Hope Lutheran Church Hope Lutheran Church

This week we had Pastor Dan Laitinen with us from Divine Savior Church in Sienna, Texas. He led us in a special Thanksgiving worship service which helped us see how God gives us everything we need, including his recipe for contentment, which he shows us in Philippians 4.

This week we continued our Waiting series, as we learned today who it is we're waiting for. From Daniel 7, we learn that the one we're waiting for is Christ, our King.

We're starting a new series for the weeks leading up to Christmas called Waiting. In this series, we'll talk about waiting for two great world events: Christmas and Judgment Day. In this lesson from 1 Thessalonians 5, we learn that Judgment Day is a day we wait for in hope, not fear. Because of that, we can be ready, we can be different, and we can be confident.

This is a story that's about more than guests who cancel at the last minute. It's a story about rebellion and stubbornness. It's a story that's meant to warn us against our own stubbornness and sin. But ultimately, it's a story that points us to the generosity and patience of our God, who has invited us to his heavenly banquet where everyone is invited, and everything is prepared.

We all have things we take for granted. We think that we'll always appreciate that new car or new house we just bought, but within a few weeks, we've already started to grow accustomed to the new standard of living. It becomes normal to us. And soon we feel entitled to it. It's that feeling of entitlement that Jesus warns against in our spiritual lives in this parable. He tells us that we are prone to entitlement, but thankfully, God's grace conquers human entitlement.

All of us have a natural tendency to shift blame away from ourselves and onto someone else. That's what the people in Ezekiel's day were doing too. The problem is that shifting the blame causes us to be blind to our sin, and if we can't see our sin, we'll never repent and find God's mercy. In this lesson, we see that repentance brings life. Because of God's mercy, we can be honest about our sin and confident in our forgiveness.