Balancing Ministry N' Work

Prayer is one of those things I like to take time each year for us to look at. The Book of James may be short but it does tell us a lot about prayer. “ 5  Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. 6  But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind.” - James 1:5-6 “ 2  You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3  You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” - James 4:2-3 “ 10  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” - James 4:10 “ 4  Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.” - James 5:4 “ 13  Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone

Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!” All Glory and Honor belong to our God!  May the Lord’s Peace fall on each of us. May the Peace that defies all logic and reasoning be with you. Peace is one of those things that has escaped many of us at times in 2020. The struggles many faced with job issues, medical issues, family uncertainty, and more made it hard to hold on to Peace. Part of the problem I think is that we were trying to find our own peace. When things are starting to get to us one of the first things many of us do is to attempt to create peace on our own. We may go sit in a dark and quiet room, take a long hot bath, listen to some music, spend time in the workshop, sew, or whatever we think will help us step away from the craziness that is getting to us. Doing these types of things to bring calm may help for a while, they may help us step away, but the reality is they do not help us to have the full Peace of the Lord

As we started Christmas here it Littleby we looked throughout the Bible to see that Jesus lives up to the name Immanuel, God is with us. I hope that over the last week you remembered that Jesus is with you. Scripture shows us that He will never leave us, He will never forsake us, and that He lives in us. As a child of God, you are NEVER alone. This was all part of the Master’s Plan. God knew we could not earn our way to heaven and knew that we were going to need help. Simply put our God knew we were going to need a Savior; He knew we were going to need Christmas. This morning let’s take a look at how God prepared for Christmas. Luke 1:1-4 “ 1  Many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us,  2  just as the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed them down to us.  3  So it also seemed good to me, since I have carefully investigated everything from the very first, to write to you in an orderly sequence, most honorable 

On any given Sunday I will call Jesus several different names. That statement alone sound pretty bad. Ok, moving on, I tend to call Jesus names such as Lord, Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Lord and Savior, and Jesus Christ throughout my time up front each Sunday.   If you use that great theological resource Google, ok it is not that great of a theological resource, but if you use it you can find many different lists of names and titles for our Lord Jesus. One of the lists I looked at had 102 different names for Jesus. This morning I want to focus on one of His names, that fits the season and is found in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.” Then while Mary was found to be pregnant and Joseph was contemplating what was the best course of action for him to take and angel appeared to him and quoted Isaiah’s prophecy that was from the la