Encountering Jesus this Christmas

John Ortberg:

“Boundary markers change from culture to culture, but the dynamic remains the same. If people do not experience authentic transformation, then their faith will deteriorate into a search for the boundary markers that masquerade as evidence of a changed life.”

2 Corinthians 5:17

T. Michael Crews:

“Christ’s birth changed human history; but Christ’s entrance into your life will change your history. When Christ enters your life: He changes your direction.”

1. THE COMING OF JESUS BRINGS  WHEN WE 

Brendan Manning:

“All of the Santa Clauses, and the red nose reindeer, all of the 50 foot trees, and all of the church bells ringing put together create less pandemonium than the infant Jesus.”

Albert Camus:

“Christ the God-man suffered. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. For in the shadow of Calgary the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege and lived through to the end despair included the agony of death.”

Isaiah 53:4-6

C. S. Lewis:

Someone asked Lewis, why do the righteous suffer?

Lewis:  Why not? They’re the only ones who can take it.”

2. THE COMING OF JESUS BRINGS A  TO 

 Philippians 2:5-8

B.B. Warfield:

“Jesus was led to forget himself in the needs of others. Self-sacrifice brought Jesus Christ into the world and self-sacrifice will lead his followers not away from but into the midst of human society. Wherever people suffer there will we be to comfort. Wherever there is strife there will we be to help. Wherever they fall there will we be to uplift. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellow man, it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others, it means entering into every person’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs.”

John 20:30

Mark Hart:

“We can’t understand our calling and our vocation until we listen to the Lord… until we look upon the Lord… until we realize who it is that we’re really serving. Are we serving God? Or the world?”

Charles Spurgeon:

“It is only serving God that is doing immortal work; it is only living for Christ that is living at all.”

3. THE COMING OF JESUS BRINGS A  THAT IS 

Sperondeo—”my hope is in God.”

G.K. Chesterton:

“Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or… Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all… As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”