Advent Devotions for 2016

Transcription

1 Advent Devotions for 2016 The Christian church traditionally sets apart the four weeks leading to Christmas Eve, the season of Advent, as a time to prepare our hearts to celebrate Jesus birth with the most JOY possible. Greenwood is providing four Advent devotions to help you make room for JOY this Christmas season. Because joy erupts in our hearts when a deep longing is finally met with glorious fulfillment, each week s meditation will focus on a particular way God fulfills our deepest desires for Hope, Joy, Peace, and Love through the coming of His Son. We will provide a new devotion each Sunday of Advent. Please take one to use at home, or come to the prayer chapel at Greenwood for a respite during the week, Monday Thursday, 8 a.m. 5 p.m. We are redecorating that space, and though it isn t finished, you will find comfortable seating and an inviting space. You may also find these devotions at GreenwoodCC.com. May the Lord bless your heart with fullness of JOY at His coming.

2 Advent at Greenwood Week Four December America is anxious. We spend $2 billion a year on anxiety medications. Almost one in five Americans suffers with a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and that doesn t mean the other four of the five aren t anxious. Those of us with diagnosed anxiety represent the overflow of the volcano our whole culture boils with anxiety, but we can only measure the part pouring out the top (or walking into the doctor s office). If you feel anxious today, you are not alone. But listen to the song the angels sang after Jesus birth: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests, (Luke 2:14). Zechariah said the same thing about what God would do through the advent of Jesus: Because of the tender mercies of our God... the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-79). Why are we Anxious? Zechariah says we sit darkness. Darkness intensifies fear; when the lights go out, we can t see what s out there. This is also true emotionally. Under the constraint of chronological time, we can t see beyond the illumination of this moment. What will happen tonight? Tomorrow? Next year? We don t know. Darkness surrounds us, and anxiety fills us. Zechariah also says we live under the shadow of death. Isaiah calls death the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations, (Isaiah 25:7). The shadow of death means we and everyone we love will one day die. It means decay and decline affect everything around us our bodies, our companies, our nations, our relationships. Though life is full of blessings and joys, loss is inevitable. No wonder we feel anxious.

3 The word Zechariah and the angels used for peace is the Greek word eirene (i-ray -nay). It can mean to set at one, rest, and quietness. Anxiety hurts. It clenches our bodies, frays our nerves, and exhausts our minds. Doesn t eirene quietness, tranquility, and rest sound good? Don t we long for peace? Peace, but How? Did you notice one of the meanings of eirene is to make one? When Zechariah sang that God would guide our feet into the path of peace, he explained how: he said God s people would receive the knowledge of salvation... in the forgiveness of their sins, (Luke 1:77-78). Through Jesus death and resurrection, we are made one with Him (John 17:21). Paul writes, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (Romans 5:1). And our peace with God means we can find peace in every other way as well. Being one with Jesus means every eternal blessing is ours: He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32). God gives us, along with Jesus, the gift his kingdom: Fear not, little flock, for it is your father s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, (Luke 12:32). The sunrise has visited us from on high. Jesus coming means we can see beyond the darkness to a dawn of glorious light: life in God s kingdom of perfect justice and unbroken joy awaits us. So Jesus advent has transformed death from an oppressive shadow over everything to simply the changing room for glory. Taking Peace to Heart Peter tells us we can cast our anxieties on God because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Take a few moments to tell God about the anxieties you have today. Paul says, The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, (Phil 4:6). Interspersing your prayers with expressions of thanks, ask God for His help with the things you are anxious about. How can peace with Him, and the hope of His kingdom, give you peace today? Sometimes I choose to stay anxious because I want what I want, and I don t know if God is going to give it to me. The path to peace sometimes involves the surrender Jesus modeled, Not my will, but yours be done, (Luke 22:42). If you can, make this your prayer, asking the Lord to give you peace that His will is good, pleasing, and perfect (Romans 12:2). You may also want to find a version of the Hymn, It is Well to listen to this week. It gives powerful expression to the peace we long for and can find in the midst of difficulties. A Prayer for Peace Sometimes anxiety doesn t have a name; it eats at us for vague reasons. If peace eludes you this Advent, make this your daily prayer this week: Father, I long for peace, for freedom from the painful grip of anxiety. But I can t think myself out of it. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, (Ps 85:8). Thank you for the gift of Jesus and the peace he made between me and you. Please also give me your Holy Spirit and the peace only He can give. May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus, (Phil 4:7).

4 Advent at Greenwood Week Three December Small children are good at joy. When we toss a child into the air and catch him, what will he say as soon as he stops giggling? Do it again! And again! And again! G.K. Chesterton writes about how this joy points to God s joy: Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again ; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again to the sun; and every evening, Do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we, (Orthodoxy). We have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. Yes, we have sinned, and we have been sinned against, and the anxieties of life weigh on us. We know too much. We grow up, and grow old, and our capacity for joy erodes. But underneath we long for that elusive joy. The secret of the human heart is that we crave joy most of all. Everything else we want love, security, significance, peace, a vacation, a house we want not for itself but for the joy in it. The Angels Announce the Advent of Joy The night Jesus was born, a multitude of angels appeared. Behold, the first angel announced to the shepherds, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, (Luke 2:10-11). Why will the birth of this baby cause great joy? Because he is the savior.

