If we are searching for deep faith, our answer lies on the fringes of belonging. In serving them, we fill our own souls with the depth of what it means to follow Christ. To know Him is to pursue the people who do not belong. The rejected, the uncool, the unpopular, and the ones who bother and annoy everyone around them.

Our relationship with Him deepens as we wait on Him. Patience and perseverance dance together during our ongoing and intimate prayer with God. The infinite conversation solidifies the roots of our faith. 

Fully God, Jesus did not escape the rejection of also being fully man. He didn’t have to come to earth and experience all of the feels we trudge through on a daily basis, but He chose to. God sent Him to save us, and He willingly came and walked out the Father’s will.

"And now, dear children, continue in Him, so that when He appears we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming" (1 John 2:28).

When we are lost in the woods, we can pause and pray to the Shepherd of our hearts. He is the Way. He is Emmanuel, God with us. His faithfulness and mercy are trustworthy. 

Jesus is asking us to completely forgive without receiving an apology. He’s suggesting it’s better to humbly accept the situation instead of arguing for our side. Jesus is telling us to be nice to the people who are mean to us. 

Silence allows us to sit in our anger and spin stories to ourselves about how sorry we and others should feel that we’ve endured this injustice. We start assigning false character traits to others and assuming their motives. Silence in anger can allow us to walk into silence one way and walk out farther from God than ever before.

Loneliness likes to lie to us in these situations, but Jesus is always with us. In today’s Scripture from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus shows us five major ways He not only is with us in every storm, but has the authority to calm each dark cumulous cloud.

We celebrate peace and joy a lot in the Christmas season. Peace in Christ surpasses all understanding. It’s calm in the midst of chaos, like the eye of a hurricane. We are meant to be at peace, with our lives and the calamity in the world, by understanding the place God has for us in it. Faith in Him ushers in peace.

The world gives peace and then takes it away, because it’s not rooted in things which last. Jesus gives us a Peace rooted in who He is. Christmas reminds us of the gravity of the gift He came to earth to give us. Everything about His life on earth leads us to understand more about godly Peace.

Positive people have a gift to come alongside those who are struggling and stumbling, and gently pull them aside with truth. They are a gift, because they sense conflict and have a desire to repair and help de-tangle division.

His arrival set God’s plan of rescue in motion. By placing our faith in the babe who was born under the stars that night, as angels sang to shepherds of His arrival, we embrace a hope which doesn’t depend on our happiness nor the chaos in the world surrounding us.

The command to love teaches us to be thankful for the life Christ died so that we might live. Not an easy life, but one which will end in heaven, with Him, for eternity. The amazing journey of life is looking through the lens of God’s love in order to see and be thankful for all of the many blessings littering our lives.

Winning in this life is rooted in the hope we have through Christ Jesus, and the victory He has already won.