Today at our church,
was the lightening of the second candle for Advent. The first message was “Watch,” and the second
is to: “Prepare.” Isaiah prophesied about John the
Baptist.
Isaiah 40:3-5 The voice of
one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare
the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert, A highway for our God. 4Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked
places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth; The glory of the Lord
shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Pastor
Jerry read from Isaiah 40:1-11 and from Mark 1:1-8.
I took notes and edited his sermon. - - When we think of highways, some are dangerous, with turns, and bumps. As engineers plan new routes, and better roads, the changes are safer and please us.
I took notes and edited his sermon. - - When we think of highways, some are dangerous, with turns, and bumps. As engineers plan new routes, and better roads, the changes are safer and please us.
In
his Gospel book Mark was direct and abrupt as he took us straight to John the
Baptist, a desert preacher, a wild looking man, simply clothed and eating
locusts and wild honey.
Mark 1:7-8 And John preached, saying, “There comes
One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to
stoop down and loose. I indeed
baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Isaiah offers comfort in the
place of testing for the people were not where they wanted to be. He presented Hope, that a Savior would come,
but there was preparation needed.
John urges to prepare your
hearts and repent from your sins. His
message filled a need as people flocked to hear his words.
Commitment may need to be
renewed as God comes out to meet us.
We may have been twisting and turning in our walk, and there have been rough places that need to be straightened out and perhaps widened out.
We may have been twisting and turning in our walk, and there have been rough places that need to be straightened out and perhaps widened out.
God leaves the road
improvement up to us; we might be
following Christ, but have prejudices', are tight fisted with our money, not
being kind to family and friends, refusing to use our talents to do God's work,
dodging responsibility and ignoring the needs of others.
These aspects of our lives
take us on detours and hinder our Christian walk.
We all come today on a Spiritual Highway ,
that might need to be engineered and pot holes need to be filled. Likewise Spiritual bottlenecks need to be
unblocked.
We may need to sit in silence
and listen to how God directs us to make these changes in our spiritual
road. We cannot change the highway that
others walk, but it is necessary that we allow God to change "ME."
Our world is a dangerous
wilderness out there.
We must build a signpost to guide others and join with them as we Prepare to take the straight newly paved highway.
We must build a signpost to guide others and join with them as we Prepare to take the straight newly paved highway.
We are reminded that our Lord
Christ Jesus is always by our side as we travel on His Highway.
5 comments:
As Jesus told His disciples, we must WATCH and PRAY.
Watch and prepare..great points to remember as we journey in the advent season. Grateful He walks with us always.
Amen, Hazel. May He make our paths straight and narrow before us… He directs our paths...
Focusing on Him is all that counts and the road and the paths and the walking places situations are a necessity for us to never turn our eyes and hearts away from Him. Nothing else counts. I have to be looking in the right direction every minute of every day. Thanks for sharing.
So many good nuggets here. I will have to pin and tweet this so I can come back and reveiw again. ;)
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