’Tis the season: ADVENT. Contrary to what you hear and see, it’s a season of devotion, not decoration. Herewith, my personal five-point guide on how to use this month to prepare for a frenzy-free Christmas.

1. Make Your List
Brainstorm gift ideas for Jesus, considering what He wants most. Best bet: the time-tested trio of golden forgiveness, sweet-smelling humility and the balm of a contrite heart.

2. Figure Out Your Plan
Worry less about the Christmas tree and more about Christmas triage (the determination of priorities for action). Put first things first: prayer, acts of charity, Scripture. No one’s going to suffer if you use your time to worship God instead of wrap presents.

3. Pump up the Spirit
Find a Bible verse for the month and meditate on it while you bake or shop. I’m choosing Luke 10:41-42: “[I am] worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.” Stay focused.

4. Clean House
Scour your conscience thoroughly. Pay particular attention to corners you’ve overlooked and scrub away excuses. Apologize to those you’ve hurt. And don’t forget the dust bunnies—all the things God asked you to do but which you neglected. Confess thoroughly, and let God make your soul sparkle.

5. Remember Why You’re Doing This
The purpose of Advent isn’t to make people happy or to manufacture warm memories. Those are incidentals that happen automatically when we focus on the real thing: preparing our hearts to greet the infant Lord.

(JULIA ATTAWAY)

Have you ever watched a movie on fast-forward?  It’s not very enjoyable and you won’t understand what’s going on, it is frustrating.  Yet this is often how we view our own lives.  We are trying to live our lives at the wrong speed; wanting to rush to the next scene before we have even understood the one we are in.

If you want to enjoy a movie, you have to sit back and watch it at the speed its creator intended.  Only then will you begin to appreciate the amazing cinematography, the cast of characters, the depths of tragedy and moments of joy, and the plot as it unfolds according to the design of the director.

God has the storybook of your life all mapped out.  He has all the scenes in mind, knows each of the cast of characters intimately, and has the plot slowly working towards an incredible ending.  But for us to really appreciate this, for us to enjoy and understand our life, requires we sit back and view our life at the speed God intended.  God’s speed is ‘patience’.  This is the speed with which God sees us, and it’s through His eyes that we should see ourselves.

This is not only true for our own lives, but also for those around us.  It’s important that we view others with the same patience that God does.  If we would be like Christ, whether in our inward life or in our dealings with other people, we must grasp patience. Then we will gain Godly insight into life.

What is it in your life that causes you to reach for the remote?  What is it that you want to fast forward through to the next scene?  It is probably suffering or difficulty of some sort, perhaps boredom or apparent delay.  Whatever it is, resist the temptation to skip right to next scene.  There is purpose for this event in your story.  Trust God that it will all make sense in the end.

Patience is a lot like faith.  Without it, your life will be a constant source of frustration.  Exercising patience is not much different to exercising faith, and like faith, it will eventually yield a valuable crop.

Pray for patience, for the ability to persevere through suffering, to see your life from God’s perspective.  Pray that God might give you patience for others.  Look forward to what the Lord will finally bring about, for He is full of compassion and mercy.                                                         (SIMON WHITTON)

We wear masks because we want to appear more perfect than we really are. But the reality of it is, all of us are so very imperfect. Yet we persist in wearing masks to hide who we really are from others because we fear their disapproval, believing that we have to present ourselves in a certain way in order   to   fit   in   and   be   accepted.
We are afraid of letting people see the real “us,” so depending on the occasion or circumstance we slip on a mask to fit the need of the moment. At work we may throw on a mask of authority and power in order to seem like we’re in control of our environment. At home we may put on a mask of “everything is okay,” out of fear that our spouse might stop loving us if they find out we have real problems. Some people wear their super-religious masks to conceal the guilt and shame of their secret sins. Sometimes we wear our happy-face mask to conceal our fear, anger, hurt, worry, and even depression.

Many of us Christians wear masks. We pretend to be something that we are not. We have our “Sunday mask.” We have our “model-parent mask.” We have our “happy Christian mask,” etc. etc. We try to hide our true character from each other, and even more amazing, we think we can hide our true character from God!

