{"id":13175,"date":"2022-12-25T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-25T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/?post_type=ctc_sermon&#038;p=13175"},"modified":"2022-12-29T12:30:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T17:30:31","slug":"meeting-jesus-in-christmas","status":"publish","type":"ctc_sermon","link":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/sermons\/meeting-jesus-in-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Jesus in Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-gdm-google-drive-embedder-viewer\"><iframe width='100%' height='100' frameborder='0' scrolling='yes' src='https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1GQgLuGvzw4hIfgYlxk05UGP8TMwYGYkD\/preview?usp=drivesdk' allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n<h4>Read<\/h4>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Matthew 2:1-12<\/p>\n<h4>Consider<\/h4>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Christmas is a joyful season.\u00a0 The eternal joy comes to this world because the eternal God became flesh and came to this world.\u00a0 Our Lord Jesus Christ temporariliy gave up his comfort to come to the relatively uncomfortable place to meet with us. The bible uses the word \u201cEmmanuel\u201d, means God is with us.\u00a0 How gracious our God is!!\u00a0 The first coming of Jesus (Christmas, the First Coming) tells us that we should leave our comfort zone to meet and encounter God because our Lord Jesus left his comfort place and is willing to meet with us.\u00a0 To meet Jesus and encounter Him is to experience His grace, mercy, love, joy and peace so that we can prepare our lives with hope that one day, we will meet with Him in eternity (Parousia, the Second Coming).\u00a0 Are we prepared to meet and encounter Jesus in Christmas?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px; text-align: right;\">Pastor Julian Wong<\/p>\n<h4>Pray<\/h4>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for grace and mercy. In the Christmas season, may the Spirit dwells in me and guides me to give thanks of what He has done for us.\u00a0 Show me if I am living in the comfort zone and reluctant to step out of it to meet you, Lord.\u00a0 Give me the desire to meet you and grow in you so that my life will reflect your glory. \u00a0In Jesus Christ\u2019s name I pray.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Diving Deeper<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Am I pursue any temporal things without eternal values? Power, Possession, Position, Prestige and Pleasure?<br \/>What is your most vivid memory of meeting Jesus?<br \/>Am I living a life preparing for the future to meet Jesus?<br \/>How can we live closer WITH GOD in our lives?<br \/>How are we being TRANSFORMED to be more like Christ?<br \/>How is the Holy Spirit empowering us to imitate Christ in what we DO this week?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew 2:1-12<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":13176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","ctc_sermon_topic":[],"ctc_sermon_book":[49],"ctc_sermon_series":[],"ctc_sermon_speaker":[520],"ctc_sermon_tag":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/13175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ctc_sermon"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/13175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13207,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/13175\/revisions\/13207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_topic?post=13175"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_book","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_book?post=13175"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_series?post=13175"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_speaker?post=13175"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scbc.com\/em\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_tag?post=13175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}