December 15, 2024
When The King Comes | Where Can I Find Joy In Life?
Advent 2024
When the Wisemen arrived in Jerusalem looking for the ‘King of the Jews’, the scholars read our Micah passage and told them to go to Bethlehem. Bethlehem was the place of the king's birth. That prophecy had been given 700 years before Mary and Joseph trundled into sleepy Bethlehem. All of this: Micah’s prophecy, the difficulty of his time in history, translates into joy for us and potential joy for all the generations of the earth.
Songs for this week: Spotify
- Look over your life; when did you feel the most joy? Tell that story to your group.
- How would you explain joy to your friends asking you about the Christian faith?
- Have you ever felt ‘under siege’ or that you’d been struck in the face emotionally? How did you respond? Do you think Jesus cares about your hard times? Explain.
- How do you explain “one whose origins are from of old, from ancient times”? Is this a legitimate claim to Jesus being God, or does it mean something else?
- What is gained in Jesus being our shepherd? Does that term deliver hope and joy, or does it feel underwhelming to you?
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James 4:6-10 -James knows that the heart of the Christian message is grace. God gives us good that we couldn’t ever deserve. The truth is that we earn and deserve justice and punishment. Thankfully, Jesus took both of those for us and gave us the good he deserved. As powerful as grace is, there is one thing that can re
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