Sermons
Biblical Wisdom For Daily Living
Chapter OneAdvent IThe Art of Impatient Living
Text: Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.
-- James 5:7
I am going to ask you to do a very difficult thing, and that is to forget all the seasonal trappings that surround you and seduce you into thinking that Advent has anything at all to do with Christmas as you and I understand it; I wish that there was a way that I could make this all disappear. I want you to clear away all of the "let's get ready for Christmas" stuff, all of this manufactured cheer and happy expectation of something that once happened; clear the decks, rather, and get ready for something that has not yet happened, for that is the agenda of the entire season of Advent.
Having asked you to do that, now I ask you to think about an extraordinary set of verses from the Epistle of James: "Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord..." The Lord is coming, not in retrospect, not in a rehearsal of things that happened once long ago. The Lord is coming in a way ... read full excerpt from Sermons ebook