Message: “Seeing God Again After You’ve Given Up, Finale” from Ross Stackhouse

In our final message in Seeing God After You’ve Given Up, we’re going to look at the one story we have in the Bible that features Jesus as a child. Even in this instance, Jesus shows us something that is crucial for us to grow in our ability to have eyes to see God. What Jesus shows us is something about resolution, which is “the quality of being determined or resolute” (according to Oxford Languages). What are you determined or resolute about in the coming year? Recently we’ve talked a lot about taking time to discern your mission and values and structuring your life to be aligned with those things. We’re going to look at this again to empower each other individually and together as a church in the New Year.

Scripture References: Luke 2:41-52

From Series: Seeing God Again After You've Given Up | More Messages from Ross Stackhouse

From Series: "Seeing God Again After You've Given Up"

We’re entering a season called Advent in the Church in which we prepare our hearts for Christmas. Yes, it’s a season of joy, but we don’t get to the joy–the truest joy of this story–by leaving our pain, sorrow and sins unaddressed. After all, this isn’t how the story of Jesus goes anyhow. We’re going to take a deep dive into the two chapters of the Bible that deal with Jesus’s birth (in Luke’s Gospel), and we’ll see from the beginning that people like Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary and others had perhaps given up on the possibility of God actually existing, or, at the very least, that God was yet going to do something in the world and in their lives that would honor the despair and disgrace they had experienced (along with others). Until one day, there’s a glimmer of light, a glimpse of something God was doing…and was preparing to do all along.