"God's Gifts: Hope from the Prophets"

I’d like to thank everyone for being very patient with me as I've been recovering from my surgery for the severed tendon.  Obviously, one of the casualties of my convalescence has been writing these Sunday Morning Updates each week.  When it hurts to type (and it’s impossible for me to stuff the envelopes), then some things just have had to take a back seat until the healing process fully kicked in.  This injury even messed up my plans to get a second volume of short stories published by Christmas!  It’s still a little sore--especially if I work for long periods--but I’m going to the orthopaedist tomorrow to get officially discharged from my Physical Therapy, and I’ve healed up far quicker than any of my doctors or PTs were expecting, so thank you for your prayers and praise God for that!

To catch you up on at least a few things that have been going on here at First Covenant Church, our Adult Sunday School class has been studying “Cults and Other ‘Gospels’” this year, looking at religious movements that have spun off of Christianity so far that they really aren’t “Christian” groups any longer.  With so many different groups out there, it’s helpful for all of us to be aware of what everyone believes and why.

In our ongoing sermon series, looked at the “Names of God”--different names and descriptors that the Bible uses to speak about God.  So we looked at Biblical names for God like “El Shaddai” or “Yahweh” or “Elyon” and what those meant.  Over and over again, we were reminded that the names used for God by our Jewish theological forebears so often reflected the unchanging truth that God is the mightiest, the most high, the most powerful, and the most faithful Being in all the universe--and the only “god” who actually IS God!  Today, in a world filled with different religious ideas based on whatever makes people feel the most comfortable, remember that other gods are just shadows and fables, and let’s give glory to our Lord--the God who is real, who created and decides all things, and who genuinely wants to be in personal relationship with each of us.

In this first week of Advent, the Diemer family lit our first Advent Candle this year, sharing about the hope that we have in Christ.  Since Sara has begun chemotherapy for her breast cancer in the past month, that word “hope” has taken on a whole new dimension of meaning for their family.  It’s not a “crossed-fingers” or “pie-in-the-sky” expectation that everything is going to be okay, but rather a deep and abiding sense that God knows what He’s doing, and that we can trust Him to walk with us.

In our new Advent sermon series, we talked about how God’s gifts like hope can come from the strangest places.  For instance, our promise of “Immanuel”--of “God with us” coming to Earth through a miraculous birth--came originally from a rebuke that God gave to King Ahaz, who was in the process of disregarding God and making his own provisions for Judah. 

But God is committed to His promises to save us--even from our own sinfulness--no matter how foolish we are on a given day. 

Immanuel doesn’t just walk with us on the good days--He walks with us on every day.