Central Baptist Church, Portsmouth, Virginia

In many ways Christmas is the most beautiful time of the year. It’s that time when houses are lit up, Christmas trees are put up, and decorations abound alerting us that this is a special season. But, with all the glitz and glamour, all the lights and decorations, there is just one true light. If we miss Him we miss more than we realize. However, if we receive the true light we gain more than we ever imagined.

The world is full of darkness. We look around and we see the darkness of broken relationships, the darkness of broken-down bodies, the darkness of broken hopes and dreams. At the dawn of creation, as the darkness hovered, the first words spoken by God were, let there be light. It was as if God the Son pulled back the curtains of time and space and revealed the splendor of who He is before he ever spoke the physical world into existence. He filled the universe with the light of His presence. This Christmas season we are joining with John as He first introduced Jesus and inviting you Into the Light. The Christmas message provides a light of hope for a broken humanity. And the thing about light is – light always defeats the darkness! So, come into the light with us this Christmas season!

We have made it to the half-way point in Mark’s gospel. There are 16 chapters and we are studying the end of Mark 8 this Sunday. The half-way point also marks a major shift in the book. The focus will turn from rightly recognizing the person of Jesus to rightly recognizing the mission of Jesus and the mission he empowers his disciples for. This is an important section and timely reminder of what’s required for genuine discipleship.

November 20, 2022

This Sunday we look into Mark 7 and compare those with faith and those with tradition.

Have you ever felt like you just needed some time alone and then your “alone time” gets interrupted? The disciples experienced that. So, they saw the problem and the obstacle. Jesus would teach them to the people and the opportunity. He does the same thing for us.

Do you want the good news first or the bad news? We’ve all had that question posed to us at different times. As we continue in our “Empowered” study through Mark’s gospel we come to some good and some bad news. Two events that seem almost unrelated, but Mark strings them together on purpose. Let’s explore why that is and how this passage is so timely for us today.

Have you ever had an interruption that seemed like it couldn’t have come at worse time? Maybe you endured some negative consequences due to the delay. What can we learn when things don’t go according to plan, or our plans get interrupted? As we continue our empowered series, Mark chapter 5 will speak to just that.

Maybe the most dreaded time during school was when the teacher said there was going to be a pop quiz. No time to study, no time to prepare, in the moment you had to demonstrate what you remembered from your studies. The time had come for Jesus to give his disciples a pop quiz. Their reactions reveal they hadn’t really learned the lessons. These are hard lessons to learn, so let’s study together.

Everybody loves a good story. Jesus was a master storyteller and all of his stories were embedded with deep truths about life. This week, we get took look at a story that Jesus said is foundational to understanding all the other stories.