Advent is a time to wait, listen and ponder the awesome wonder of God who sent his only son as a baby to save us. Pause and spend some time this season reflecting on God’s gift of love.
Let us join together in singing "O Come all ye faithful. "
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Let us entre into a time of prayer
Advent prayer
Lord, in a season when every heart should be happy and light, many of us are struggling with the heaviness of life—burdens that steal the joy right out of our stockings. Tragedy arrives as innocent victims suffer, and an inner voice whispers, “Be afraid!” We need your peace, Jesus. We confess that our hearts are too often filled with wonder of a different kind: wondering when the bills will be paid. Wondering when rest will come. Will it ever? Sometime we may even think, "Is the Christmas message still true today?" Especially in a world where worry, not peace, prevails, stir up that good news again my Lord. This Advent, make it real in our hearts. Never have we needed Your joy and peace more than now. Thank You for the gift of Jesus, our Immanuel, the Word made flesh. We not only need Your peace and joy; Lord, we crave it. You’ve promised rest for the weary, victory for the battle-scarred, peace for the anxious, and acceptance for the broken hearted—not just at Advent, but every day of every year. Your name is still called “Wonderful,” “Counsellor,” “The Mighty God,” “The Everlasting Father,” and “The Prince of Peace.” We know that peace on earth can only come when hearts find peace with You. You are still our Joy. You are still our Peace. You are no longer a babe in the manger. You are Lord of lords and King of kings. And we still celebrate You as Lord—this Christmas and always. Amen.
Please take time to bring your worries and concerns before God, then
let us share together in The Lords Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen
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Before we go to the word let share together in this Salvation Army Devotional on
Angels From The Realms Of glory
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ADVENT
If you or I were God, would we have let Jesus be born in a time and a place where His life was under threat? Would you have let Him become a refugee? I don’t think so. And yet God - God did both of those things.
Did you know the official UN statistics on refugees are absolutely frightening? At last count there were around 30 million refugees around the world. The misery of just one refugee is beyond comprehension for me, but 30 million, that’s too vast to even comprehend.
I’ve never been a refugee. I’ve never been so poor as to not have enough food to eat. I do remember a time when my parents struggled. A time when they found it very hard but managed to bring food to the table somehow. With that in mind it’s very hard to put words to paper that will bring comfort to those who are struggling. Especially today in our present climate.
Lets look at Matthew 2:7-18
Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared to them. Then he sent them to Bethlehem saying, “Go and search diligently for this child and when you’ve found Him, let me know so that I can go and worship Him as well.” When they heard the king, they set out and there ahead of them went this star that they had seen at it’s rising in the East until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.
On entering the house they saw the child with Mary, His mother and they knelt down and they worshipped Him and then, opening their treasure chest they offered Him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh and having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. Now after they left an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and His mother to Egypt and flee and remain there until I tell you for Herod is about the search for the child and destroy Him.” So Joseph got up, took the child and His mother by night and went to Egypt and there they remained until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called My Son.”
But when Herod saw that he’d been tricked by these wise men, these Magi from the East, he was infuriated and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, “A voice was heard from Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled because they are no more.”
What a story! Do you agree? I mean, this Jesus is the Son of God and God brings Him into the world, into this precarious place with Mary and Joseph, who were just two young kids and He’s in this place and Herod wants to kill Him. Herod thinks that this is a Jewish uprising, Herod thinks there’s going to be another King David, who will threaten his throne. So, Herod wants Jesus dead, and in a dream, God tells Joseph to get up and go to Egypt.
Let’s remember here that Joseph doesn’t have the Bible like we have it today. Joseph doesn’t have the New Testament; Joseph doesn’t know how it all turns out. There’s nothing at all. All he gets is a message in a dream. A message saying, ‘pick up your wife and your child and flee to Egypt, run like the wind.’ Wow! Now tell me, what do you think you would do? I think I know what I would do. What faith Joseph had. Unconditional faith. And because of that faith, Joseph and Mary get up in the middle of the night and become refugees with no rights, no possessions, no home and no United Nations charter on refugees to protect them. They’re completely at the mercy of kings and rulers and local despots.
Let’s remember how young Mary was. Scholars say that Mary would have been between 14-18 years old. And what about Joseph? This Jesus wasn’t even his natural child. The whole of God’s plan, this little baby, was entrusted to teenagers and they were up against a king who wanted their son dead. And the only reason Jesus escaped was because God gave Joseph a dream.
Is that how you or I would have handled things? If we were God, would we have let Jesus be born in this place and put Him at risk and entrusted Him to a couple of hapless teenagers who weren’t even married? Yes, you heard it, not even married. Let me ask you, what does all this say about God? What can you and I take away from this Christmas story today and treasure in our hearts for the rest of our lives? You know what it tells me; firstly it tells me; God’s ways are not our ways. It tells me that we follow a God who does miracles through adversity; He works through the supernatural to achieve His supernatural purposes. You know when you and I face adversity, sometimes we want to panic or get depressed or run around in a flap or give up or fix the problem in our own strength, but when God wants to do something, He steps into this world in the most unexpected way. Right in the middle of conflict and danger and fear in a lowly and humble way and He does miraculous things. Because God is a miraculous God.
Secondly, He was prepared to let His Son be a refugee so that He could speak to the refugee. So that He could speak to the prisoner in jail, so that He could speak to the sick in the hospital, so He could speak to the outcast, the forgotten, the marginalised the hurting, the lonely. In fact, all of us who are afraid and who suffer and who wonders what’s going to happen next. He whispers into our hearts and says, “I know, I understand, I’ve been there. I’m here in this place with you.”
Theologians talk about the doctrine of the incarnation where God becomes man, but this story, this story speaks about the incarnation in a way that our hearts can digest, in a way that brings peace and comfort and love to our hearts. God chose this way; God is speaking through this story and He is saying I’m here with you and for you. I’m Emanuel, God is with us.
We today know how this story ends. We’ve got the New Testament. We can see that Jesus was the Son of God, He did miraculous things. He was crucified, He rose again, the Church grew out of that and for the last 2,000 years has been thriving but Joseph and Mary and the people at that time, they didn’t know how it was going to end, they knew none of that.
“We know that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation. We know that He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. We know of all the miracles and wonders that Jesus performed. But for the few eyewitnesses on that Christmas night, they saw none of that. They just stepped out in faith and believed. And we need to do that this Christmas time. Step out in complete faith and comfort the hurting, the marginalised and bring a message of hope.
God becomes a man in a stable just over 2000 years ago and through that He says to you and me, “I am humble of heart.” I did not come just for the rich and the powerful and the famous and the wealthy and the “holier than thous”. I became low to speak this truth into your heart, I came for everyone, I came for you.
Doesn't that just make you was to sing His praises. To give Him all the glory. We have a King, who is also a friend and a brother and we long to worship you Lord.
Let us sing As The Deer
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
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