Reach Community Church

I have good news for you this morning—God wants to hear from you.

Today, we’re stepping into a spiritual discipline that most Christians will admit they want to grow in: prayer. And like I said last week, I’m not here to guilt you into religious activity. I’m here to remind you that life is found in these places. Prayer is not a ritual we perform for God; it is our one-on-one connection with the Father. It’s the place where our hearts are shaped to His will, where our fears are laid bare, and where His voice can be heard above the noise of everything else. And today, we’re going to approach prayer from an unlikely place in Scripture. We’re heading into the Old Testament. You’ve probably heard the phrase “digging for buried treasure.” Today, we’re going to look at prayer the same way—because sometimes the most life-giving things aren’t found on the surface. They’re found when we’re willing to dig.

Most of us don’t struggle because we don’t know what we should be doing as followers of Jesus. We struggle because we underestimate how necessary some of those things really are. We tell ourselves, “I’ll be fine. I’ll get to it eventually.” And yet we live with a quiet frustration—less peace, less clarity, less freedom—than Christ actually promised us. So for the next two weeks, we’re going to talk about two practices that aren’t optional add-ons to the Christian life… they are essential to living free in Christ. Today, we’re going to talk about what it means to abide in the Word of God. Next week, we’ll talk about prayer—not as a duty, but as a living connection that gives life. And I want you to hear this clearly—I’m not here to guilt you into religious activity. My goal is far better than that. I want to convince you that life with these practices isn’t heavier…it’s freer.

Happy New Year—welcome to 2026! Every new year carries with it a pinch of hope… that quiet thought in the back of our minds that maybe this could be the year. The year things change. The year habits break. The year healing begins. The year faith becomes real again. You can fill in that blank for yourself. But if we’re honest, hope alone isn’t enough. Without help—real help—we don’t get very far. We’ve all made the promises. We’ve all set the goals. And most of us know how quickly our good intentions fade. That’s the good news. We don’t have to do this on our own. Through Jesus, we have access to the greatest help we could ever receive—grace that restores, power that transforms, and mercy that meets us right where we are. Not condemnation. Not pressure. Help. So the real question as we step into 2026 isn’t what do you want to change? It’s will you lean in and allow Jesus to help you begin again? Because the truth is—we’re not very good at lasting change by ourselves. But with Jesus?….

Love is one of the most used words in our culture—and one of the most misunderstood. We say we love coffee. We say we love our kids. We say we love Christmas. But the love the Bible speaks of isn’t a preference, an emotion, or something that fades with circumstances. It isn’t something we fall into or out of. It’s something that moves, initiates, and costs. Advent doesn’t begin by asking how well we love. It begins by pointing us to the Love that came to us. And until we understand that, we won’t truly understand Christmas.

On the third Sunday of Advent, we light the pink—or rose-colored—candle. Traditionally called the Shepherds’ Candle, it represents joy.

But just like Hope and Love in the earlier weeks of Advent, Joy also has many counterfeits. One of the most common substitutes is happiness. What’s the difference? Happiness is a state of well-being or contentment; it’s a pleasurable or satisfying experience.

Joy, however, is a source or cause of great happiness—it is rooted in something (or Someone) that produces lasting delight.

Here’s the question: Do you want an experience that fades… or a connection to the source that endures? Trying to find joy in the trappings and traditions of Christmas is like opening a beautifully wrapped present labeled “Joy Inside”—only to discover the box is empty. Our traditions don’t contain joy; they point to it. If we want the empty spaces in our hearts truly filled, we must look not merely at Christmas, but through Christmas—to the One in whom indestructible, unspeakable joy is found.

Reach Community Church

There are a lot of things competing for our attention during the Christmas season. But the next four Sundays are meant to slow us down and help us remember what is truly important. Through the birth of Jesus, we are given access to Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. And this week, we begin with Hope. So what is hope? Webster’s defines it as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” But the biblical definition goes deeper: hope is “confident expectation.” It’s not wishful thinking—it’s trust in a God who keeps His promises. Romans 8:24–25 says: “For in this hope we were saved… we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The tension we face during this season is the same struggle that follows us all year long: we are in the habit of putting our hope in other things. We may never say that out loud, but our hearts often drift there. Advent re-centers us. It reminds us that true hope is not found in circumstances, accomplishments, or holiday expectations. It is found in Christ alone.

Reach Community Church

Last week, we talked about the better covenant God made with us through our faith in Jesus. This week, we focus on the sacrifice that made that covenant possible. There was a payment in blood that had to be made. Hebrews 9:22 reminds us, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Sin is not just the problem of “those people”—it’s our problem. Romans tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Jesus came to fix that problem once and for all.

So the question this morning is: What sacrifice are you trusting in?

Everyone has some kind of agreement with God—spoken or unspoken. We think: “If I do better, God will bless me.” That’s covenant thinking. But Hebrews 8 reminds us: there’s a difference between the Old Covenant, which depended on our performance, and the New Covenant, which depends on God’s promise. Warren Wiersbe says“A covenant is not a contract we negotiate with God; it is a relationship established by His grace and guaranteed by His Son.” So the question becomes personal: Which covenant are you living under—your promises to God, or His promises to you?