There are things in God's Word that our world and our culture don't want to hear. They aren't popular. Those are the things that can be difficult to share. Those are the things that can be difficult to hear. But the message of the Bible is necessary. We need to hear that we are sinners. We need to hear that we have a Savior.

People tend to trust what they see. Spiritually this is problematic because there are so many things that we can't see. There are also so many things that we don't know. Add to this that sometimes what we see is not reliable and we have troubles. But we have God's Word that is always reliable and sure. As a special gift of his grace, he has also given us his sacraments, which we can see and touch and taste.

Your identity governs everything about you. It governs what you think, what you say, and what you do. That makes your identity very important. One thing that we learn from Scripture is that if your identity is found in someone or something other than Christ, you will have identity issues. Another thing that we learn from Scripture is that God gives you the gift of an identity... You are a child of God.

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When a child is born, your imagination reels. You wonder what that child will be like. You also have expectations for the child. Mary and all those who heard about the birth of the Messiah had expectations too. Some of their expectations were small and unbilblical. But Jesus came to exceed expectations.

When you have thought about Mary, have you ever asked, "Why her?" Why did God choose Mary to the be the mother of the Savior? There was nothing special about Mary in an earthly sense. Mary had no special holiness that made her "better." Yet, when we ask that question, we find that God choosing Mary was far more about God than it was about Mary.

Preparation is a large part of most peoples' lives. We learn to prepare for things pretty early in life. However, do we often think about preparing our hearts? And more specifically, do we think about preparing our hearts for Jesus' coming? John the Baptist came and preached a message of preparation. He came to prepare hearts for the Savior. He did so by urging people to repent. That same message stands today. Jesus is coming back and we need our hearts to be prepared, so we too, need to repent.

How long would you bear with something before you gave up on it? How long would bear with someone before you gave up on them? That would be an interesting question to consider from God's perspective. How long should God have bore with his people before giving up on them? The reality is that we have given God every reason to give up on us, but years worth of disobedience could not negate the grace of God. God's grace is unshakeable!

If you lived at the time of Jesus, what would your first impression of Jesus have been? It likely would not have been that Jesus was a king. He didn't look like what a typical earthly king would look like. But Jesus didn't come to be an earthly king, he came to be the Messiah-King. He came to be a heavenly king. His purpose was to do big things like defeat death, crush the devil, and save you. Because Jesus was successful he now sits on his heavenly throne and he deserves all praise an honor as the king of kings.

One of the things that makes a Christian different than a non-Christian is how they approach death. A non-Christian may have theories of what will happen after death, but they don't know. The Christian has a confidence that comes from God's promises. That doesn't mean that the Christian will never doubt, but the Word will always bring comfort to a Christian that those in Christ will rise to be with him forever. We give thanks for that confidence and we praise God for all the blessed Christians that he has taken before us.

The Christian does not need to pretend that judgment does not exist. The Christian also does not need to fear judgment. Jesus has taken God's judgment on our behalf by dying on the cross for our forgiveness and our salvation. Therefore, instead of judgment the Christian receives JOY!