Prayer is an essential component of our faith. It's how we access God. Yet, so often we take it for granted and miss out on what a treasured resource it is.

We finish our Advent series by looking at what was, ultimately, the main reason that Jesus came to Earth: to be our substitute. Jesus earned a righteousness we needed and took on the sin that separated us from God, all so that we might have a reconciled relationship with God, the one thing we need above all else.

The season of Advent reminds us what it's like the wait on the Lord with a sense of expectation. Just as Israel expected the Messiah's first coming, we now live expectantly, longing for his second coming

The Incarnation is the greatest and most wonderful mystery in the Universe. In Christ, God himself became like us so that we might become like him. And the implications of the Incarnation are many, and they deserve our attention and reflection.

All of us know what it's like to wait on the Lord—to anticipate his intervention and action. The season of Advent helps us reflect on what it means to wait on the Lord well. It shows us that we can be honest about the brokenness that we experience in this life while at the same time cling to the hope that God will always make good on his promises in the end.

Our guest preacher, Pastor Subash, joins us all the way from Bangalore, India, where he labors as a pastor, church planter, and seminary professor. He shares from a story about David what it means to truly give thanks to the Lord.

Paul's prayer for the church is that we would have hearts filled with Christ—that he would be the driving force behind everything that we do. That means we have to be diligent to allow the Spirit to turn our affections back to Jesus through the means he has ordained to do just that.

Paul grounds his entire ministry—his entire identity!—on one thing: the Gospel. A right understanding of the Gospel and implications is foundational to our role as the church.

At the end of Ephesians 2, Paul makes a twofold statement about the identity of Christians: that we are citizens in God's Kingdom and members of God's household. These identities have enormous implications on our lives, and they are both aimed at the purpose of displaying God's nature and character to the world around us.

Coming off of the wondrous explanation of our salvation in verses 1-9, Paul then explains what that salvation means for our unity with one another. Where there was once a "dividing wall of hostility," there is no more. We are all one in Christ.