5 Why Joy? Picture this. You live in a world where chaos, darkness, pain, and death threaten everything. The ruler of your world is a horror. And you, implicated in its evils, cannot escape the destruction coming to wipe this world away. You have heard there is another realm where goodness, beauty, and love rule. In that world, it is impossible to find a speck of injustice, life is good and lasts forever, and the Ruler is so glorious that to look upon Him is to know infinite joy. But there is no path from your world to that one; you cannot escape. Now picture someone comes in great love, and with an unthinkable personal sacrifice, carves a path for you to walk forgiven and clean into the other realm; you can enjoy that delightful kingdom and its King forever. Imagine your joy. That s the story of Christmas: the Savior has come. There is now a way. Someone came not to mock, but to fulfill our childhood desire for endless joy. He came the first time to tear down the wall of sin between God and mankind, making us ready for His second coming. Then, He will do away with all that is wrong and take His place as the Beautiful King (Isaiah 9:1-8). And we, because of his first coming, will be able to live with him where there is fullness of joy, (Psalm 16:11). This is the JOY of Advent. Taking Joy to Heart If we don t hear of Jesus birth with joy this Christmas, it may be because worries or evils weigh down on us or because we are distracted by lesser things we trust to give us joy. If you are weighed down, ask the Lord to show you how the gift of His Son offers you joy even in the midst of heaviness, sorrow, or worry. If you are distracted, C.S. Lewis says: Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased, (The Weight of Glory). Ask the Lord if you are too easily pleased. What do you trust this Christmas to give you just a little joy? How can the gift of Jesus lift your eyes from mud pies to infinite joy? Spend time thanking God for Jesus. Thank Him for the hope of His perfect, beautiful Kingdom. A Prayer for Joy this Advent If you find joy elusive this Advent, you may make this your daily prayer this week: Father, the psalmist calls you his exceeding joy (Psalm 34:4). The angels announced Jesus birth as a great joy (Luke 2:10). And you, Father, have a heart full of joy (John 15:11). But I have sinned and grown old, and my capacity for joy, even as you offer me your Son, is so diminished that I feel hardly happy, let alone joyful. Please give me your Holy Spirit and fill me with all joy. (Romans 15:13). Enlarge my capacity for joy so I can rejoice in the gift of your Son: I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart, (Psalm 119:32).

6 Advent at Greenwood Week Two December 4 10 Please set aside some moments of quiet to prayerfully read through the following thoughts and scriptures. Try to still yourself so you can hear your heart speak and so you can listen to impressions, nudges, or breaths of encouragement from the Lord. You might read one scripture verse that stands out to you slowly, many times, allowing the Holy Spirit to apply its truths and the love it contains to the deep places in your heart. May the Lord bless you with joy in His love. God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, (Jeremiah 31:3). Read this verse again, and put your name in it. Can your heart hear God say, I have loved you,, with an everlasting love? Our Need for Love God created men and women to long for love. We come out of the womb craving, even requiring, unconditional love. As we grow, disappointments, wounds, and trauma can shut down our hope that we will ever find such love. When this happens, we may attempt to fill our need for love with some poor substitute: control, money, success, power, approval, or an addiction. It doesn t work very well. Picture a small plant rooted in the dirt. What does it need to grow? It needs soil and water, but it also needs exposure to the sun a radioactive fireball so vast it could swallow 1.3 billion earths. Imagine if our plant were blocked from soaking up the gifts of the sun. We know it would wither. It might twist itself to find a scrap of artificial light, or its roots might go searching in dark places for some other source of nourishment for survival. This is a picture of us: we require the sunlight of God s love. Substitutes will not suffice. We need the infinite and unending love of the eternal God to make us sane, healthy, and free to be all God created us to be.

