Friends, I can assure you, Jesus is not focused on Christmas past. He's not.

Currently, in this moment, Jesus is utterly fixated on his return. That's what has his attention.

That's what he has joy over. That's what he is about. And he invites us to be as well.

Gang, welcome back. It's just such a joy every week to be with you guys and particularly

in special seasons of the year like this one. So you see we've got our studio decorated,

those of you who are watching by video. And we're in the third week of Advent. And what we were

reflecting on last week is it's a period of preparation built into the church calendar that

for millennia, Christians have used these, you know, markers to say, okay, I'm going to slow down

and think about one thing for a moment.

I'm going to give it my attention.

Yes.

And we're giving the Christmas story our attention.

And it's difficult to do because last week we talked about familiarity

and how familiarity gets in the way.

This week, we're going to talk about something else

that gets in the way,

and I think this one's going to be even more eye-opening

and I hope helpful to you all

here in the third week of Advent.

But before we get there, let's pause.

As we come into our pause this week, I'm just curious, what is it that you need to release

right now?

...