrupted by one thing or another. Something comes up, catches us off guard, and we wait for that thing to be over so we can get on with life. What if we responded differently to these inevitable distractions? Like the shepherds disrupted by the news of Jesus’s birth, we can listen and look to God and tell others about the distractions in our life and what God is doing.

When Jesus arrived on earth, he brought and showed us the way to live a God-honoring life. If we want to experience the life of Jesus and all that that life brings, we must adopt the lifestyle of Jesus ourselves. We slow down to connect with God, serve others, and sacrifice with eternity in mind. Jesus always has and always will invite others to “Follow Him” and be committed followers, not just fans.

In this Christmas season, we reflect on the meaning of “Advent” and how it applies to two arrivals: Jesus’s birth in the past, and His future Second Coming. As we wait, we must have hope. Hope that confidently expects our faith to bring results, and that trusts entirely on the person of Jesus.

As we learn to know God more and more, we will grow in faith and understanding more and more. When we work to know God, we know how things grow, we are able to give, and and we find that we can grow even more. There is always more to know about God, and we have the joy to know him better and better and better!

In this message, we read a miracle of Jesus providing for his disciple’s needs. We too can trust Jesus as our savior and provider, knowing that wherever He leads us, He will also provide. Our part in trusting means we keep the right motives, engage with the assignment God has for us where we are, and take care of what God has given us.

As we read this miracle of Jesus’s in the last message of this series, we reflect on the connection between leprosy in the Bible and our own sinful natures. Both begin from within, cannot be hidden, and separate us from others. But, Jesus overcame both leprosy and sin for us. We can have faith that Jesus is willing to help us in the process and command to “be clean!”

Just as Jesus restored sight to a blind man in the Bible, Jesus can restore our vision for the future today. Without vision, we get distracted and lost, blocked by sin. Jesus can give us hope, vision, and purpose again.

When we feel lost or in need, we must come close to God. If we stay consistently obedient to what God has called us to do, even if it feels mundane, God will bring us to an even greater outcome.

Jesus is willing to go to extreme measures for you. Through the miracles he performed, we can see that death does not have the final say, our stories are not finished, and that Jesus still does miracles in our lives and world today.