"A Story Only God Could Write"

Christmas Eve Sermon - 12/24/23

Misty Creek Community Church

What a blessing it is to celebrate the Advent and Christmas season with the Misty Creek community of faith family. I am privileged to be your pastor and serve alongside our beloved Worship Pastor, Doug Allen. I feel incredibly blessed and honored to serve Jesus at Misty Creek. My heart is filled with joy as we prepare to celebrate, once again, the birth of the Christ Child. I know this year has been filled with difficulty on so many levels for so many of you.  However, these challenging times have also provided us with the opportunity to exercise our faith. We have witnessed acts of profound kindness and creative ingenuity. We have helped and taken care of each other. My friends, there are many more reasons to be grateful and filled with hope because of our faith. God has and will continue to help us to see all of this through as His promise is fulfilled with our Christmas Hope, Jesus!
 
The visit between Mary and Elizabeth, one young and unwed, the other advanced in age, both poor and pregnant, is a familiar scene during the Christmas season. Mary proclaims, “the Lord…has been mindful of the humble estate of His servant,” and the rest of her song proclaims that God is working out His plan. This friendship and prophetic song present us with an opportunity to consider what God has done in the past, while encouraging others in the uncertainty of today about what God has promised to do in the future. It is important to keep this friendship and Mary’s song in mind as we spend Christmas with friends and family and know that many of our brothers and sisters around the world are facing so much uncertainty. Our hope is that the eyes of our family and friends are open to see that the Child the angel Gabriel declared would be named “Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”. 
 
While much has changed over this past two years, that message of truth is unchanged.  What a blessing for us to have our Christmas Hope! As we go about our celebrations and festivities this Christmas, my prayer is that you do not let this story of God’s unfailing love for the world go unspoken, but share this good news with everyone, so that they can find hope, joy, peace, and love in the infant Savior of the world!  
 
I hope you will join us for our Night of Christmas this Saturday at 6:30pm and our Christmas Eve candlelight service on Christmas Eve at 5:30pm.
 
I am eager to see what God has in store for us in the new year. Our lives and ministries will continue to transform in ways we could never imagine. I am grateful for all the ways you support the ministries of the Misty Creek Community Church and pray that you will continue to do so with your prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness in 2024. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
 
Grace and Peace,
Stephen

JESUS AND JUBILEE 
ISAIAH 61:1–4
Scripture is clear that Christ's coming into the world occurred at exactly the right time and the precise place. God had ordained his birth since before the world began. God scripted the birth of Jesus down to the smallest detail. Scripture contains many occasions when God spoke directly to men about what was going to happen. When we study Scripture, we find many prophecies that were made and have been fulfilled, and many relate to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Why should we trust biblical prophecy? The answer is found in the very beginning of the Bible: How can we know when a message has been spoken by the Lord? If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord takes place or comes true, that is a message from the Lord. That prophet has spoken the truth.
The purpose of prophecy in the bible is given in Isaiah 46:9-10: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” Not a single prophecy from the Bible has been proven false. Many prophecies remain in the future, but all that has come to pass have been verified to be true. Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, many godly people, from Moses to Malachi, prophesied about the coming Messiah, the King who would deliver Israel. In fact, the prophets revealed so many details about the coming Christ that it is difficult to believe that the people around Jesus didn't recognize Him. But it's still like that today, isn't it? Despite much evidence, many refuse to acknowledge Him. Prophesies told us that the Messiah will be:
 

This is incredible!! Hundreds of years before it happened, and it was prophesied perfectly.
See you Sunday!!
May the Joy of our Savior surround you this Advent season!   
-Stephen

The Story You Live in is the Story You Live Out! 
The Wilderness and the Way
Isaiah 40:1-5 & Isaiah 64:1-4
Advent means arrival or coming. It is a word we often associate with the arrival of some life-changing technology. And often these inventions are held for advancing our great cultural obsession: the elimination of waiting. With each innovation, we attempt to expedite the process in the name of progress and rush more of the world to our fingertips. Thanks to Uber, Amazon, curbside pick-up, and delivery, waiting and patience have taken a backseat. We thought this would create time, but we seem to be losing more of it, and losing touch with it. Because of our obsession with eliminating waiting, we are anxious, entitled, and even spoiled. In kingdom time, however, Advent tells an alternative story. It is a season in the Christian calendar in which we intentionally enter into a time of waiting, longing for the arrival of Jesus at Christmas. Let’s commit together to resist the urge to rush ahead to the nativity and Christmas day. Let’s be where our feet are as we daily experience, the hope, love, joy, and peace of Christmas.
 
May the Joy of our Savior Surround you this Advent Season,
Stephen

Is There Room in Your Heart for Jesus?
 
Luke 2:4-7 & Revelation 3:20
 
Over 2000 years ago, God gave mankind the greatest gift in human history, the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem in the most humble of places, an animal stall because there was no room for them in the inn. God has made room in His heart for all who would put their trust in His Son, the Savior of the world. Jesus came not just to save the lost but to rule and reign in our hearts. Is there room in your heart for Jesus?
I love y'all
doug

The Story You Live in is the Story You Live Out Part 6:  
Stepping into the Story
Luke 1:30-33
 
Genesis 12:1 “The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”
The Lord has called us all to step away from all that’s familiar, just as he once called Abram. He has invited you into His story. To make room in your heart and your home for the infant Savior of the world. As we approach the season of Advent you are encouraged to leave behind the normal rhythms of life in order for God to reveal to you your place in His story. This is no ordinary place story. It’s a story filled with love, joy, peace, hope and endless possibilities. 
I am thrilled that Misty Creek will begin a Church-Wide Advent Study December 1 (Get your Book by 12/1!!) The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus—a translation of the Greek word parousia, which means “coming.” The season of Advent encourages the church to look back and remember the birth of Christ, while looking forward in anticipation to the second coming of Jesus. Advent is the start of the (Western) Christian year and begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. This Advent we are thrilled to offer each Misty Creek family an Advent Devotion book, Protagonist: Stepping into the Story of Advent. We will begin the daily devotions from the book on December 1st. So, what is a protagonist? In this study the protagonist is the main figure in a real situation. The Creator steps into the story and takes on the lead role. The Author becomes the Protagonist. 
 
