{"id":1285,"date":"2011-12-12T20:51:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T20:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/?p=1285"},"modified":"2011-12-12T20:51:04","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T20:51:04","slug":"mondays-advent-reading-mark-11-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/12\/mondays-advent-reading-mark-11-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday&#8217;s Advent Reading, Mark 1:1-8"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Theme: Get Ready for Jesus<\/p>\n<p>Has anyone ever told you that you needed a bath? Do you always agree? God sent John the baptizer to tell people that they needed a bath \u2013 a spiritual bath. They thought they were spiritually clean (after all, they were God\u2019s chosen people). But they needed to be perfectly clean if they were going to live forever with the Lord. Only Jesus, the true lamb of God, would be able to offer the sacrifice that could remove the sin of all his people once and for all. John poured water on people as a sign that God was sending one soon who would wash away sin once and for all. Now when we were baptized, God was saying that he will wash away our sin too. But for us, that washing comes after Jesus came to die on the cross for us. Our baptism in water means even more than John\u2019s \u2013 a promise that God will make us clean and new now if we believe in Jesus, and we\u2019ll never need a bath again! Ask God to help us live our lives as those who have been washed and made ready for him.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/12\/mondays-advent-reading-mark-11-8\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"25\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"recommend\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Theme: Get Ready for Jesus<\/p>\n<p>Has anyone ever told you that you needed a bath? Do you always agree? God sent John the baptizer to tell people that they needed a bath \u2013 a spiritual bath. They thought they were spiritually clean (after all, they were God\u2019s chosen people). But they needed to be perfectly [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-pastor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1FrAa-kJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1286,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions\/1286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}