vineyard-church-weekly-update-december-17th-2025

Hello Vineyard Fam!

As we move into the final week of Advent, four candles will soon be burning: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. It’s fitting that love comes last, because everything in Advent has been moving in this direction. 

Hope waits.
Peace rests.
Joy awakens.
And love… comes close.

This is the heart of Christmas and the heart of the unfolding plan of a Loving God. Love is not a sentimental idea about God, but the startling truth that God did not and will not remain distant. The Word became flesh and made His home among us. God pitched His tent in our neighborhood. Love closes the distance.

That word incarnation can sound technical, but it simply means that God refused to love us from afar. He stepped into our world, into noise and poverty, broken relationships and identity wounds, sin and shame, fear and longing. Jesus wasn’t born into an ideal world; He was born into ours.

This is where Advent stops being something we merely receive and becomes something we’re invited to live. Advent isn’t an invitation to consume warm spiritual feelings; it’s a call to embody the same love we’ve received. Love moves from for us to through us.

In a world where faith is often reduced to the consumption realm of private comfort or personal fulfillment, Advent reminds us that love is communal, costly, and present. Jesus didn’t heal with slogans, He touched. He stayed. He listened. He moved toward people everyone else avoided.

That’s the kind of love the Church was meant to carry.

The early church became known not for polish or power, but for presence. They fed widows, welcomed strangers, adopted abandoned children, and sang hymns in prisons. Their nearness to suffering became their witness. People encountered the living God because they encountered a people who stayed.

Every act of true love points back to the Father’s embrace. The arms of Jesus stretched out on the cross were God’s final word: I am with you. Not platitudes. Not distance. Proximity.

A Simple Practice for This Week

Choose one moment each day to pray this simple prayer: “Lord, make me someone who stays close.”

Next, we pay attention... Who comes to mind? Where might God be inviting you to move toward someone instead of away?

Scripture to Read This Week

• John 1:1–14: The Word becomes flesh
• 1 John 4:7–12: We love because He first loved us
• Luke 10:33–35: The love that stops, sees, and stays

Read slowly. Ask: "Where do I see God coming close? Where is He inviting me to do the same?"

As we light the final candle of Advent this week, may we remember this: Christmas is the story of a God who moved in, and love still moves toward people today.

Grace and peace,
Adam Greenwell
Lead Pastor
Vineyard Church
www.billingsvineyard.org