As Christians, we’re called to keep our minds focused on Christ, who is Lord over everything. But in order for us to do that, we first need to have a good understanding of what His lordship truly means.

God showed us His great mercy when He sent Jesus to live and die for us and our sin. That mercy from God should motivate us to show the same love and mercy to others in everything we do.

If we examined our lives, would we see evidence that we’ve joined the fight against injustice?

For the month of January, we’ll focus on a few areas of our lives that we all can improve upon. Hopefully by this time next year we’ll all be able to point and say “This is how my faith grew in 2012.”

Merry Christmas from the LifeMatters team! Thank you for making us a part of your on-going Bible study. We hope you have a wonderful time of worship on Christmas morning, and we look forward to growing with you in the new year.

Joseph was open to obeying God’s plans, even when that plan wasn’t predictable. So were the wise men. Hopefully you and I can be ready to obey God’s perfect, unpredictable plan for our lives as well.

As you prepare for Sunday and the study on Mary and Joseph’s obedient responses to God’s plan for their lives, spend time reading and dwelling on this week’s Advent reading from Luke 1:57-80.

This Sunday starts a new quarter of LifeMatters. We’re studying the Christmas story this month, but for most of us, the Christmas season has been in full swing for a while.

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Here are the Web links for this week’s lesson on Deuteronomy 32.

In this week’s lesson, we’ll take a look at the single most important quality a leader needs to have—trust in the Lord.