Daily Readings for Week 4 (Dec. 21 - Dec. 27)

*These are all the scriptures referenced in the Advent Reading for Week 4.

Day 1

Read Ephesians 1:3-4 and Revelation 13:8

When did God the Father devise a plan to save our lives?  To pay for our deadly decision to sin and make a way for us to be able to be with him, in his holy presence?  Was it just when he saw I couldn’t seem to stop sinning?  Was it way back when Adam and Eve believed the serpent’s lie and disobeyed God?  We get the answer in Ephesians 1:4 and Revelation 13:8. These verses tell us when God chose to save us from destruction–before the foundations of the world.  By his mercy and love, God wrote our names in the Lamb’s book of life who was slain “before the foundation of the world.”  

Before God ever started creating, in his perfect knowledge of all that would be, he provided the sacrifice to save our lives, to connect us back to him.  He loves us so much that he didn’t even bring us into existence until he had provided a way for us to return to closeness with him, in spite of our terribly bad decisions.  

Ask the Father to help you know and believe that he deliberately provided for the forgiveness of your sins long before you ever committed them.  Ask him to show you how to draw close to him, to experience the love and acceptance he planned how to give you from the very beginning.  Ask him to make his love and provision very real to you, so real that it changes what you desire and how you make decisions.

Day 2

Read Genesis 1:26-27, Hebrews 2:5-8

What does it mean when Genesis says that God created people in his own image?  When the book of Hebrews quotes the Old Testament psalm that says God is mindful of people, that he crowns us with glory and honor? What makes people less like the animals and more like God?  A major part of the answer to that question is our capacity to receive and give love. That is the “honor” God gives people.  He created us with the capacity to know Him, to listen to and talk to Him, to have an actual relationship with Him.  His plan was always to love us and to teach us how to love him.  We are literally made for that purpose, with a fundamental need to know and interact with God. Everything else we try as a substitute to meet that need leaves us disappointed and ultimately devastated.  

Ask the Lord to make clear to you where you are pursuing something other than Him to fill your need to be in a close relationship with Him.  Ask him for the clear understanding and faith to turn away from the false promises of anything else you would chase.  Ask him to show you how he can and will fill you up with all the affection, attention, and value you long for.  Expect that there is far more to God’s love than you’ve experienced yet, and that he is ready to show you!

Day 3

Read Genesis 3:22-24 

Ever since Genesis, people have been trying to find their own way to get close to God (or to become god-like on their own).  God refuses to let us go on thinking this will work, refuses to let us live in the delusion that our efforts will ever achieve what we really want and need.  Once Adam and Eve decided to believe the enemy’s lie and pursue god-likeness on their own, they couldn’t live in intimate fellowship with the Lord in the Garden of Eden.  God set up an angel with a flaming sword to guard that sacred space.  A few generations later, when people had the bright idea to build a tower high enough to reach God, that didn’t work either (shocker).  Even the temple system that God gave his chosen people as a way of interacting with him eventually failed beyond repair.  The people couldn’t maintain it.  They wouldn’t choose to follow and trust the Lord consistently enough to keep the temple safe and sacred.  But there is good news.  

Read Isaiah 30:18

God sent a message–he knew the weaknesses of his people, and his heart was yearning, longing, just waiting to be gracious and show mercy. He promised, if his people would wait on Him to move, and stop trying to take care of all their problems on their own, he would act. He had a plan all along.

Now, read Romans 5:6-11 

God knows we can’t get back to Him on our own.   While we were still weak, still sinners, still his enemies in rebellion, Christ died for us.  We were never going to get it right.  God loved us too much to let that be the end of the story.  He humbled himself to come all the way to where we were, and he did the only thing that would save us–he gave us his life.  

Ask God to show you the uselessness of anything of your own doing that you might mistakenly think will get you closer to him.  Ask him to make clear to you what pursuits are just your own efforts, based on the enemy’s lies about what you can do to fix your problems.  Then, thank God that he has really, truly already done all that is necessary to have a relationship with you.  Tell him that you want to live in that reality and ask him to help you take advantage of the fact that you have full access to him today, to talk and listen all day, about every aspect of your life.

Day 4

Read 1John 3:1, 4:9, 4:16; John 3:16

The Lord knows we’re not even sure what love looks like.  So he illustrated.  He made himself seeable, touchable, hearable.  That's what John means when he says God made his love "manifest" among us in 1John 3:1.  Don’t let the familiar words of John 3:16 slip past you–God sent the only physical form of himself–his only Son–into our world so that we could live again and be reunited to God–to actual life–through his Son.  THIS is love, that the Son of God paid for my deadly decisions with his own death.  We have to understand.  Once he did that, the debt was paid.  Settled.  We are freed to life, the life he shared with us in his blood, by giving us his blood.  He made it so his blood, his life, now flows through our veins, and now we can live, and God can love us forever, like he wants to, and we can love him.  

Thank God for the incredible gift of forgiveness he offers us through Jesus’ death, and for the incredible gift of life that is ours through Jesus’ resurrection.  Ask him to destroy any sense that we who have received his gift still owe a debt for our sins, to help us see the ridiculousness of the idea that we can pay that debt ourselves.  Ask him for the grace to give up the guilt and to embrace the gratitude that rushes through us when we realize anew what he has done.  Ask him to give you the ability to bask in the love that he was literally dying to show you.

Day 5

Read Isaiah 43

(verses 1-2) In this passage, the Lord tells us that now is the time for us to see for ourselves, in our real lives, that we can “fear not”!  He really has redeemed us.  He says, I know you, I made you, I put you together to be exactly who you are.  Let go of the fear and let me show you exactly who you are in me!  I am WITH you–do you understand?  In all your circumstances I am with you!  He calls us to walk in the present, and trust him when he says we won’t be overwhelmed.  We won’t be burned.  He tells us we don’t need to look at the fire and water, the overwhelming and potentially dangerous circumstances of our lives, but calls us instead to look at him.  

(verses 3-4) God says, I have given untold wealth and resources to redeem you.  You have no idea.  You are not slipping through my fingers now.  

You are precious to me.  That’s the word he chose–precious.

He said you are honored, chosen, mine.

The Father says I love you.  Do you have any idea how much I love you?

Ask the Lord to give you a special understanding, a new level of understanding, of how much he loves you, personally. Ask him to make his love for you so powerfully real that you can’t look away from it, and all the rest of the circumstances of your life rightfully pale in comparison.  

Ask him to show his very real love to you today in ways you can readily understand and believe.