Honest Advent
We invite you to join us as we take a look at the humanity of Advent, the real human story of the birth of Christ.
Advent Podcast
As part of the Honest Advent series, we are invited to participate in a weekday podcast devotion. The podcast is designed to be listened to each day, Monday through Friday, for three weeks. Each podcast takes between 5 and 7 minutes. This is an opportunity to make space to engage with our Heavenly Father and grow in our intimacy with him. To listen to the podcast, we invite you to click on the buttons below and subscribe to the Calvary podcast.
Honest Advent | Nov. 26, 2023
What a joy to come together with you this morning as Pastor Dale kicked off our new series, Honest Advent. In this Christmas season, we will look at the birth of Jesus with honesty, staring at the very humanity of Advent. As Paul famously wrote, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” - Philippians 2:5-7
Advent is the literal story of "becoming human." Throughout our series, we will explore that humanity and be given the opportunity to enter into a deeper intimacy with the one whom we celebrate and anticipate returning again. Pastor Dale began our series today as we stared together at something right in the middle of the Advent story, fear. We see Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and even Herod experiencing fear.
Fear is an emotion God created in us and there is both reason and purpose for it. In scripture, when God says, “Do not fear,” he is not commanding us to shut off a part of our brain. God wants us to wrestle with what we do with the fear. While fear is real and can be paralyzing and powerful, God is more powerful. Experiencing fear might not be the problem, it could just be that we are trying to fight it or simply denying it. When life is out of control, fear says: “Life is happening to me.” Trust starts to develop by seeing, “God is forming me into something better than I could imagine.” Courage says, "I refuse to miss out on what God wants to do in me, my relationships, my family, and my life."
In reality, Advent is a master class in courage.
A beautiful quote from Jesus Lives by Sarah Young, was read over us during our response time. We invite you to read it again:
“Most of your fear stems from pondering bad things that could happen, leaving me out of that imaginary scenario. This is a very harmful practice; it’s also an exercise in unreality. Although your future stretches all the way into eternity, there is not even one second that I will be absent from you. Whenever your mind wanders into the future, make the effort to include me in that imagery. See me helping you, strengthening you, encouraging you. Instead of being intimidated by tough times ahead, view them as adventures that you and I together can handle."
Honest Advent | Dec. 3, 2023
This morning Kristi continued our series as we stared together at the mother of Jesus and the idea of motherhood to see how this binds us together with Jesus in our shared humanity. In the Advent story, we see an angel go to Mary and tell her that she will conceive and bear a son. Mary then asks the angel a question, "How?" While on the surface it seems as though Mary is asking a purely practical question of how this will be, a deeper question also seems possible. This is the first glimpse we get of Mary stepping into motherhood as she wonders “How can this be? And how can this be that I am enough?"
The angel Gabriel responds to Mary’s question of “how” with words that answer both the logistical and heart perspectives. The conception will take place through the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary. The promise of the Most High overshadowing Mary brings the answer her heart needs to hear. Through Gabriel, God reassures Mary that His power will overshadow her. God will hover. God will protect. Mary doesn’t have to be enough, because God is more than enough.
When we ask the question "Are we enough?," our Heavenly Father provides His gentle response that, “no, we are not enough.” There is a second part to this answer that we cannot miss and we see it throughout scripture. We do not have to be, nor were we created to be enough on our own. We need our Father. We need our Savior. We need His Holy Spirit, because He is more than enough for all our needs. That means all of the fear, striving, wondering, hiding, pretending, and avoiding can all be brought to the feet of Jesus and left there. In return we can take up the knowledge that His grace is sufficient, His power is perfected in our weakness, and we acknowledge that through the humanity of a teenage mom, God revealed himself as our all-sufficient shepherd, the one who is more than enough.
Honest Advent | Dec. 10, 2023
What a blessing to hear from Danny this morning as he continued our series, Honest Advent. Our goal in this series is to consider the humanity of Christmas. Today we paused and stared at three words: she gave birth. Those three words carry significant meaning. Birth is vulnerable, messy, complicated, stressful, painful, risky, and always traumatic to some extent.
If Jesus, God in human likeness, was willing to submit himself to the mess and risk and vulnerability of childbirth, let alone the dependency of a child, he’s undoubtedly willing to enter into the rest of the mess of humanity. The mess that we wade through every day: broken relationships, self-doubt, fear, anxiety, pain, sorrow.
“She gave birth” sets the tone for the rest of Jesus’ story and it is why the words in Matthew 1:23 are so important. “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.” Matthew’s use of Immanuel links back to the prophecy of Isaiah and isn’t used for anyone else. It is only used of Jesus and means "God with us."
This says that we have a God who has experienced what we have or are experiencing. It means we can go through pain knowing the pain is temporary because the God who broke through and became like us, loves us. He’s been there and one day, in this lifetime or the next, he will take all the pain away.
While we wait, "she gave birth" reminds us that Jesus came as one of us, for us. As Scott Erikson writes, “A saving way came into the world just like we did - in all its goopy humanity. A birth is a rite of passage in human vulnerability…The Christ was born of blood – like we are. The Christ partook in the powerless vulnerability of coming into the world naked and weak – like we often still feel. That the Christ was born into the muck of human biology, which we seem to wade through for the rest of our lives.”
This Christmas, may "she gave birth" remind us Jesus came as one of us, for us. The invitation of the reality of the doctrine of incarnation is that anything is possible. That is the honesty of Christmas.
Honest Advent | Dec. 17, 2023
What a joyful morning! Not only were we able to witness six people declare in front of their church family that they believe in and will follow Jesus throughout their lives, but we also received the blessing of hearing from our friend Pastor Steve as he continued our series, Honest Advent. Today we stared together at Fatherhood.
There are desires and expectations we have of our earthly Fathers. We want them to be present, loving, even corrective. It's a desire that is within us all. And yet, when our Fathers don't meet these expectations, there's a sense of longing, even disappointment. Often, these feelings are transferred and projected onto God. Feelings and beliefs that we need to work in order to get attention from God, that He is uninterested in us, that God is cruel or critical, or that God is absent and inaccessible.
What advent shows us, is that God loves us so much, his desire to be with us so great, He comes to us. He enters the mess, vulnerability, and brokenness of humanity to be with us. Advent is proof that there is nothing God won't do to bring us back to Him. And in the mess of our daily lives, He continues to invite us into relationship, healing, and wholeness in Him.
Pastor Steve extended three invitations to us today:
Invitation into relationship with God. A prayer you can pray: Jesus, I trust with you my life.
Invitation to healing. A prayer you can pray: Jesus, I give you my _____ today.
Invitation to action. A prayer you can pray: Jesus, I'm here. Show me where you can use me.
