TCBC Family and friends,
Merry Christmas and happy New Year! As we look forward to 2026 I want to let you know about a new class we will be starting with a Tuesday Night Men's group. The study is by Chip Ingram and called Overcoming Emotions that Destroy.
We all struggle with angry feelings, brought on by tension, pressure, and the blocked goals and frustrations of day-to-day life. The broken and stressed relationships that result from these feelings can overwhelm us. But there is hope. With the right help, you too can overcome those emotions that destroy.
On Tuesday, January 13, we are going to have an interest meeting from 6:00-7:30 to share more details about the study and enjoy a time of fellowship together. Dinner will be provided and even if you aren't sure about attending the whole class, I encourage you to come out this evening and enjoy time together with the men of our church.
May God bless you in the coming year!
For His glory,
Pastor TJ
Cell: 410-303-5190
Devotion
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
Psalm 51:5–7
I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas
It was 1941, just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, and the US military was ramping up to send nearly three million troops overseas within the next year. On Christmas day, a new song debuted that would soon capture the hearts of our nation. From the Kraft Music Hall rang the rich baritone voice of Bing Crosby, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …”
If you are like me, you have already finished the line in your head and even heard it in Bing Crosby’s unforgettable voice. As Christmas of 1942 approached, the Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. The men and women of our military, deployed so far from home, found in White Christmas a nostalgic longing for what they lost and a dream of what they could one day have again.
White Christmas resonated deeply with a nation separated from their loved ones during Christmas. It stirs images of a landscape covered in the peaceful perfection of a blanket of snow, of family gathered around a tree, of a fireplace crackling and warming the room. It evokes the feelings of joy, hope, laughter, and peace which too easily escape our grasp. It is a Christmas worth longing for.
There is another type of white Christmas we ought to yearn for. One not about our home here on earth, but our home in heaven. In our sin, we are separated from God. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).
Our troops in World War II were separated from their families because of the sins of others, we are separated from God because of our own sin. Thankfully, He does not leave us without hope. In Psalm 51:7 we see confidence that God can wash away all our sin and leave us, “whiter than snow”. God tells us how we can receive this forgiveness in 1 John 1:9 ... “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Though we did not have a white Christmas this year, I am thank God for a Christmas in which my sins are washed whiter than snow, where they are separated from me as far as the east is from the west, where all my sins have been forgiven. I hope you, too, experienced a white Christmas through forgiveness in Jesus Christ. No matter what you have done, no matter how great your sin, no matter how dark your hidden secret, confess it to God. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” and He will wash us, “white as snow”.