So here we are, a day past our Christmas celebrations. How was it for you? Did you have a merry Christmas?

Maybe your Christmas was everything you wished; maybe it failed epically. Either way, whatever your Christmas experience has been and however the New Year is shaping up, you can still have a blessed Christmas.

You can have a Mary Christmas.

Bible Reference: Luke 1:39-55

Reach out to Pastor Ben at pastorben@ascensionharrisburg.com

More about our ministry: ascensionharrisburg.com

Christmas comes soon; what are you doing to get ready?

If you celebrate Christmas, even from a secular perspective, your preparations likely involve gifts and parties and food and decorations. It's fun at first, but easily becomes something that wears us out.

Preparation is important for Christmas from a Christian perspective, too - but it doesn't involve any of the traditional Christmasy activities. In this episode of Ascension on Air, as we continue our series A Real Christmas, we listen to a man whose job it was to prepare the people in his time, to get them ready, for Jesus - through repentance.

Bible Reference: Luke 3:1-6

Reach out to Pastor Ben at pastorben@ascensionharrisburg.com

More about our ministry: ascensionharrisburg.com

This episode begins a new series at Ascension called A Real Christmas. Christmas can mean a lot of different things to different people, and it's easy to get swept up in the parties and gifts and everything else around us; but what makes for a real Christmas? That's what this series will explore, starting with this first episode that's all about Jesus' coming and why that matters.

Bible Reference: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Reach out to Pastor Ben at pastorben@ascensionharrisburg.com

More about our ministry: ascensionharrisburg.com

This episode closes out our series, Live Like You'll Live Forever, this time considering how we live now given Christ's imminent return. Spoiler alert: Jesus sums up both his warning and encouragement in a single word: watch.

So are you? Are you really watching confident of what's to come?

Bible Reference: Mark 13:26-37

Reach out to Pastor Ben at pastorben@ascensionharrisburg.com

More about our ministry: ascensionharrisburg.com

We're jumping into the middle of a series that's focusing on what it means that we're going to live forever. In this episode, we focus especially on the idea of living in freedom from the fear of judgment, knowing that Jesus Christ is our high priest who sets us free.

Bible Reference: Hebrews 9:24-28

Reach out to Pastor Ben at pastorben@ascensionharrisburg.com

More about our ministry: ascensionharrisburg.com

Our fourth and final episode of our series Beautiful Truth. Everything we've talked about to in the previous three episodes - God's truth as truly good, the truth of our shared humanity, and truth as freedom from deception - leads up to this discussion about true identity found in Jesus Christ.

Bible Reference: Philippians 3:4-11

We all like to believe we're free - free to make our own choices, free to follow our own desires. But what if you were actually ruled by your desires?

In John 8:31-36, Jesus Christ reveals the true nature of what human beings call liberty - and it's not pretty. But thankfully there's a greater truth than this - and it has the power to set people, to set you, free.

Bible Reference: John 8:31-36

As we continue the series Beautiful Truth, we're diving into the disconnect we perceive with the past and how that affects our view of what it means to be human. This then forms the context for us to consider what Scripture reveals - that we all share a common humanity with a common problem, and the awesome truth that God's Son has shared in our humanity to solve that problem. Our primary Bible reference is Hebrews 2:14-18.