Monday, December 3, 2012

advent.


Sunday marked the first day of Advent season...four weeks when we prepare for Christ's arrival {Christmas}. As I get older, I love Christmas time more and more. I love the extra time spent getting together with family and friends, extra excuses to buy presents for others, and of course the good food. But I really, really love the excuse to focus on Jesus. I mean, I don't really need an excuse to do. But its nice to purposefully refocus each season.

Are you doing an advent study this year? I'm doing this one, but there are tons out there. 

I read this little blurb in the margin of my bible yesterday, and I can't stop thinking about it, especially in light of Advent & Christmas.

In all of life, study is a faithful friend if we learn its ways. I see that a great deal of damage is done not by evil but by ignorance. Christ tells us that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free (John 8:32), but so often we don't know what the truth is. We don't know how to dig it out. In Romans Paul tells us that our lives are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). But if we have no firm grasp on what God's word says, how can we be changed by it?
I think we Christians have become lazy. We would rather read a book about how someone else became closer to God than spend time alone with him ourselves. We would rather listen to someone else's interpretation of the Word of God than read it for ourselves...
-Sheila Walsh (Women of Faith study Bible)

So, I encourage you. Dig in this Advent season. Find a Bible study that works and do it diligently. Read for yourself why Jesus needed to be born. And what that means for us. Even if you've heard it a thousand times.

You won't be disappointed, I promise. 
If you're doing an Advent study, share! Are you doing one with your church? Friends? SheReadsTruth?

1 comment:

Legally Lovely said...

I'm away from home and in the throws of finals. I've been so sad that I'm missing the beginning of the Advent season at my home church. This was a good reminder that I need to get out my Bible and do begin the Advent season on my own!