As we approach the New Year, we can look to scripture for our example and inspiration - to allow God to push the restart button of our lives. Thank God for His mercies and His grace at work in us, to always forgive and always restore - all to empower us to be better witnesses for Him!

Tonight is a celebration of the Incarnation of the Son of God. The incarnation was necessary in order to provide a Savior who qualified to pay the penalty for Adam’s high treason by offering His spotless blood as the sacrifice for man’s transgression. That Savior is Christ the Lord.

Man is stuck in the miry clay of spiritual death and doesn’t know it. Jesus heads up the search party and calls out to anyone who will listen. We, too, call out by witnessing. Whosoever answers the call and cries out to God gets rescued, and released from spiritual deaths walls.

Jesus revealed the Father to be a loving, good, faithful, unchanging, and merciful Father who is more responsible than any earthly father who ever lived. To trust God is to trust the person who was the Word made flesh!

God’s word gives revelation to us on my levels. The scriptures are in the context of the time when the events occurred. We can study these scriptures to see what different sources have said about the Name of Jesus!

God is for us and nothing in time or eternity, in heaven or earth, can separate us from His love or from what He’s done for us - no force of evil, or demon from darkness. God is for us, are we for Him?

2 Cor. 2:14-16 shows us how the church is called to pass around the aroma of the body of Christ. As we celebrate communion, let’s rightly discern the body of Christ: 1. in His sacrific, 2. each of us as part of the body of Christ, & 3. the corporate body of Christ.

Isaiah chapter 54 beautifully illustrates how we can trust God with our past, our present, and our future. Circumstances are subject to change, but if we keep our eyes on Him we can be assured that God is our salvation.

When we look at our examples in scripture of the patriarchs of old, we can see that none of them were perfect. Each one was a work-in-progress, compared to where God wanted to bring them. Let us remember that each of us has a much greater potential in front of us which we have not yet attained! Thanks be unto God who calls us to high places!

In 1 Corinthians 2:9-10a, the Apostle Paul says that no matter what we’ve seen, heard, or experienced in God on this side of heaven, it pales in comparison to what God has prepared for us in glory. What we’ve experienced is only a glimpse of what lies ahead!