Week 1: A Time of Waiting in Jerusalem
Theme: Finding hope in the midst of restless waiting.
Focus: How the people of Jerusalem yearned for deliverance, and how God invites us to trust His timing even when we cannot see the full picture.
Our culture can cause us to Christ in Christmas.
Advent is simply defined as , and it is the time we celebrate the birth of Jesus and anticipate the return of Jesus.
The challenge we find in this season is the longer you wait, the easier it is to lose .
Proverbs 13:12 – “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
In the process of waiting, they became , , and .
Luke 2:25 – “at that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel.”
In the season of advent, it acknowledges our on God and celebrates the tension of on God.
We can hold out hope and eagerly wait because our hope comes from our with God.
3 Things we learn form the story in Matthew 2:1-12:
- In Jesus we have set our that He will continue to deliver us and help us because we have seen him do it before and we have he will do it again.
- God is in , he knows what is going on, and his ways and his plan are far greater than we could ever possibly know.
- God is to those who are discouraged, and he those who have lost all hope.