After a hard day scrambling to find your way around in the world, it's assuring to come home to a place you know. God can be equally familiar to you. With time you can learn where to go for nourishment, where to hide for protection , where to turn for guidance. Just as your earthly house is a place of refuge, so God's house is a place of peace.

God has a timeline. And because of Bethlehem, we have an idea where we stand on it.

When you teach on a familiar text, you're capitalizing on common knowledge. When you teach on an unfamiliar text, you're having to build a bridge of understanding, and we need to do that as well.

I remember enjoying writing those, theres two clues of a gift: you enjoy doing it and people enjoy you doing it.

You change your life by changing your heart.

If today were your last, would you do what you're doing? Or would you love more, give more, forgive more?

Pastoring the flock with words. I love that. We always have a prayer time in the middle of our service. We take about eight or ten minutes before I preach, after we've sung, and invite people to come forward for prayer. That's a tender moment to me. I don't preach much in that, but I like to speak to the people.