The Perfecting Church

In every generation, God’s people face the same battle—the struggle to see Jesus clearly amid competingvoices. Some distort His divinity, others deny His humanity, and many replace His gospel with one builton greed, power, and violence. The early church faced these same lies, and John reminded them that whatthey heard from the beginning—and the anointing of the Holy Spirit within them—was enough to standfirm. That same truth guards us today, helping us see through the lie and advance the Kingdom withcourage, clarity, and conviction.

It’s impossible to live a full life in this broken world without loving and trusting people. But it’s just as impossible to live loving and trusting people in this broken world without being betrayed. We’ve been betrayed by family, by friends, by bosses, by co-workers and others. Betrayal is a part of the human experience. What’s less common, is returning to full and free lives after betrayal. There’s pain in the plan and one of the worst kinds of pain in this life is the pain of betrayal. 

We can be in relationship with the lover of our souls, the redeemer of our lives and not know what really means to be His child -- living functionally as orphans. Our response to the Father's love often falls into one of two categories.  We can rebel against His love, wanting what we can get from Him rather than actually wanting Him or we respond religiously to His love just performing in hopes He'll be indebted to give us what we want.  Sometimes, in response to the extravagant love of the covenant making Father, we just put on church clothes. 

Most of us don’t struggle with believing Jesus has power. We struggle with giving up our power. We pray — but we still build contingency plans. We call Him Lord but we still try to negotiate our terms. Control feels safe. Surrender feels foolish. But the Kingdom of Heaven does not advance through our power — it advances through our surrender. And in Matthew 8, Jesus meets a man who understands something many church-going people miss — surrender means living under His authority more than loving our authority. Surrender makes outsiders insiders. 

We’re living in days where vision is blurred, compassion is thin and fear-filled, divisiveness passes for wisdom. The darkness of our times isn’t only moral — it’s perceptual. We are losing the ability to see one another as God does. But glory was never meant to remain on the mountain or in the sanctuary — it was meant to move through the streets. Matthew 8 shows us what happens when a surrendered life carries the glory of God into broken places. What happens when the holiness of heaven walks among the gross darkness of the earth.

God’s glory is more than moments we remember—it’s also encounters that keep returning to form us. Each time His holy presence meets us at the edge of our ordinary lives, it exposes what we’ve settled for and reorients us toward who He truly is. Glory doesn’t merely confront us; it consecrates us—shaping a people set apart for God’s purposes. And every genuine encounter with His glory sends us back into the world, not changed and commissioned to carry His holiness into everyday places.

Glory is one of the most familiar words in our faith and one of the most misunderstood. We imagine glory as something distant, displayed through power or spectacle. But glory is not just something to admire; it is something we encounter— drawing us near and working within.There was a time when God’s glory stood outside of us, revealing truth and exposing what was broken. That glory was real, but it wasn’t the final word. The glory of God has moved closer. What once confronted us from the outside now meets us on the inside, reshaping our hearts and renewing our lives. The glory we are invited into is not a moment to watch, but His holy presence to remain within. We’re not only rescued by His glory; we’re formed by it and made more and more like Him — from glory to glory.

A people of holiness, formed for and from Himself, has been God’s idea all along. Eons before men made plans for the building of nations, the heart of God imagined not just a person or a family, but a people—a nation-- who would bear His image and His likeness, living in ways that demonstrate His great Love, great care, and great Glory in all of His creation. The Church is that people and our shared eternal and divine assignment is to be holy.

There was a time when God’s glory was associated with distance, danger, and separation, marked by smoke, fire, and a curtain that stood between God and humanity. That barrier reminded us that sin had created a gap we could not close on our own. But our text today declares that through the death of Jesus, access to God has been opened. His holiness has not changed, but our distance has. Because of Jesus the message is no longer — clean yourself up and come, but because you have been made clean, draw near.

Most of us move through life on what feels like ordinary ground — routine days, familiar struggles, predictable places — lives we control and we’ve settled into. But Exodus 3 reminds us that there are moments when God steps into our ordinary and reveals Himself in extraordinary ways. When the Holy One draws near, nothing remains common — especially not us. The Extraordinary One invites Himself into our ordinary, interrupting our routines and helping us recognize that we stand closer to holy ground than we realized. And if we respond with reverence and surrender, these moments become encounters that reshape how we see God, ourselves and our place in the world.

