I hate to wait as much, maybe more, than anybody. Red lights don’t turn green quickly enough.  The line at the grocery store moves way to slow. And don’t get me started on the doctor’s office waiting room.  A whole room devoted to just waiting. Then there are those seasons of our lives that are extended waiting periods.  

But waiting often involves things way more serious than traffic lights, store lines, and doctors’ offices. Sometimes we find ourselves in a season of waiting on God to act.  We know that He knows what is going on, but He seems to be taking His ever-loving time.  I am in such a season of my life right now.  But what we forget in our seasons of waiting is that “nothing is never happening.”  God is always doing something even when we don’t see it or sense it. God is constantly in preparation mode.  While we wait He prepares us and His solution for our need.

That brings us to the theme of the second week of Advent – PREPARATION. We remember the long years of waiting for the promised Messiah.  During that wait, God was preparing a couple to receive and cradle the Word made flesh. Advent waiting challenges us to prepare our hearts to worship Him this Christmas season.  

Waiting on the Messiah

Let us reflect on Luke’s account of the preparations for Jesus in Bethlehem: 

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. – Luke 2:1-7

God spent all of eternity preparing for the moment when He would send His Son Jesus to die for the sins of His people.  He promised the Redeemer all the way back in the Garden of Eden.  Through the millennia that followed, He spoke through His prophets of the Messiah who would come.  He established a system of worship with signs pointing to the work of Redemption the Messiah would do.

God prepared a woman and a young man to bring Jesus into the world.  He prepared pagan government officials to provide the reason for that young couple to travel to the place He had prepared for Jesus to be born. 

Advent reminds us that our redemption was not an afterthought.  God had been preparing the way all along.  As we worship today, let’s us be thankful that God had a plan and ensured that His plan would succeed. 

And We Still Wait

But Advent also reminds us that God is preparing us for eternity as well.  Redemption was not the end of Jesus’ work in our lives; He is also restoring the image of God in us and by His Spirit remaking us to look like Him.  May we submit our lives to His work, allowing His Word to shape us and His Spirit to fill us.  May each day he tarries enable us to look more like Jesus. 

Remember the promise of God’s Word found in Philippians 1:6:

And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

As we worship today, let’s surrender our hearts to the work that God wants to do in our lives.  Let’s pray that each day the Holy Spirit will make us more like Jesus than we were the day before.  And may we live in anticipation of 1 John 3:3 that when we see Him, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

A Prayer for Us Who Wait

Heavenly Father,

We cannot thank You enough for saving us from our sin.  But we also thank You for not leaving us like You found us, but for working through Your Spirit to make us who You originally intended us to be.  We recognize that is a work of grace and we cannot do it ourselves.  So we ask You to do Your mighty work in us.

Help us to look forward to the day that Jesus returns and that all things are finally made new. Including us.  

In Jesus’ name we pray,

Amen.

For more, CLICK HERE for my Bible studies from last year on ADVENT.

To read about the first week of Advents’s theme – Hope – click here