For this first week of Advent, celebrating Hope, Pastor Josh takes one of the most seemingly insignificant portions of the Christmas story – the genealogy of Jesus – to show why it is so incredible significant to the whole story. And how that principle is reflected through the entire Word of God. 

People reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the time. And to those who have been compelled to share the gospel, that rejection always hurts. Which is why sometimes we start skirting around or downplaying it. As Pastor Josh shows this week, that's exactly what happened to the Apostle Paul...

The forgiveness of God is astounding. 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." All of it. But forgiveness doesn't negate the consequences of what you've done or make it easy to live with. As Pastor Josh shows this week, living with your past can continue to weigh heavily on you.

"His blood is on us and on our children!" That's what the crowd shouted when they accepted the responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion. The same people the apostles would later still offer the good news to, many them still rejecting it to not only their detriment, but their children's as well. That's something we can definitely learn from.

God says that He will never leave us, nor forsake us. Which means we are never truly alone. But that doesn't mean we won't still feel alone. And God knows that, which is why He gives us families, communities and, yes, even friends. The question is: have you ever asked Him to give you the friendships you need?

We say that 'no man is an island'. The Bible says that "It is not good for the man to be alone". So clearly we were meant to be in community and relationship with one another. And that really shows when we find ourselves in seasons of being or feeling alone. And yet, sometimes God allows these seasons to show us that we are never alone, He is always with us, and we can't depend solely on human community to make it through this life.

The kind of suffering we see in the New Testament is a direct result of spreading the Gospel of Christ. But that's not the suffering most of us endure in North America. Ours is just 'normal' suffering and often it's self-inflicted. But how we react to our suffering now can reveal how we'll react if we're ever called to suffer for the gospel...

It's not enough for professing Christians to simply speak the truth of who Jesus Christ is. Our lives need to be continually backing those words up, showing that He truly has transformed us from the inside out. Otherwise, all our words do is create mass confusion and lead people further away from the gospel... and it would be better then that we didn't speak at all.

At Kingsview, we have a big heart for missions – both at home and abroad. Each year we take time to honour our missionaries, missions teams and share what the vision is moving forward.

God ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. We know this. And yet, it still catches us by surprise when God seems to ignore our 'logic' and direct us in ways that seem nonsensical. And it's not like this wasn't true of the early church either. Acts 16 records an excellent example of God closing doors that, by all appearances, should have been open.