When you have guests to your home, there is much that goes into preparing. The more important the guest, and number of people, the greater the preparation. So how could we ever prepare for the coming of a baby who will change our lives?

The toughest part of waiting is trust. Trust that what you are waiting for will really happen. That the person you are waiting on is really coming. This is the tone of psalmist writes with. God I trust you are coming (you are really coming, right, God?) I love you (with good reason, I think). We open advent with a voice of hope and expectation for the coming Messiah.

Pain forces us to choose, among other things, how we will choose to see God. Is He "the God of Pain", "My God of Pain", or "My God of my pain"? Guest speaker Kay Edwards challenges to look at pain -- and our God -- in a different way.

Chapter 2 starts by talking about sin this way: do not judge others. The purpose of God’s grace is to lead us to a repentant life that is grace-filled to one another, as fellow broken sinners. How silly would it be for us, a sinner, to spend our lives judging other sinners like ourselves? Instead, our lives should ooze grace, like the grace we were given by Christ.

The most uncomfortable topic you could talk about in church might be sin. We all do it, it’s very real, and it’s often avoided. Yet Paul lays out this foundation: sin is real and part of all of our lives. The point is not to shame people into being better, instead it reminds us that sin at it’s root is us thinking we know better than God, and that has consequences.

At Mount Sinai, God called Israel His kingdom of priests, and gave them a mission to put Him on display to the world. Peter also calls the church a royal priesthood - we are also called to show who God is to those around us.

Romans 1:16-17. We read about the gospel and the lifestyle response it demands from us, what is our response to it?

In Ephesians 5 the focus shifts to our relationships. If God is love, then how does that impact how we interact with one another? Or better, what does it look like to live and love as God’s beloved children?

God promises to work in the lives of all of His children, but we often don't take the time to sit in the living room and listen to each others' stories of how He is at work. Today, we take a moment to hear how God is working in and through three Trinity Community Church members, to be encouraged to share our "transformed and transforming" stories.

OK, we are picked, given grace, called to overflow with grace, and then we hear that all of this should change our lives. If this is really true, it should change our lives, and how we do everything. Ephesians 4 paints a picture of what this new life in Christ looks like.