December is upon us, and the Christmas season is already in full swing. The frantic race to the twenty-fifth has begun—let the good times roll. If we’re honest, Christmas brings a mixture of emotions. Some are positive, others not so much. Getting together with family is great; the gifts are wonderful and the food is good. While there is much to enjoy at Christmastime, the stress, loneliness, and financial strain of the season leaves many individuals feeling less than jolly. For millions of Americans, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. But this isn’t the case for a great number of people.

          For some, the holiday season is actually one of the most difficult times of the year.

 It’s predicted that 32 million evangelicals will sit out this year’s election. Read that sentence again. Millions of professing Christians will not bother to vote. This is not only a staggering number, it’s a discouraging one. How can evangelical Christians complain about the direction of our nation when so many don’t even participate in the election process? Should you choose to not vote, remember that refusing to participate in the election does remove moral culpability. Shrugging your shoulders in indifference is not a wise response to the divisive challenges facing our nation.

In Philippians 3:20, the Apostle Paul writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” What an amazing hope we have in Christ!

            While I increasingly long for God’s heavenly kingdom, I am still a proud citizen of the United States and expected to be an active resident in our country. My citizenship may ultimately be in heaven, but that does not negate my responsibility to be a faithful citizen in our earthly nation. As Christians, our citizenship in heaven should make us better citizens here.

With both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions now behind us, we begin the homestretch toward Election Day in November. All of the pollsters and pundits, regardless of party affiliation, are predicting a close presidential election that could be decided by one or two states. Given the deep divide in our country, I don’t believe anyone is really surprised by the polling numbers. Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are gearing up for what will undoubtedly be a tough fight for the White House, and in all likelihood it’s going to be a bumpy ride for them both. While I won’t tell you who to vote for, I am going to tell you who is going to win the election.

For many months, Americans assumed that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden would be elected to a second term. Now, with President Biden out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Irrespective of November’s outcome, the 2024 election is undoubtedly one that will be remembered for generations to come. Given the level of polarization in our country, this is going to be a hotly contested election that will likely be filled with many more twists and turns.

“In the beginning, God” are four of the most powerful words recorded in Scripture. It’s no accident that these are the first words we find in the Bible. In Genesis 1:1, we are introduced to the subject of Scripture: God Himself. If we’re not careful, we can read these four words too quickly and miss the magnitude of what Moses is saying in this opening phrase. Not only are we introduced to our omnipotent Creator, we are also confronted with the truth that there is a God. In a world that desperately seeks to erase God from the cultural narrative, we must grapple with the foundational truth of the Bible: There is a God who created us and He has every right to rule His creation in a way that brings all glory to Him and has every right to humankind accountable to His commandments.

While the idea of personal sin has all but vanished from many churches today, it hasn’t disappeared in God’s mind. All sin—no matter how seemingly insignificant—is deserving of His righteous judgment. Our religious pride, critical attitudes, hurtful speech, impatience, worry, covetousness, and anger are all serious offenses that God has every right to judge. Even though our hearts have been renewed through faith in Christ and we have been delivered from the eternal consequences of sin, our sin nature still wages war against us. Sinful actions flow from the insatiable craving to fulfill our own desires (see James 1:14). We typically choose sin over obedience when the lure of momentary pleasure is stronger than the desire to please God and honor him. Unless we recognize the battle against our flesh and take decisive action against our propensity toward wickedness, sin will linger in our hearts.

We all understand the importance of kids making wise choices when it comes to friendships. But what about adults? Are we mindful of the relationships we build? Are we purposefully building relationships that honor the Lord? Are we walking with the wise or with fools? The companions we choose will greatly influence who we will eventually become; our friends can either make us more like Jesus or they can pull us away from him.

While preparing for our recent series on the “one anothers,” it seemed every article I read, every book I picked up, and every podcast I heard mentioned the growing epidemic of loneliness in America. You do not have to be a social scientist or a researcher to know that people are increasingly lonely and discouraged. Loneliness and discouragement are unfortunate consequences of living in a fallen world, but this does not mean we have to allow these two feelings to dominate our lives and cause despair.

Since various types of suffering are part of humanity’s experience, Paul encourages Christians to continually “encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). In today’s culture, too many Christians are living isolated from the body of Christ.