7 The Love of Advent The season of Advent invites us to turn from our meagre substitutes and soak up God s love for us. We peer into the manger and see a baby an inestimable gift of love. God, because He loves us, gave us His eternal, perfect, gloriously beautiful Son. There He lies, vulnerable and humble. Jesus grew up and explained, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, (John 3:16). If you love a child a son, daughter, grandchild, niece, or nephew is there anyone in the world you would sacrifice that child to save? Wouldn t you have to love whoever needed saving at least as much as that infinitely precious child? Even then, and even if you knew the child you love would overcome death, could you make that choice? I don t think I could. I sometimes look at my children and find myself thinking, I would trade the universe every star and particle of it for you. But this is what Advent says to us about God s love for us. Jesus said it plainly in prayer to His Father: you sent me and (you) love them even as you loved me, (John 17:23). Even as. God loves us even as He loves His Son. These may be the two most beautiful words in all of Scripture. And Jesus loved us with the same everlasting, infinite love. John says, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, (1 John 3:16). The baby in the manger came to die for us, for love. This love knows no equal. Jesus said, Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, (John 15:13). God did the unimaginable: He loved us so much that He gave His Son to save us. Taking Advent to Heart Picture yourself at the manger in Bethlehem, looking upon God s gift to us. Can you hear God say to you, For God so loved (your name) that He gave (your name) his only Son, that (your name) should not perish but have eternal life? (John 3:16). Prayerfully read this verse, filling in your name, several times. Take a few moments to thank God for loving you enough to give you such a gift. You may want to kneel. A Prayer to Know More of God s Love Julian of Norwich said, For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. The fallen human heart nearly always struggles to grasp the depths of God s love. If you feel this is true for you today, make this your prayer every day this week of Advent: Heavenly Father, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water, (Psalm 63:1). I long to know more of your love for me. Please pour your love into my heart through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5) so that I can open my heart to receive the love you showed through the gift of your Son the helpless baby in the manger with joy abounding this Christmas.

8 Advent at Greenwood Week One November 27 December 3 Please set aside some moments of quiet to prayerfully read through the following thoughts and scriptures. Try to still yourself so that you can hear your heart speak and so that you can listen to impressions, nudges, or breaths of encouragement from the Lord. You might read one scripture verse that stands out to you slowly, many times, to allow the Holy Spirit to apply its truths and the hope it contains to the deep places in your heart. May the Lord bless with you hope. We have hope when we cherish simultaneously a deep desire and the expectation that our desire will be fulfilled; we don t yet have what we long for, but we have confidence that one day we will possess what our heart desires. Hopefulness buoys our hearts, lifting us through hard times and struggles. On the other hand, Proverbs says, Hope deferred makes the heart sick, (13:12). God made our hearts to run on hope, like a motor runs on gasoline. So when we cherish deep desires and have very little or no expectation that our desires will be fulfilled, our hearts become sick. The lights go out, and we walk in painful heart-darkness: sadness, despair, hopeless, and inertia. Areas of hopelessness hurt, perhaps at the deepest level. As you prepare for Christmas, how are you experiencing hope deferred or the heart-sickness of dead hopes? Where do you long for hope? Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God spoke through the prophets of Israel, promising He would come. Isaiah said, The Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (meaning God with us. ) (Isaiah 7:14).

9 The Israelites waited a very long time. But then... Mary... gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn, (Luke 2:6-7). God promised. And God delivered what He had promised. God had been working in the darkness. When Jesus had grown to be a man, He promised, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also, (John 14:2-4). We live in the time between His first coming and His second coming (Matthew 24:30). But God s perfect fulfillment of His long-ago promises gives us every hope for the fulfillment of the promises we cling to today: because Jesus came the first time, we hope with confidence in His coming again. And when He comes, He will take us to Himself. We will be with Him forever in His Kingdom where death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, (Revelation 21:4). This means that chapters in our lives of pain, loss, or disappointment do not define us. No matter how dark the road we walk this Advent season, God is not finished writing our story toward the best and most beautiful ending. This is our greatest HOPE. Because, The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone... For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, (Isaiah 9:2). Ask the Lord how the HOPE of Jesus birth and His promised second coming shine light into the areas of dark hopelessness you wrote about above. Listen quietly for His response. Promises to give HOPE: If you have yet to find hope for your heart, prayerfully consider these promises. Ask God to speak hope to you in the ways only He can. Isaiah prophesied that Mary s son Jesus would be called Immanuel God with us. And Jesus said, I am with you always, to the end of the age, (Matthew 28:20). How can Jesus with you every breath give you hope? Speaking of His own coming, Jesus said, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, (John 3:16). And Paul taught, If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32). How can the truth that God loved you enough to give you His Son give you hope? Before the coming of John the Baptist, the Israelites passed four hundred years without hearing from a prophet of God. This was a long walk through a dark, silent time. But the birth of Jesus revealed that God had been at work in that darkness, fulfilling His promises in His perfect time. Speaking of the coming of Jesus, John the Beloved wrote, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it... the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world, (John 1:5, 9). How can the truth that while God was silent for four hundred years He was preparing to fulfill His promises in the most glorious, unexpected way give you hope? A Prayer for HOPE: Glorious Heavenly Father, I long for your Kingdom where everything is as it should be: where no one dies, where relationships do not fail, and where the things that have broken my heart will be no more. I long for your Kingdom where I will find fullness of joy... at your right hand, (Psalm 16:11). I long for these things, but I live here and now where sin and evil and death do so much damage; I live in the land of deep darkness. Please give me your Holy Spirit and shine the light of HOPE into my darkness. Please may you, the God of hope, fill me will all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit I may abound in hope, (Romans 15:13).