Let God have you, and let God love you - and don’t be surprised if your heart begins to hear music you’ve never heard and your feet learn to dance as never before.

I don't have a lot of time in the sermon anyway. The sermon is only 25 minutes, which to me is frighteningly short. So I feel as if I need to get into that pretty quickly and make it as practical and accessible as possible.

Kind of the bottom line for me, I don't think people come to the church where I preach to hear my view on politics.

Fear results in fight or flight. Anxiety creates doom and gloom. Fear is the pulse that pounds when you see a coiled rattlesnake in your front yard. Anxiety is the voice that tells you, Never, ever, for the rest of your life, walk barefooted through the grass. There might be a snake...somewhere.

You have a God who hears you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you, and all of heaven ahead of you. If you have the Shepherd, you have grace for every sin, direction for every turn, a candle for every corner and an anchor for every storm. You have everything you need.

We celebrate the First Advent to whet our appetites for the Second. We long for the next coming.

God's mercies are new every morning. Receive them.