December 4, 2025

FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT: HOPE

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You. Save me from all my transgressions.” (Psalm 39.7-8a)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

If God did not believe in us, He would have never invested Himself into us. That investment was and is His ruach, the breath of God that truly changes us from death to life, dust to flesh, empty to full, a possibility to a reality, a dream to a fulfilled promise. God, as I reflected on previously, has high hopes for us. As it is written, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55.9) This corelates for me that God’s hopes for our lives are far beyond mere existence and survival in a broken world. God’s belief in us is so great that He sent His only begotten Son into this broken world. Jesus’ presence, Immanuel, is the evidence of that hope. It is also the promise that trusting in Him, putting our hopes in Him, will not fail us. It certainly is not easy to do so. The battle of wills is great. That battle is greater when we forget that surrendering to Him is not a weakness but a strength. Trying to do life on our own and allow God to be a part of it, keeps real hope in the shadows. It may even seem like we are keeping God at bay or a prisoner like a bird in a cage. We cannot really control God. He can open the door of that cage at will. It is no different than when Jesus was on the cross. the doubters and tempters taunted Him to free Himself. Doing so would be evidence to them that He was the Son of God. If He had done so, then He would have been guilty of a great sin. It would have been His own act of spiritual blasphemy which was an unforgiveable sin by His own teaching.

Imagine that “He who was without sin” had become sin for us in that He bore the cross of our shame and condemnation upon His shoulders. Isaiah declared the true identity of God’s Messiah, the Christ of God, was bound in the words “Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace upon whose shoulders the weight of the world rested.” (Isaiah 9.6) He took up the identity of the “scape goat” and wore the sins of the people. He bore the weight of them to His death. Yet, He did not die of those sins. He died with those sins. He died when He fully submitted to His Father’s will so that hope for us could be hope in us. He surrendered His Spirit so that we might receive it for ourselves and live a life of fulfilled hope. It is a hope everlasting which sin cannot steal away. Why can’t sin steal our everlasting hope? Because it is bound in us and not merely something we put on. Our hope is the righteousness of God. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5.21) But that would not happen and could not happen if Jesus had “proved” Himself to be free of the cross. He would have broken covenant with God and the hope God had for us through Him. He would have saved Himself but left us in condemnation. He would have become “one of us” in a disastrous sense. Instead, He accepted the cross fully so that hope would remain. Instead of becoming “one of us,” we can become “one with Him.” Isn’t that our real hope? Isn’t that what we are looking for: resurrection from this broken world so that we can dwell on earth as we will in Heaven?

Mighty ones of God, Christmas shouldn’t really be about celebrating what others give us or what we can give to them in accordance with a broken world mentality. Christmas is about celebrating what God has given us to free us from the world so that putting our hope in Him will spring up unto eternal life. True Christmas comes with a great hope when His ways become ours and His thoughts become ours. It is about celebrating the greatest gift of all: SALVATION without merit on our part. It is a free gift of God born to us in the greatest love, and hope for love the world will ever know.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.