New Year's Day – The Nexus

Happy New Year! As we get started on this brand-new adventure, we are going to spend a couple of weeks taking a look at what God has been doing in our midst and how we can experience more of that together. Part of experiencing more of that means honestly addressing the cultural situation we are facing. If we are going to grow God’s work in this culture, there is something specific we will need to commit ourselves to doing. Let’s talk about that today.

A Timely Invitation

The culture around us is changing. That’s a pretty bland start for a sermon, so let me explain what I mean. I mean, the culture around us is changing. Clearer now? In a sense, that’s always true no matter when or where we live. Culture is not a static thing. It is constantly moving and morphing and mutating from one thing to another. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Because of this, if you look at it in just the right light, it always appears we are on the precipice of a great shift even if in reality, we are sitting squarely in the middle of a movement. Of course, you can’t see that until long after the fact, so that’s not a terribly helpful observation in a given moment.

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As we begin this new year, we are taking the first couple of weeks to think about God’s action and our response. We are going to do this with a story from the life of the prophet Elijah. Come listen in as we tell one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament and reflect together on what it means for us. Thanks for tuning in and sharing.

When God Shows Off

The transition from Christmas to New Year’s is always a bit of an interesting one to me. Now, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy it. In fact, I enjoy it immensely. I enjoy it so much because it is often a quiet week. Life seems to slow down just a bit—especially after the break-neck pace most of us travel through the rest of the month of December. As much as I enjoy it, though, it is an interesting transition. I mean, think about it: With Christmas, we have a month-long build up to a grand celebration of one of the single most powerful acts of God in the whole history of the world. Only the resurrection and creation itself rival the miraculous birth of Jesus. In other words, Christmas is big. With New Year’s, though, while we’re told that it’s big, it kind of feels like a letdown. Sure, we have parties and make resolutions and the like, but we really don’t give it much in the way of attention until after we get through Christmas. And then, we don’t spend that week getting ready for New Year’s, we spend that week recovering from Christmas before normal life—not to mention the long winter months of January and February—comes and slaps us in the face. The letdown can indeed be pretty intense.

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