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One of the Christmas gifts I most enjoy is the Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge Christmas Concert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, I pay for the tickets and I always take my lovely wife (Mrs. Hallelujah Jones) as a Christmas present to her, but each and every year I have attended I have received the gift of tears of joy and praise.<\/span><\/p>\n The concert was held last Saturday at Grace Church in Eden Prairie with featured artist Jason Gray.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And the choir!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n No doubt you’ve enjoyed Jason Gray’s songs on Kinship Christian Radio, and he is certainly a wonderful and respected Christian artist, but I would\u00a0 respectfully maintain that the 350 people in the choir rescued and recovering from addiction by the power of Jesus Christ deserve equal billing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What turned on the water works for me this year was Gray and the choir singing “Baby King.<\/em>”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s one of those songs you like the minute you hear it, but has a much deeper impact once you pay attention to the lyrics:<\/span><\/p>\n Ring every bell, shout out the message\u00a0<\/em><\/span> When Gray introduced the song, he said he thought God sent Jesus as a small and defenseless little baby so we would not be afraid when God stepped into this world with us.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And that makes me think of the verse in Luke 2 when the angels appeared to the shepherds:<\/span><\/p>\n An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified<\/em>. (v9, NIV)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Terrified.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most translations use that word, but also used is “filled with great fear,” “terribly frightened,” “greatly frightened,” and of course the KJV’s “sore afraid.”<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sore afraid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n That’s the shepherd’s reaction to one, single angel who has come to announce good news, peace on earth good will to men. And the mortal men in his presence are so scared it hurts<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gray has a valid point. If our omniscient, omnipotent, glorious, look-upon-His-face-and-die God who created all the stars and all the planets and suns and galaxies simply by speaking them into being had come down among from His throne in heaven with its flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder how would we have reacted? (Do take a look in Revelation 4 and read what God’s throne looks like.)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But He didn’t.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n God sent his Son as a humble little baby in a manger. Seven or eight pounds of God in the flesh. The Lord of heaven and earth unable to walk, talk, feed himself, or take care of himself in any way.\u00a0 Defenseless. Small. Weak.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Humble.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n God sent His Son, his only Son, to be a son of man that we would be able to be sons and daughters of the One True Father.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus came down from His throne in heaven that we might be able to go up to His throne and join Him forever.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He left His kingdom that the kingdom could come to earth.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He came so that He could die for us so that we would never die.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus was born so that we could be reborn.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And there was the proof of that amazing rebirth standing right there in front of me. There were 350 souls standing in front of me who had been spiritually dead, who very well could have ended up physically dead, had that little baby not come to earth and saved them.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And they were singing His praises amid tears of joy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n HALLELUJAH!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today’s Praise<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n So, ring every bell, shout out the message\u00a0<\/em><\/span> (Photo used by permission, Mn Adult and Teen Challenge)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the Christmas gifts I most enjoy is the Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge Christmas Concert.\u00a0 Yes, I pay for the tickets and I always take my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":16694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 14:16:20","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAll hail the coming of Jesus\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nLord of us all, small and defenseless\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nPower comes swaddled in meekness\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nSo don’t be afraid, He came as a baby King<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
\nAll hail the coming of Jesus\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nLord of us all, small and defenseless\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nPower comes swaddled in meekness\u00a0<\/em><\/span>
\nSo don’t be afraid, He came as a baby King<\/em><\/span>
\nSo don’t be afraid<\/em><\/span>
\nHe came as a baby King!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n