Please find below Adam Naler's notes from the Mid-service comments from Sunday, December 18, 2016.  We are posting prior comments to aid in edifying the church through these prayer lead times.  

We’ve been singing this morning of the birth of Jesus. The advent of Jesus. The coming of our Savior the prophesied Messiah, Jesus Christ. God, in the flesh, in fact. God, with us, Emmanuel. And he has come. He was born. He came 2000 years ago. And he lived!

And as he lived he made disciples. He made followers. He told the crowd in Mark 8 - "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And he tells us to “follow him”. And if you are a believer in Jesus, if you are a believer in this Savior, Jesus Christ, then you too are a follower. You are a disciple. And your motivation for following is love for him. Love manifested by obedience to him…

Your command, therefore, your directive as a disciple of Jesus is simple. “Go. Make disciples. Teach them to observe all that I’ve commanded you”, Jesus says in the last chapter of Matthew. Go and make followers of Jesus those who are not followers of Jesus. Go and make disciples of Jesus. As you are a disciple of Jesus, go and make other disciples of Jesus. And our motivation for making disciples is love for Jesus, which again is manifested by obedience to him…

But there is a further command for us, his disciples. There is an additional command for his followers. Yes, our motivation is love and obedience. Yes, we are to live to make new disciples of this Savior: he who was born, who died, and who rose again from the dead. But additionally, we, as followers of Jesus, should seek to refine Christlike character in each other. We should be purposeful in helping each other, helping other disciples, helping other believers follow Christ more closely.

Hebrews 10:19-25 - “19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus,
20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Love and Obedience! Stir up one another to love and obedience! Cultivate within each other a desire to follow Jesus more closely. Work to develop within other disciples a desire to be maturing disciples of Jesus…. Encourage each other to establish daily patterns of scripture reading and prayer. Regularly involve yourself in the lives of each other. Fellowship with each other. Model a love for those in your local church. Spend time with each other both when we are gathered and when we are scattered during the week. Display what it means to be a member of a local church by identifying with members of this local flock, spend time fellowshipping with this local flock, and serving this local flock of disciples.

And all the more as we see the Day of his return approaching. Fellowship with each other. Spend time with each other. Encourage each other. And as we live lovingly and obediently to God, we display his love to others. We are testimonies of his love to others. We “proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light”. I Peter 2:9

Do you “follow him”? Then love and obey him. By making disciples of him. And by causing his disciples to deepen their love for him and their obedience to him.