Church Family:

We hope you enjoyed the first week of Advent as we begin to celebrate the Christmas season. We have many exciting things in store for the next few weeks, and we want to give you a taste of what is to come.

As you saw on Sunday, the theme of this Christmas season is “Christmas in the Valley of Vision.” If you are not yet familiar with The Valley of Vision, it is a collection of powerful Puritan prayers that are deep in knowledge, wisdom and doctrine. Many of us in leadership have spent significant time reading and praying through these prayers in our own lives. This time of meditation on Christ through the words of the Puritans has led to a deepening of our love for Him, our knowledge of Him and our love for His mission.

Our heart is for you to know Christ more through this series. As you meditate on and pray through these Puritan prayers, we hope that you will gain deepened affection for our Savior and understand the weightiness of His sacrifice for us. The natural overflow of this response is increased worship of Him in our own personal lives, our families and the corporate church.

To have some fun with our series, we created a movie trailer-style video. We want to be clear that “Christmas in the Valley of Vision” is a preaching series, not a video series. Our pastors will be preaching weekly through these amazing prayers as we study them together.

Our hope is that “Christmas in the Valley of Vision” will generate more worship of Christ our King. As we worship, we seek to share our joy with others. One way to do that this Christmas season is to serve others. We are providing many opportunities for you to do this through the For the City Network. You can find these opportunities at forthecity.org/christmas

We are thankful to worship and serve with you, our church family,

The Leadership at The Austin Stone

"Gift of Gifts" from The Valley of Vision
By Arthur Bennett.

© Arthur Bennett 1975
Used by permission from Banner of Truth.