Gifts of the Christmas Spirit: Vision - Audio
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It's awesome to see everybody here today. Coblands is glad you made it, and Ronnie, glad you're here, but it's Christmas, and it's that exciting time. I know the kids probably bouncing off the walls, getting pumped, and adults looking forward to a late night tonight and an early morning tomorrow, just a good time. We've been in a series, we've been talking about the gifts of the Christmas spirit. We talk about the shepherds and the wise men and the donkeys and baby Jesus. We don't talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, and yet the Holy Spirit is just all over the Christmas story. We've been seeing the gifts that He gives us, and not just in the first Christmas, but now. It's the same stuff. It's not any different today than it was 2,000 years ago. Those gifts are still with us, they're still empowering the church, they're still engaging our lives, they're still giving us hope. We've talked about truth. Sometimes truth hurts, but the Spirit is the one who enlightens us and gives us eyes to see the truth. We talked about joy. We talked about the fact that we can't manufacture joy. Joy comes from God and God alone. The best that we can do is we can be a part of sharing God's joy with others. We talked last week about possibility, that the power of the Spirit opens up new vistas, new hopes, new possibilities for life and living. And today we get to talk about the ultimate Christmas gift, and that is vision. Now we've got a lot of text today because I want us to get the whole story of Zachariah. But as we're thinking about vision, I would like us to just kind of recognize that whether we're young or old, we're always asking this question in our lives, why is this happening? What is God up to? This is something that everybody experiences, and usually, honestly, it's like when we're bummed about something. Something goes terribly wrong. So for example, tomorrow, some kids here are not going to get what they want for Christmas, and they're going to go down on their knees and cry out, "God, why? How could... What is the meaning of this madness?" I was so looking forward to that doll. Finally, all of my joy would be complete, but now I'm lost, and I've got to wait until my birthday for something decent. And of course, kids, like I told you last week, and in youth group, I tell you, that never happened to me. I always got what I wanted. So joke's on you. But in our adult lives, it gets really serious. You're going through life, and we're people of routines, of rhythms. We kind of do the same thing over and over. Even the artists among us have rhythms in their lives, even those of us who hate nine to five in a cubicle, even those of us who don't do that. You still have rhythms in your lives, and the way we go through life is those rhythms are happening, and they're moving, and then something comes in.
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Teaching on Luke 1:11-20, 59-79, Pastor Tom explains how believers can have vision and insight into what God is up to.