Grace and Peace,
Stephen

Misty Creek Community Church

11/19/23 Sermon:

"Living In and Living Out the Story of God"

The Story You Live In Is The Story You Live Out, pt.5

1 John 2:16

Senior Pastor, Stephen Streett

The Story You Live in is the Story You Live Out Part 4:  
This is what God’s really like.
After Highland Park Presbyterian Church announced the shocking death of their young pastor a few weeks ago they wrote: “When we don’t know what to do, we are taught to turn to God and pray.” So, they held a vigil in their Sanctuary and invited all who could “to sit with our grief and to pray with us.” That Sunday the church held “a time of guided prayer in the Sanctuary . . . asking for God to give them wisdom as they grieve and to guide their church through the next steps.” 
I have lost a lot of loved ones, friends, and church members over the years. Although we may think that when we lose loved ones, we lose part of ourselves, I have a different perspective, the more and more I’ve leaned into the Lord during times of grief. My perspective is that I don’t lose part of myself but instead my spirit more and more begins the transference process. I like to call it transitioning from this life to eternal life, and to unpack this a little bit, for me it looks like this; I am becoming more and more part of the heavenly realm than I am, the earthly realm.
 
We worship a God who knows how to grieve. We worship a God who doesn’t try and minimize the pain of loss. We worship a God who has mercy in our times of anger and frustration. We worship a God who knows when to speak and when just to hold us as we cry. This is what God is really like.
Have you begun to try and think through the over, under, front, and back stories of your life? It's a good exercise for journaling. What has been the underlying pain, difficulty, or even travail you have suffered and endured? How has this unfolded in the "front" story of the visible movement of God's kingdom in and through your life? What about the more hidden and secret "back" story, in the house of prayer that is becoming your life? We are living in the story that defines us:
A story of grace, in which all brokenness will experience healing, all suffering will come to an end, and death will be merely a gateway into everlasting life for those who respond to the love of Jesus.
 
Grace & Peace,
Stephen

"It Is Well With Our Souls"

(The Story You Live In Is The Story You Live Out, Pt.3)

11/5/23 Sermon

Thursday April 27, 2023, from 7pm-11:30pm will be forever etched in my heart’s memory. The hospice RN, Muhammad, motioned for Karen to come into the room. Early that evening our church prayer team prayed over her father, Gary, via Facetime and Doug Allen sang the most anointed version of Leaning on the Everlasting Arms of Jesus that I had ever heard.  Gary breathed his last earthly breath as Karen held her daddy in her arms – Joyce, Karen, Gary, Melodie and I were standing of what NT Wright refers to as thin place ( I explain in the sermon). I was struck by the intensity of the grieving that I witnessed that evening, including my own.  We hugged each other with such passion that it just moved me.  Later I was thinking about what I wanted the family to know - how they are to deal with grief…. how to move through it…what they are to do with the pain.
This led me to recall the account of David when he grieved the death of his son with Bathsheba.  Here is the scripture reference of the whole story 2 Samuel 12: 16-23
 
“David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in a sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them. On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”
David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord and worshipped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate. His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!” He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
I want to emphasize verses 20 and 23 “I go to him”. We will go to our loved ones; they will not return to us!!! This is the greatest assurance of hope that we have. God will make all things new. It is well with our Souls! 
Grace and Peace,
Stephen

"The Misguided and the Misinformed"

(The Story You Live In is the Story You Live Out, Pt.2)

10/29/23 Sermon from Misty Creek Community Church

Humanity runs down every path the world has to offer in hopes of finding life, happiness, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, love, and peace, to find themselves, only to find each path a road of empty promises. They are taught that they will find love, joy, peace, meaning, purpose, and fulfillment if they have more, do more, see more, know more; if they give more, serve more, sacrifice more; if they work harder, work smarter; if they pray more, read more, sing more, jump more, cry more, laugh more, attend more; if they focus on modifying, adapting, improving, and bettering self, then they will be “more,” they will find their self, be who and what they were made to be, and enter into that full life they’ve been longing for. To their disappointment and destruction, none of these brings about the life they are looking for—not in this world and not in the next.
 
As the church, are we clear with people what Jesus has invited us all into? Are we clear on His expectations, or are we simply inviting people to an easy or hard moralistic, religious, psychotherapy, behavioral-modification group where the goal is to produce more people like ourselves? Are we being clear that a “win,” “success,” and/or “to find one’s self,” according to Jesus, is to lose it, to die?  This Sunday I hope to be very clear and share with you how we got here.
 
Grace and Peace,
Stephen

10/22/23 Sermon from Misty Creek Community Church

Senior Pastor, Stephen Streett:

"Beloved Son, Beloved Daughter"

Luke 15:11-32