But masks are like fig leaves, and God can see through fig leaves! And He can see through our masks just as easily. We need to quit trying to hide from God and let Him change our character so we don’t have to wear masks and fig leaves anymore.

The word “integrity” means being the same on the outside as you are on the inside. It is about being the same person when you are at home all alone in the dark, as you are when people are watching you. We need to become men and women of integrity. All of us come to God broken. That’s a fact! Maybe it’s alcoholism, pornography, adultery, drug addiction, selfishness, gossip, a nasty temper, greed, or envy. What is it that hides behind your mask? It doesn’t matter. In Christ there is genuine and complete cleansing and forgiveness. Moreover, God forgets what we were and only sees us as we are now in Christ Jesus. The masks can come down now. We don’t have to pretend with Him. He knows everything, and He loves us anyway. How cool is that?

Let take off our stupid masks since they don’t work anyway, and let’s make sure that we don’t slip them back on. And remember, God loves parties, but His are always “come-as-you-are parties,” not “masquerade balls.”
(MIKE WILSON)

The first and most important step in winning the invisible war is not in addressing the devil but in submitting to God. I have seen many people who claim to be involved in spiritual warfare but whose lives are       not    submitted
to God. They know how to fast and they say they pray but they are still gossips, unforgiving and rebellious. Such “intercessors” may walk around with an air of spirituality but their prayers are not doing anything to push back the darkness or establish God’s kingdom.

You see the whole essence of spiritual warfare is that we are enforcing the authority of Jesus by taking ground from the enemy and thereby establishing God’s kingdom. But it is only those in whose lives the rule of God has been established – those who have submitted their lives to him and are living in obedience to him, that can enforce and establish his rule elsewhere.

Spiritual warfare is not so much in how we shout or jump or know the right words to say, as much as it has to do with our walk with the Lord. A right walk with the Lord is the first step to effective warfare. Remember those seven sons of Sceva? (Acts 19:14-16). They tried casting out devils using the right words but it carried no weight with the spirits because their lives were not submitted to God.

Before we rush off to bind and loose, let us submit all our sins, and fears (it is counter-productive to try resisting the enemy out of fear), and cares, and let us receive God’s holiness and grace. Let us submit to God in repentance, and in praise and adoration. And then from that point we can resist the devil.

It is when we submit our lives to God that we will be effective as we resist the devil. There is nothing that the devil fears like the prayer of a holy man or woman. It’s like coals of fire being poured out on him, so he flees                        (CHIMEZIE ONYEBILANMA)

Some of the various ways the tongue can damage or injure:

1. When it is used for gossip:  Gossip is saying negative things about a person when they are not present. It can also involve the telling of a truth that does not need to be told for the purpose of hurting someone. Sometimes we gossip by saying nothing when we hear things that we know are not true and say nothing to correct them. We also promote gossip by simply listening to it. Why is gossip so destructive? One reason is that it spreads uncontrollably. It also destructive because it warps the truth. People expand on what they hear until the rumor gets worse and worse.

2. When it is used to slander:  This is defined as saying negative things about someone else in their presence. The word “slander” literally means “ripping of flesh”. When applied to speech it intentionally hurts someone with the words you say about them. When we slander someone we not only involve ourselves and the other person–we also involve God. “Blasphemy” is literally putting God down. God made all humans. So when we slander fellow human, it is blasphemy because in so doing, we insult the God who made that person, loves that person and sent Jesus to die for that person.

3. When it speaks lies and exaggerations:   A local church body cannot be healthy if lying is a common practice within its membership. Ephesians 4:25 says, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”  When we don’t put away truthless-ness people become afraid to reach out. They become afraid to move because they don’t know whom to trust.

4. When it grumbles and complains:   Even when we try to resist being influenced by such negativism, we find some of it rubbing off. This passing around of the poison of pessimism happens every day, and it steals our joy. It creates an atmosphere of wholesale negativism where nothing but the bad side of everything is emphasized.