Like many families, we spend a portion of each Saturday doing household chores. On one such occasion, I had a difficult time opening a bottle of cleaner. I repeatedly twisted the cap. Squeezed. But only a few drops of liquid squirted out each time. Frustrated by the dysfunction of the cap, I decided to cut a hole in the top. Before locating the scissors, I noticed a strange and unusual word written on the back of the bottle: Instructions.

When we speak of Christian devotion, there are certain practices that immediately come to mind. Spiritual activities such as Bible study, prayer, service, worship, and evangelism are what we typically think about when gauging someone’s devotion to Christ. While all of these are obviously essential to our relationship with Christ, there are two important practices God calls us to devote our lives to that are often overlooked: fellowship and breaking bread.

What will Grace Baptist Church’s role be in the coming months? It is difficult to answer this question with any degree of certainty. So rather than seeking specific solutions to questions we can’t answer, let’s focus on what we can do: we can pray for our church and for one another.

As I consider the hours, days, weeks, and months ahead, here is my prayer for Grace Baptist Church:

In his classic work, The Existence and Attributes of God, Stephen Charnock writes, “That a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man, are such expressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love, that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.” The wondrous power of God to have the ability to take on human flesh, and the sacrificial love to do so for the sake of sinners, is what makes the Christmas season so magnificent.

October of 2023 turned out to be a profoundly remarkable month in world history, and not for encouraging reasons. Without question, the biggest event of the month was Hamas’s ruthless attack on the nation of Israel. The attack was so vicious President Joe Biden described Hamas’s actions as “pure unadulterated evil.” Personally, I find President Biden’s pointed description of Hamas’s attack not only accurate, but also profoundly intriguing.

The Lord’s Prayer is not a formula given for Christians to hang on our walls as a decoration or a mantra that we robotically repeat again and again for the purpose of manipulating God or attempting to earn His divine favor. Instead, it is given as a pattern for us to follow. Prayer can quickly be reduced to a mindless activity that we do simply because we know we should. Jesus’s model prayer calls us to something greater than monotonous chanting like that of the medieval monks.

Stories of adversity and hardship fill today’s headlines. Human suffering is, sadly, an inevitable dynamic of the human experience. Accounts of anguish and ruin are also easily found in the pages of Scripture. One such case is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of 1 Kings.

   How often are you moved by mercy? Does the suffering raging in the world arrest your attention? Or do you live with little concern for the needs of others? In Matthew 5:42, Jesus commands His disciples to “give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Most of us would, I believe, willingly admit that selfishness regularly makes us stingy with our financial resources. Because we are selfish by nature, it is often difficult to sacrifice for the needs of others. And yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges us to willingly give to those who are in genuine need.

During a recent family outing, my wife, Michelle, had to stop by Walmart to pick up a few items. Shopping is not really my thing, so I eagerly waited in the car with our kids. Promising she didn’t have much to buy, Michelle assured that she would be quick. For the first several minutes, everything was fine; the kids were talking and laughing in the backseat while I listened to music and thought about nothing in particular.

As expected, it wasn’t terribly long before the first frustrated cry of, “What’s taking Mom so long?” erupted from the backseat. A few minutes passed before the predictable exaggeration came: “Mom’s taking forever!”

Life is often confusing and overwhelming. There are decisions to be made, but we are often unsure what the right course of action is. Life can come at us quickly, making it feel like we are flying an airplane while trying to build it mid-flight. There are moments when we are not sure if we are going to stay in the air or crash to the ground. During the moments when our lives seem to be spiraling out of control, we need direction and stability. Managing life’s responsibilities can leave us exhausted and bewildered. That is why one person quipped, “I have been putting a lot of thought into it, and I just don’t think being an adult is going to work for me.”

Life can be certainly perplexing, but there is a way to keep our bearings and successfully manage whatever may come our way.

Living in this rapidly secularizing culture should remind Christians of how desperately we need the body of Christ. We are called to boldly stand as salt and light in this world. To do so, we need the church. In this time of moral insanity, we desperately need biblically sound, doctrinally faithful local churches that remain unapologetically committed to the proclamation of the gospel.