We live in a world that has mastered distractions but lost its capacity for wonder. A world that trains us to scroll past glory, to treat the sacred as familiar and to speak God’s name without trembling in His presence. We are busy, informed and stimulated but too often untouched and unchanged. Marked by Glory is a journey into holiness, not as our moral achievement, but as the result of encounter. It’s an invitation to behold the Holy One — to recover reverence, awaken awe and allow God’s presence to leave its mark on our lives.

Throughout 2025, God has been at work rooting and grounding us more deeply in Himself. What He’s formed in us this year was not incidental—it was essential to becoming fruitful and flourishing people in the year ahead. On this final Sunday of 2025, we pause to look back—not to linger, but to prepare ourselves for the way forward. In a rapidly changing world, God’s answer is a rapidly maturing Church—one rooted in Christ, grounded in love and ready to bear lasting fruit.

So much of life is spent chasing the shallow happiness of this world—moments that fade, applause that ends, a feeling that’s temporary. But God’s joy is different. Deep, unshakable, and eternal, it breaks into the ordinary, tired, frustrated parts of our lives and whispers — I am here. True joy has come. Not a happiness that depends on paychecks, bonuses, vacations, or new things, but a joy that carries us, keeps us, and shines in our darkest moments.

Advent celebrates the first coming of Jesus and we celebrate with great expectation His return.Jesus has not left us without what we need. He left us with His peace, not the fragile circumstance driven kind of peace that the world offers. His peace is unlike any other. It stays, guards, sustains, and can carry you through the most difficult times. It's a deep preserving, enduring, life-giving peace that can only come from a relationship with Jesus.

As we enter this season of Advent, let us remember that God doesn’t want our hope to be in a Christmas tree or a beautifully wrapped gift, or in our government, our business or even in our own ingenuity. But our Hope should be in His Son, Jesus and his ultimate return. And that seed of hope can bring forth life in every barren place in our lives.

We're going through a tough social and political moment full of economic instability, polarization, and hatred (the valley). We must go back to Christian first principles, center Christ in our public witness, and seek justice and righteousness in order to go through faithfully. We can't depend on the ways of the Left or the Right, we must glorify God through our response to this moment.

There are moments when God calls us to stretch—beyond what’s easy, familiar, or comfortable—into His greater purposes for us. And it’s in those stretching seasons we realize: somewhere along the way, we’ve gone dull. We’ve grown tired. We’ve lost the edge we used to carry. But what feels lost to us is never lost to God. He calls us to recover what’s slipped, what’s been buried, what we’ve mishandled—to return to His work with renewed focus and fresh fire. And as the darkness of our world grows louder and more blatant, God is calling His people to rise—sharp, ready, and fully committed to His Kingdom. He’s restoring our cutting edge.

Our allegiance to Christ shapes how we live, work and engage in a culturethat is driven by greed, fear, and self. We live in the profound truth that gives us bothour identity and purpose; we are citizens of the Kingdom of God and of the world. Ourdual citizenship may seem to be a contradiction, but in fact it is a calling. We live in thetension of the values of Christ and the seduction of the world. Through the power ofGod, we walk with integrity, generosity, justice and compassion considering “the other”as we balance both worlds.

The spiritual battle is real — but it’s not what it seems. Behind every cultural divide, political argument and personal wound lies a deeper battle for our hearts and loyalties. Our enemy isn’t flesh and blood; it’s the deceiver who feeds fear, pride, and polarization until we start fighting the wrong battle for the wrong kingdom. But the Lamb has shown us a better way — a way of truth-telling, love and power under the cross. God is commissioning us to live as witnesses of that Kingdom — to wage peace, not by force or fear, but by the faithful way of the Lamb who has already overcome.

Winning the war within means dying to our flesh daily—putting the flesh to death to discern the voice and leading of the Spirit—ushering in the shalom of God to and through us.