Introduction and Ice Breaker
Name some of your favorite things about the holiday season.
Themes to Consider
Advent - examining the space in between; the time between our bruised heels and the serpent’s crushed head.
THE LULLABY EFFECT - we hear something so often that we lose the ability to pay attention to it.
The devastation and curse of GENESIS 3 sets the stage for all our ADVENT LONGINGS AND HOPES.
Original sin: IT WAS A DENIAL OF WHAT GOD HAD SAID MADE THEM HUMAN. WHAT GOD SAID MADE THEM LIKE HIM BEARING GOD”S IMAGE.
THE PLANTING OF DOUBT ABOUT WHAT GOOD SAID
THE ADDITION OF LEGALISM AT SOME POINT ALONG THE WAY)
A WEIRDLY TRUTHFUL WORD FROM THE SNAKE AND A DELAY FROM GOD
Good for Food / Pleasing to the Eye / Desirable to make one wise
LUST OF THE EYE / LUST OF THE FLESH / PRIDE OF LIFE
Consumption / Security / Status
Appetite / Ambition / Approval
OUR WORLD IS BROKEN: God / Self / Others / World
Personal - brokenness, sin, lies, wounds, idols, addictions
Relational - rivalry, strife, unforgiveness, betrayal
Systemic - racism, wars, violent cycles, oppression
Supernatural - temptation, shaming, strongholds, deceptions
Discussion Questions
What does the Advent season mean to you?
Why do you like/dislike the advent season?
Why have you become ashamed of how I have made you? What other voices have you been listening to?
Look at the following categories. In which of these can you identify personally the longings in you for renewal and redemption by Jesus?
Personal - brokenness, sin, lies, wounds, idols, addictions
Relational - rivalry, strife, unforgiveness, betrayal
Systemic - racism, wars, violent cycles, oppression
Supernatural - temptation, shaming, strongholds, deceptions
Guided Prayer
Father, just as You sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus, help me to clear the path in my heart, too. Show me the distractions in my life that block me from all-out worship of You this Advent. Lord, I await Your coming! As I celebrate the first Advent––the first coming––I look toward the day where I will see You face to face. I imagine what it will be like. Give me a heart, Lord, that looks for Your coming on a daily basis. Help me to live my life where I'm constantly seeking Your presence. My offering to You today is my righteous life for I know I am only clean because of Jesus. Show me today how I need to be refined, purified, forgiven. Give me the strength to ask for forgiveness and to then change my ways. Meet me in this time of longing.
Supplemental Content
In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time. It can well be called the Time Between, because the people of God live in the time between the first coming of Christ, incognito in the stable in Bethlehem, and his second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead. In the Time Between, “our lives are hidden with Christ in God; when Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory.” Advent contains within itself the crucial balance of the now and the not-yet that our faith requires.
—Fleming Rutledge
What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’ – could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us like a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and would not properly run on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended – civilizations are built up – excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and run a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. This is what Satan has done to us humans.
—C.S. Lewis
