पुरानो करारमा ख्रीष्टमस-४, पा. अरबिन पोखरेल
Theme: Message of Christmas should be drawn from the OT, because Christmas happened in the OT, in the prophetic tradition.Goal: We will gain deeper appreciation for the original Christmas message. We had a very meaningful NRC conference over the past week. The highlights of the week was in my view the sharing of our stories, celebrating what God is doing among us, with a keen eye and anticipation for what God wants to do through us in our churches and in Nepal. It was also a time of self examination, and preparations. I want to personally thank everyone who worked very hard to make all the events possible and enjoyable. This is the season of Advent. During Advent we focus on the coming of Christ. It is a season of waiting, preparing with Advent candles of hope, faith, peace, and love in anticipation of Christ’s coming. We at Cross-Way also prepare for evangelism and outreach as it has been a suitable season to invite neighbors, share the gospel, and even prepare for going outside to help other pastors and leaders to preach the gospel reaching out to their neighbors. The first sermon focused on the Christmas of the OT. The idea behind is that we often forget there is a whole world of people, culture, personality and context of time/space behind the story we read and often quickly put into our (or recently borrowed) ideas of culture, from our own perspectives. We are “imprisoned by the present,” whereas we must live inside God’s Big Story (grand plan of salvation and revelation). Thus the series will focus on digging deeper into the prophecies spoken around the Christmas events, the obscure prophecies (not often focused on Christmas messages), for there are many prophecies fulfilled around Jesus’ birth.