You're Invited To Return | Malachi - Clint Leavitt

You're invited! This Advent season, 2021, join us as we look at the invitational nature of Jesus' arrival in the world, exploring the messages of the prophets as they looked forward to the day where God would come to redeem and to restore. Our culture is constantly telling us to return to the Christmas season--and to the duties of our regular lives--in a certain way. Yet so many of us often find ourselves overwhelmed, anxious, and self-focused. Join us as Pastor Clint explores the prophet Malachi, and how Malachi's response to his own cultures unsatisfactory pattern can teach us something about what it means to 'return' in our own day today. Sermon Resources: 1. “the coins in the offering plate cost them nothing, their discards for the poor, the remnants of their time, and the grudging gifts of their talents...Worship became a perfunctory, sometimes tiresome service, or at best a sleepy duty, ineffective to change or touch anything in the worshipers’ hearts and lives.” -Elizabeth Achtemeir, Commentary on Malachi 2. 75% of Americans view members of the opposite political party as enemies to be opposed, not neighbors to be loved: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10050039/More-HALF-Trump-voters-want-red-states-secede-union.html 3. 5% of regular churchgoers tithe: https://www.vancopayments.com/egiving/church-giving-statistics-tithing#:~:text=5%25%20of%20churchgoers%20tithe%20(Church,%25%20(Health%20Research%20Funding). 4. Stats on Spiritual Conversations: https://www.barna.com/research/sharing-faith-increasingly-optional-christians/ 5. Stats on volunteering in the U.S.: https://lifewayresearch.com/2018/07/26/data-paints-a-picture-of-volunteerism-across-the-nation/ 6. “Christ has no body now on earth but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” -Teresa of Avila Join or follow us below: Facebook: www.facebook.com/thespringmid...​ Instagram: www.instagram.com/spring.midtown​ Website: www.thespringmidtown.org/​ Community Groups: www.thespringmidtown.org/comm...​ Sunday Services: www.thespringmidtown.org/