A people of holiness, formed for and from Himself, has been God’s idea all along. Eons before men made plans for the building of nations, the heart of God imagined not just a person or a family, but a people—a nation-- who would bear His image and His likeness, living in ways that demonstrate His great Love, great care, and great Glory in all of His creation. The Church is that people and our shared eternal and divine assignment is to be holy.

There was a time when God’s glory was associated with distance, danger, and separation, marked by smoke, fire, and a curtain that stood between God and humanity. That barrier reminded us that sin had created a gap we could not close on our own. But our text today declares that through the death of Jesus, access to God has been opened. His holiness has not changed, but our distance has. Because of Jesus the message is no longer — clean yourself up and come, but because you have been made clean, draw near.

Most of us move through life on what feels like ordinary ground — routine days, familiar struggles, predictable places — lives we control and we’ve settled into. But Exodus 3 reminds us that there are moments when God steps into our ordinary and reveals Himself in extraordinary ways. When the Holy One draws near, nothing remains common — especially not us. The Extraordinary One invites Himself into our ordinary, interrupting our routines and helping us recognize that we stand closer to holy ground than we realized. And if we respond with reverence and surrender, these moments become encounters that reshape how we see God, ourselves and our place in the world.

We live in a world that has mastered distractions but lost its capacity for wonder. A world that trains us to scroll past glory, to treat the sacred as familiar and to speak God’s name without trembling in His presence. We are busy, informed and stimulated but too often untouched and unchanged. Marked by Glory is a journey into holiness, not as our moral achievement, but as the result of encounter. It’s an invitation to behold the Holy One — to recover reverence, awaken awe and allow God’s presence to leave its mark on our lives.

Throughout 2025, God has been at work rooting and grounding us more deeply in Himself. What He’s formed in us this year was not incidental—it was essential to becoming fruitful and flourishing people in the year ahead. On this final Sunday of 2025, we pause to look back—not to linger, but to prepare ourselves for the way forward. In a rapidly changing world, God’s answer is a rapidly maturing Church—one rooted in Christ, grounded in love and ready to bear lasting fruit.

So much of life is spent chasing the shallow happiness of this world—moments that fade, applause that ends, a feeling that’s temporary. But God’s joy is different. Deep, unshakable, and eternal, it breaks into the ordinary, tired, frustrated parts of our lives and whispers — I am here. True joy has come. Not a happiness that depends on paychecks, bonuses, vacations, or new things, but a joy that carries us, keeps us, and shines in our darkest moments.

Advent celebrates the first coming of Jesus and we celebrate with great expectation His return.Jesus has not left us without what we need. He left us with His peace, not the fragile circumstance driven kind of peace that the world offers. His peace is unlike any other. It stays, guards, sustains, and can carry you through the most difficult times. It's a deep preserving, enduring, life-giving peace that can only come from a relationship with Jesus.

As we enter this season of Advent, let us remember that God doesn’t want our hope to be in a Christmas tree or a beautifully wrapped gift, or in our government, our business or even in our own ingenuity. But our Hope should be in His Son, Jesus and his ultimate return. And that seed of hope can bring forth life in every barren place in our lives.

We're going through a tough social and political moment full of economic instability, polarization, and hatred (the valley). We must go back to Christian first principles, center Christ in our public witness, and seek justice and righteousness in order to go through faithfully. We can't depend on the ways of the Left or the Right, we must glorify God through our response to this moment.

There are moments when God calls us to stretch—beyond what’s easy, familiar, or comfortable—into His greater purposes for us. And it’s in those stretching seasons we realize: somewhere along the way, we’ve gone dull. We’ve grown tired. We’ve lost the edge we used to carry. But what feels lost to us is never lost to God. He calls us to recover what’s slipped, what’s been buried, what we’ve mishandled—to return to His work with renewed focus and fresh fire. And as the darkness of our world grows louder and more blatant, God is calling His people to rise—sharp, ready, and fully committed to His Kingdom. He’s restoring our cutting edge.