Christmas is near! The air is getting colder, stores are dressed in red and green, and everywhere you go, Mariah Carey is singing her heart out. There’s nothing like Christmas. Christmas is only one day of the year and yet there is an entire season devoted to the waiting of its coming.
During the second week of Advent, we celebrate the virtue of hope. Hope is biblically defined as confident expectation of what is yet unseen. This definition challenges our normal understanding of hope. If we’re honest, most of the time we exchange the word hope with wish. “I hope I get an A on this project,” or, “I hope I don’t get another sweater from Auntie Carol this Christmas.” In our culture, hope has been transformed from confident expectation of what is unseen into wishful thinking about what is to come. What is the difference between the two? The outcome.
When we wish for something to come to us, we spend our time waiting for something that might happen. But, when we hope for something, we wait for what we know is coming.
Hope is remembered first in Advent because Jesus brings us eternal hope. When we believe in Jesus, we have eternal hope because He is unchanging (Hebrews 13:8). God reveals Himself to us as good (Psalm 107:1), faithful (Hebrews 10:23), and love (1 John 4:16), which gives us confident expectation that everything He has promised us in Scripture will come true.
No matter what season of life we find ourselves in, we can cling to the hope of God’s promises. This Advent, remember that waiting for the promises of God is not some elongated period of wishing things would come true, but a daily opportunity to stand firm in confident expectation of what is to come.
Promises of Hope in this Advent Season
Songs of Victory
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