Lord, hear my prayer,

    listen to my cry for mercy;

in your faithfulness and righteousness

    come to my relief.

Do not bring your servant into judgment,

    for no one alive is righteous before you.

Did you know a decision can be both not wrong and unwise at the same time? Paul encourages us to live life wisely, redeeming our time. Nothing in this culture will necessarily call you to wisdom or follow Jesus. Nothing will necessarily encourage you to live life better to be better at life.

Our lives are an unfolding story. We write this story one decision at a time. When living out current moments we can oftentimes become myopic and unable to see the ultimate and end up making decisions that are good for the immediate but leave us with stories we are not so proud to tell. How can we turn this around? Is it possible in the heat of the moment to make decisions that are better for the ultimate and leave us with a story worth telling?

Our Culture's best advise is to follow one's heart. But that is never helpful as we have all experienced when later in regrets we ask ourselves, "What was I thinking?". That is because we easily deceive ourselves when our minds are made up about something. Of our hearts, scripture says they are deceitful above all things.How then can we make decisions better to make ourselves better? Learn to make yourself tell yourself the truth about each decision you make. You owe it to yourself.

Joy is a gift from God, it is also a practice we need to have. As the year ends it is easy to be aware of the disappointments from the year and where you did not see God in the ways you expected. To find joy we need to learn to see the unexpected King. The one born in a manger instead of a palace. The King has come. We need to be full of expectation while abandoning our agendas and picking God's vision and story over our own and the one from our world.The intentionally choose joy over worry and practice themselves into being joyous people, like our God is.

Offence will happen and disagreements will come. But we are to do all we can to hold on to the unity of the Spirit in our communities of faith. Disunity serves no good and quenches the Spirit of God. As people boldly step into the community, it increases the chances of all these, what does it look like to be faithful to remain united?

We cannot afford to ignore the New Testament teaching on honour regardless of how self-centred the culture around us is getting. When we honour people, we open ourselves up to the blessing and life they carry.

Following Jesus can only be fully realised when we commit ourselves to do it within and alongside a loving community of believers. This includes both corporately in large gatherings and in smaller groups around tables.

We would like to be formed to be as generous as our father in heaven is. Generosity is more than just being able to give but is a posture of our hearts. Generosity is who our father is; it frees us from the hold of possessions and money and allows us to enter Kingdom Joy. However, you can't learn to be generous for the rest of your life until you are generous with your possessions and money. Because where one's treasure is, so is their heart. A discipline for followers of Jesus that helps form us into Generous people is giving in a considered, consistent and progressive way. As we tithe, give offerings and give to the poor as Spiritual Discipline we open ourselves up to our hearts being formed to be as generous as our father in Heaven is.

God is inviting us to be people whom others will experience the Kingdom of God breaking through for them, people whom others will experience heaven and earth meet. Thin places, little pockets of heaven breaking in. In the ordinary things of life or the dark and painful things of life.