Pastors Brian, Lance, and Ashley
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
[Pastor Brian]
Romans 15, 13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. Welcome to the Bridgeway Christian Church Daily Advent Devotional for Sunday, December 1st.
I’m Brian Kiley, and I serve as the Director of Discipleship here at Bridgeway, and I’m joined by Pastor Lance and Pastor Ashley for a brief conversation about hope. But before we get into that, Pastor Lance, this is the very first devotional in the series, and just want to talk a little bit about Advent. Why is Advent important?
Why is it worthwhile to kind of recognize and celebrate this season?
[Pastor Lance]
Yeah, I think the whole idea of looking forward to something, right? Too often in our lives, we rush through everything. And so we’ll be thinking, especially in the holiday season, that we will be kind of running from one event to the other event.
And sometimes there needs to be importance placed on very important concepts. And that is the birth of Jesus Christ. Now, we can get into all the, oh, when was he really born and all that stuff.
That’s not the point. The point is, we’re celebrating him. And to realize, as we are anticipating all of this, to get our hearts right, get our focus right, there needs to be some type of process and preparation.
[Pastor Brian]
Yeah, definitely. Pastor Ashley, how about you?
[Pastor Ashley]
I think it’s perspective shifting, that there’s so much to distract us during this season, that intentionally reminding ourselves what the purpose is, what the hope that we have for the future is, what God has promised, what he has fulfilled, what he still is yet to fulfill. It’s purposely putting God at the center of our lives, even in the midst of a busy holiday, busy schedule, busy all of the things. It’s intentionally putting him on the calendar and on the schedule.
[Pastor Brian]
Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I love kind of the preparation element of Advent as well. It is amazing to me how often I can just kind of get to living my life.
And if you were to ask me at any given moment, hey, do you believe Jesus is coming back? I would say yes. But how often that is really not that close to my consciousness, if I’m honest.
And what I love about Advent is number one, it’s that sense of preparation for, wow, this really means something that God came as a baby at Christmas. But it also means something in the sense of, oh, and he’s coming back. And that is something to anticipate and to celebrate.
[Pastor Lance]
Yeah, I think sometimes we’ll look at Christmas as an end. Wow, this is an event. And you go, actually, it was the beginning of everything.
This idea that he came so that he would come again. He came because he was going to do one special thing now, and he’s going to do another special thing then. But for him to come into our world is worth celebrating now, but it’s not the end, it’s only the beginning.
[Pastor Ashley]
Yeah, he came as God with us, Emmanuel. And what we got after he left was God with us, like the Holy Spirit with us, empowering us, emboldening us, and leading us into the future with his kingdom just exploding and expanding. It’s the coolest.
[Pastor Brian]
I love Christmas. I love it. I love it.
Well said. So we’re talking today about hope. Advent has four different themes, and the theme of week one is hope.
And hope is an expectation or belief in the fulfillment of something desired. And hope, I think, is just so incredibly important. And it’s so kind of foundational in terms of kind of elements of our Christian faith.
And it relates to faith in the sense that we have faith in the present, that God is with us, that Jesus came at Christmas, but we have hope for the future. That because of what God has done and what God has promised, we have hope for what he’s going to continue to do both in our lives and then in eternity. Now, Pastor Lance, I think oftentimes in society, we can equate hope with just kind of wishful thinking.
How is kind of a Christian vision of hope different than that?
[Pastor Lance]
Yeah, the way that I kind of see it is there’s things God’s doing now and things God’s doing later. And how do we have the belief and the assurance that that later is going to happen? That is what we would consider hope, right?
So in other words, if somebody just says, Oh, man, I wish that I would win the lottery, something like that. They’re not even playing the lottery. It’s this whole idea that it’s just out there floating.
And I wish something great would happen to me. That’s very different than a plan being put into place. And we’re just waiting for it to be fulfilled.
That’s hope. It’s like there’s a direction to it. There are principles to it.
There’s a realization to it. And you’re just watching it get walked out in front of you. That’s kind of the difference, in my opinion.
[Pastor Brian]
Yeah, absolutely. And I think living with hope is incredibly important. And Pastor Ashley, even as we look at kind of life today, why is it important that we live with a sense of hope?
What does that do to us when we have hope?
[Pastor Ashley]
Hope fuels our lives. It fuels our steps. It fuels our actions.
And it’s not a blind faith hope that we have. We have tangible proof, as recorded in the Bible, as shown up in our transformed lives, that God is who he says he is. He has shown up.
He has promised things and fulfilled things time and time and time again. And our hope is built foundationally and is secure. And that we know that the stuff that he has promised will come to fruition.
[Pastor Brian]
Yeah. Now, all of Advent is in anticipation, of course, of the celebration of Christmas. So we would be remiss if we had this discussion without even looking at kind of hope in the Christmas story.
Pastor Lance, how do you see hope in the story of Christmas?
[Pastor Lance]
Well, I think the first thing is before anybody knew anything, all of a sudden these angels show up to these shepherds, right? And it was the idea that everything’s about to change, that all of creation is now different. And the angels were like cheering it out, going, just wait till you see what we see.
And they kept casting out, there’s hope for humanity, there’s hope for the world, there’s hope for… And they kept throwing out these hope bombs onto these shepherds. They would come in and then they would see it and they would go, wow, it’s going to be in that child.
And then in the sky, there was hope that the King would come. And that grabbed the Magi. And so like everywhere, there was a planted seed that something was getting better.
Anywhere in that story, whether it was grabbing Mary and Joseph and saying, you’re going to have a child. If it was the, even the John the Baptist story of he’s going to be the forerunner of the coming Messiah. These were all planted seeds of hope to tell people God’s coming.
It’s going to be better.
[Pastor Brian]
Yeah. How about you, Ashley? How do you see hope in the Christmas story?
[Pastor Ashley]
I see hope as fulfilled promises, looking through the scriptures in Isaiah and watching, being able to teach through those and say, Jesus literally did this in this story and knowing that this is what God promised and this is where it is fulfilled and what’s left for him to fulfill. What’s left that he has promised and is still coming.
[Pastor Brian
You brought this up earlier, Pastor Ashley, that kind of sense of God with us, right? John says the word became flesh and dwelt among us. I take a lot of hope from that, that life can be chaotic in a lot of different ways.
Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s not so great. Emotionally, we can be all over the map that I find for me so often, like my hope is rooted in the reality that no matter what is going on, God is present and at work.
And the Christmas story reminds us of God’s presence with us, which I think is just extraordinary.
[Pastor Lance]
Yeah. For God to enter into humanity creates a community. It creates a connection where he’s not lofty and distant, but he’s right here with us.
The idea that even as he passed, and I know we’re talking about Christmas, but as he was stepping out, he even said, you know, it’s actually better if I transfer out because the Holy Spirit is going to even come closer. And I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.
That communion, that connection with humanity only gets deeper and deeper and deeper. Amen.
[Pastor Brian]
I want to invite you to make sure you listen tomorrow for the first of our devotionals in the Advent series and want to leave you with a scripture from Hebrews chapter 11, verse one. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not yet seen.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.