Advent 2011 – Part 1

The Season of Advent – the four Sundays before Christmas, starts on 27 November 2011. The word “advent” basically means “coming”.

o It is a time to be filled with joy, because God became a man and was born as a baby to become our Redeemer and King!
o During this season we also remember that Jesus wants to enter our lives today, here and now, and through his Spirit’s work in us become part of our reaching out to a lost world in pain.
o We also remember that Jesus Christ promised to physically come again, to create a new heaven and earth in which we will live for all eternity!

The 4 Advent candles in church represent a “countdown” of the Sundays before Christmas - but it also reminds us that we have but a short time to prepare, before Jesus returns!

Advent reminds us that God gave his Son
During this Advent Season we will once again remember that Christ took on our weak, human nature and became one of us. We prepare for a “Merry Christmas”. To believers this has nothing to do with a politically correct “Happy Holiday”. Our cheer comes from the “mass”, or celebration, of Christ who came to save his people and will come again to make their salvation complete! He wants to change our lives into Christ’s mass: Christmas!!

The Apostle Paul explains it in 2 Cor 5: 21: God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

This is what Christ came to do when taking on our “weak human flesh”. He showed his compassion with our dilemma which is the result of our imperfections, mistakes, disobedience and sin. He came to live the life that God requires and we cannot accomplish, and to live it perfectly, holy and without sin, in our place! The Son of God became our brother and he never leaves nor forsakes us.

During this Season of Advent we want to celebrate that when God gave the gift of salvation, he did not send a handbook with complicated instructions to figure out how to be saved. He did not send us laws and procedures that are beyond us and which will lead to even more failure to please our holy God. Instead, he sent his Son to save us.

Jesus came to show us how salvation works. Jesus came to become our salvation, our joy and our security. Jesus came to give us everlasting life. Jesus came to live a life that pleases God in our place. He came to pay the penalty for what we cannot and did not do.

Even today Jesus wants to come into your life through the work of his Spirit, to through faith in him, ensure that we work out his salvation in our day to day lives and challenges and in our work for the Lord.
And one day he will come again on the clouds to make our salvation complete.

The Advent message always remains that (John 3:16) God so much loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Let’s trust in the directions of the Son. Let’s rejoice because he did everything we could not do, to save us! Lets pray that he will come again soon to dry all our tears.

May you experience a blessed and a merry Advent Season.