CFC Articles

"No more let sins and sorrows grow / Nor thorns infest the ground / He comes to make His blessings flow / Far as the curse is found" -Joy to the World At one point, the city of Pripyat, Ukraine was a busy and growing city, dotted by apartment buildings, pristine parks, and even an amusement park. The city was only officially established in 1979, but by 1986 there were ...

"O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free / Thine own from Satan's tyranny / From depths of Hell Thy people save / And give them victory o'er the grave" -O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Of all the consequences of the Fall that we see around us every day, none of them affect us like death. Adam and Eve believed the serpent's slippery suggestion that "You will not surely die." But as th...

"And in this Child we'll find our rest / And all the meek and lowly blest / An infant tongue could sing the hymn / Of Hallelujah and Amen / Amen, Amen / Amen, Amen / I found my life / I found my life in Him / Amen, Amen" -Amen, Amen Almost all good movies have a villain, and almost no movie has one as unlikable as Hilly Holbrook, the well-to-do socialite in the 2011 f...

"Israel's strength and consolation / Hope of all the earth Thou art / Dear desire of every nation / Joy of every longing heart" -Come Thou Long Expected Jesus We all have "longing hearts"wanting things the world cannot perfectly provide. We are confronted daily with our weakness, our frailty, our unmet desires, and our yearning for that which makes us feel whole. Much ...

"Who would have dreamed or ever foreseen / That we could hold God in our hands? / The Giver of Life is born in the night / Revealing God's glorious plan / To save the world" -Who Would Have Dreamed (This is a new song for us at CFC this year. But it is filled with profound and beautifully written lyrics.) It almost sounds blasphemous at first. How can a human being pr...

Preaching Passage: Psalm 62 This Sunday we will continue our Advent series of looking at Christmas in the Psalms. Come join us as we look to God alone, the one for whom our souls wait and long. Here are the songs we will sing together: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" by Coffin, Helmore, Neale (YouTube) "Who Would Have Dreamed" by Hansen Kauflin (YouTube) "What Child Is ...

"O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant / O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem / Come and behold Him, born the king of angels / O come let us adore Him" -O Come All Ye Faithful Just imagine how it must have felt to be one of the shepherds on the night of Christ's birth. A multitude of angels appearing would alone have been a spectacle. But to witness them, in all t...

"He rules the world with truth and grace / And makes the nations prove / The glories of His righteousness / And wonders of His love" -Joy to the World Isaac Watts wrote "Joy to the World" in 1719 as a meditation on Psalm 98. Thus the words of what has become a beloved Christmas song were actually written to celebrate not the coming of Jesus on that first Christmas but Hi...

"Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning; / Jesus, to thee be all glory given; / Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing: / O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord." -O Come All Ye Faithful What a truth-packed verse32 words that capture John's confession in John 1:14 in its entirety. Not just that God took on flesh, but that God lived among us. The word t...

"The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger / In all our trials born to be our friend" -O Holy Night Jesus is the Lord. From everlasting to everlasting, he is God. As the Son, he is sovereign, utterly independent, and limitless. He was begotten, not made. He is the uncreated Creator and we are his creation. He came down from heaven for our salvation. All of God's intenti...