Is this little two-ounce muscle in our mouths the problem? In Luke 6:45, Jesus unmasks the real culprit. He says, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” So, the tongue is actually neither friend nor foe. The tongue is merely a messenger that delivers the dictates of the heart, either for good or evil.

If you are guilty of using the tongue in a destructive way, remember the words of the prophet Isaiah 6:5-7, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Do you remember God’s response to this confession of Isaiah? God sent an angel to fly to Isaiah with a live coal in his hand taken from the altar. Isaiah 6:5-7 says, “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Let’s stop right now and ask God to do the same for you and me.
(MARK ADAMS)

Each day, the challenges we face tend to change. But one thing we can be certain of is that the enemy won’t retire before we do! So let us decide to be obedient to the voice of God. Let us decide to grow sweeter in the Lord each day as we go on. Paul was a man who finished strong and very well. He wrote to the Philippians while in Roman prison around AD 60, probably six or seven years before his death. We find attitudes and actions from him that should guide us to end well and finish strong!

1)   CULTIVATE A PRAYER LIFE
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.” (Philippians 1:3,4)
Pray, Pray, Pray! And this can only be cultivated by discipline and obedience.

2)   SEE THE CUP AS HALF FULL
“Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel.” (Philippians 1:12)
In chains today? Can we see the gracious hand of God upon us? To remain sweet in spirit, spend more time rejoicing over what is, than complaining about what is not!

3)  RELEASE THE UNRESOLVED
“Some preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter?” (Philippians 1:17,18)
Refuse to let other people’s bitterness infect us. Let go of other people’s STUFF! People come with their stuff and they will leave with their stuff. You did not give it to them and you cannot take it away. So let it go!

4)  VALUE PEOPLE MORE THAN THINGS
“My brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown…” (Philippians 4:1)
Get connected. Learn to value relationship above all else. God and people should be our treasure and in that order. Invest our time in them.

5)  FOCUS ON THE FUTURE
“But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13,14)
Focus on things that are ahead. Stop mourning mistakes and regretting lost opportunities. Write a letter to self-pity, leave failures behind and be captured by the future. What is ahead is more important. The best is yet to come! Thank goodness for that, huh?

Live Better! Why? Because “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). And stay sweet to the very end.
Sweeter in spirit and in speech.
Better? Sweeter?
Yes, definitely better!

Ask your neighbor or coworker to list the “top ten” sins, and you will probably hear a version of the Ten Commandments. Murder, stealing, lying and adultery would probably head the list.

But when God revealed to the prophet Amos that He was about to bring judgment upon His people, He cited Israel’s treatment of the poor as cause for punishment. In startling imagery, God said Israel had “trampled” the needy and cheated the poor. The poor, the victims of Israel’s greed and exploitation, had no recourse but to appeal to God. And God listened.

In the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly takes up the often-overlooked cause of the poor. When Jesus preached in the synagogue in Luke 4:16–21, the prophecy He chose to read to reveal who He was came from Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor.” When Jesus described final judgment in Matthew 25:31–46, He evaluated how well people cared for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the needy and the imprisoned. Jesus so identifies with the poor in this passage that He says that the good deeds done to the “least of these” were counted as being done to Him!

How does the way you live reveal your concern for the poor? Are the poor an afterthought? A nuisance? A perplexing problem you’ve quit trying to solve? For many of us, Amos’s message challenges us to serve the poverty stricken in ways besides simply giving money. Volunteering in a food kitchen or rescue mission may be the first step to helping poor people with their immediate needs. Working directly with people who are poor helps us to put names and faces on poverty. When we do that, we can no longer objectify and ignore the needy. But are there ways to take our compassion one step further? How can we speak up to make sure the poor aren’t exploited? How can we work to make sure our institutions don’t make the problem worse? How can we vote for policies and practices that are equitable?

It is God’s desire that we be willing to share what we have with those in need and help the poor whenever we can. When we do, our hearts beat in time with His.

REFLECTION

1.    What are your assumptions about why someone might be poor?

2.    Have you ever been without what you needed to live? What did you do?

3.    Why do you think God identifies Himself with the poor? What does that tell you about His character?
(SOURCE UNKNOWN)