Why does Jesus' transfiguration matter to you? Because it shows you who Jesus really is. It shows you that he is the one who fulfills the past and the one who foretells the future.

What do you do when you hit the limit of what you can handle? That's what Isaiah shows us in our reading for today. He shows us that it's normal for us to hit our limits and to feel weak, then he shows us where our strength comes from and how to find that renewed strength in times of weakness.

Sometimes it seems like controlling our thoughts is impossible. And yet in Hebrews 3, the writer tells us to fix our thoughts on Jesus. So what does that mean? And how do we do it? That's what we find out in this week's sermon.

Why would four men with stable, respectable jobs drop everything and walk away in the middle of a work day? That's what you're forced to wonder when you look at this story from Mark 1:14-20. But what becomes clear pretty quickly is that the man who called them was no ordinary preacher, and his call was no ordinary call. He was calling them to a higher purpose, and as he did, he gave them his powerful word to accomplish that purpose.

This week as we continued our Refocus series, we refocused on God's Word. In this lesson from 1 Samuel, we see a great example of how to respond to God's Word: with the humble attitude that says, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening."

What is it that defines you as a person? What is your identity? That's an extremely important question, and a question that all of us struggle to answer. Today, in Romans 6, Paul shows us what our true and best identity is. Through Baptism, we are dead to sin and alive to Christ.

Happy New Year! This time of year, it can be easy to get caught up in discontentment and fear of the future. But the writer to the Hebrews reminds us that we can enter the new year content and confident because God will never leave us.

This message, from our Lessons and Carols Service, focuses on the Good News of Great Joy from Luke 2: that a Savior has been born to us, because we have a God who loves us!

There are certain moments in life that change everything. It's tempting to look back on those moments and look for all the reasons why they happened when they did. But what's more important is to look at the results of those moments. That's what Paul shows us in Galatians 4. He shows us that as a result of God sending Jesus into the world on the first Christmas, we receive freedom, family, and a future.

This week we continued our Waiting series by talking about how we can wait with joy. That's what we find out in Isaiah 61, as the prophet foretells what Jesus would come to do. He wouldn't come to give us more of the fleeting joys of this world. He would come to bring us real joy. Sturdy joy that isn't based on the ever-changing circumstances of life, but on the unchanging reality of what Christ has made us.