The Journey to Jesus: Introduction

One of a pastor's main concerns is really rather simple. He is always asking himself, "What am I going to preach on next Sunday?" And this might seem like a simple question, but it carries a lot of weight. What does God want to say through His Word to His people that are gathered on this particular Sunday? And the humbling part is this--how could God possibly use me to communicate His Word?

We are getting ready to enter the "Christmas Season". The malls entered into it sometime around Halloween! However, traditionally, the Church always begins to celebrate Christmas sometime after Thanksgiving. And now, here we are again. In some ways it is pretty simple to answer that pastoral question of what the congregation needs to hear during this time of year.

In a society full of commercialism (just check out the Charlie Brown Christmas Special from 1965 to see how far we have really come in such a short time...was Charlie Brown a prophet???) it is hard to work through the artificial trees, Playstation Threes and church going wannabees to really get to the meat of the advent of Jesus Christ. That is why I feel the Lord is directing me to take this "Journey to Jesus" and to gather however many people I can to take this journey with me.

It won't always be an easy journey, nor should it. I want to answer the question that our guest pastor, Reverend Isaac Shaw, posed to us a week ago. Who is this Jesus of the Bible? To answer the question we need to dig deeper, think harder, and examine our own lives and our own thoughts on who Christ is. It is a theological journey, a practical journey and a rewarding trip. I hope you will join me!

Of course we won't be able to exhaust all that the Bible has to say concerning Jesus. Every single passage in Scripture point to our Lord in some way! But our goal is simple as we answer the question that Jesus asks of His disciples in Matthew 16: Who do you say that I am?

Come with me. I will be adding some weekly devotions at the start of each week to the weblog. You can also e-mail me at dbetters@grpc.org if you wish. You can use the devotions in any context, single, married, family, young, old, etc. Let's do Christmas a little different this year. Feel free to post and converse. I welcome all questions!