We all need hope. The season of Advent is the perfect time to fine tune our dependence on God for hope. We walk through our longing for hope, God's promise of hope, Jesus's fulfillment of hope, and our worship in response to being given this hope.

God has given us a spiritual family to fight the battles of the Christian life. It's not our chosen family, It's the family he has forged. The key to any healthy family relationship is communication, and Paul sets an incredible example of how to communicate with one another, about one another, and also how to pray God's blessings over one another.

Paul has already laid out the armor that God provides for the battles we fight. Now he exhorts us to invite God into the battle and provides the Who, What, When, and Where, and How to do that: PRAYER.

Paul commands us to stand firm in Jesus, and he gives us six how-tos in order to do that. These how-tos make up the "full armor of God" that we receive from Him. If we take up these weapons, then nothing the enemy throws at us will ultimately succeed.

Believe it or not, we have a whole army of spiritual enemies that are seeking to derail our faith in Christ. The most important part of preparing for this spiritual warfare is understanding where we get our strength. It's not in our own strength that we stand. It is, in Paul's words, "in the Lord and in the power of his might." The only way we can successfully withstand the enemy's tactics is by donning someone else's armor.

In our final installment of our Redeemed Vocation series, we look at slaves and masters. After wading through the fact that Paul assumes the reality of slavery, we find on the other side a countercultural and wonderful perspective on authority. The reality is that God is the ultimate authority, and every authority structure here on earth needs to remember that, including our employment structures.

God, in his grace and power, has offered us the opportunity to be in His redeemed family. This informs our involvement in any and every family we are involved with from now on. Pastor Richard and his wife Debbie walk us through their story of being a redeemed family, despite all their brokenness.

Paul is swept away with the profound and deeply mysterious reality that marriage itself has always been the picture of God's love for us, made perfect in how much Jesus loves his bride, the church.

Jesus has redeemed a community of disciples to live life in a new way. How does that affect our most important relationships, like in marriage? Paul splits the cultural extremes for marriage and calls for a completely new, Christ-centered, and Spirit-filled life of mutual submission and love between husbands and wives.

As we hit Day 1 of a new season at Calvary: The Hill, it's important to remember who is really in charge here. And not only remembering who's in charge, but what is he like? Can we trust him to guide us into the unknown? David's famous Psalm assures us that yes, he can, and he will.