“Christmas split history. Foretastes of the future abound. Drink deeply on what he achieved for us. And be filled with hope for all that is coming.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
Tag Archives: Advent Quotes
🎄 #22 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Represent The King
December 22, 2020 
0 Comments
We represent the King. We are His chosen ambassadors, doing His business “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). Then let’s represent Him this season! People are wide-open to the gospel these days. Forget about trying to impress others by what you buy. Spend more time imparting what you already possess.
Chuck Swindoll
🎄 #21 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Message Of Hope
December 21, 2020 0 Comments
“Thus says the Lord: the meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed. The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can’t be changed—these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. It is God’s message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #20 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Theology
December 20, 2020 0 Comments
“No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology. “God is revealed in flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ — that is the holy mystery that theology came into being to protect and preserve. How we fail to understand when we think that the task of theology is to solve the mystery of God, to drag it down to the flat, ordinary wisdom of human experience and reason! Its sole office is to preserve the miracle as miracle, to comprehend, defend, and glorify God’s mystery precisely as mystery. This and nothing else, therefore, is what the early church meant when, with never flagging zeal, it dealt with the mystery of the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ…. If Christmas time cannot ignite within us again something like a love for holy theology, so that we—captured and compelled by the wonder of the manger of the son of God—must reverently reflect on the mysteries of God, then it must be that the glow of the divine mysteries has also been extinguished in our heart and has died out.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 #19 The Glorious Incarnation ~ The Advent Virus
December 19, 2020 0 Comments
The Advent Virus
Anonymous via email
WARNING……WARNING: ADVENT VIRUS
Be on the alert for symptoms of inner Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to this virus and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.
Some signs and symptoms of The Advent Virus:
- A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
- An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
- A loss of interest in judging other people.
- A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
- A loss of interest in conflict.
- A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
- Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
- Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
- Frequent attacks of smiling.
- An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
- An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
Please send this warning out to all your friends. This virus can and has affected many systems. Some systems have been completely cleaned out because of it.
🎄 #18 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Humility
December 18, 2020 0 Comments
“He [Jesus] was born in a barn to show what God thinks of human pride, of human ambition, of human loftiness, of human hardness…of those who turn to religion only because of what they think it can do for them…of those who always insist on having a place at the high table and are miserable when others are put before them…of those personal jealousies and those family feuds that mar the fellowship with God.”
[Handel H. Brown]
🎄 #17 The Glorious Incarnation ~ God Can Be Trusted
December 17, 2020 0 Comments
“Christ came to prove that God tells the truth, that God keeps his promises. Christmas means that God can be trusted.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #16 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Full Of Wonder
December 16, 2020 0 Comments
“To those who recognize in Jesus the wonder of the Son of God, every one of his words and deeds becomes a wonder; they find in him the last, most profound, most helpful counsel for all needs and questions. Yes, before the child can open his lips, he is full of wonder and full of counsel. Go to the child in the manger. Believe him to be the Son of God, and you will find in him wonder upon wonder, counsel upon counsel.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 #15 The Glorious Incarnation ~ A Giving Love
December 15, 2020 0 Comments
“That’s the kind of love the Father has. It is a giving love. It gives his most precious treasure—his Son. Meditate on that this Advent. It was a very costly love. A very powerful love. A very rugged, painful love. The meaning of Christmas is the celebration of this love. “God so loved . . .” And wonder of wonders, God gives this costly love to an undeserving world of sinners, like us.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #14The Glorious Incarnation ~ Christmas Gift
December 14, 2020 1 Comment
“Say to the next generation again and again: God is truthful; God keeps his word; God does not lie; God can be trusted! That’s one blessing of Advent. Receive it as a wonderful Christmas gift, and give it to as many people as you can.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #13 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Take Time
December 13, 2020 1 Comment
Take Time to be Aware
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 196
“Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.
“An old abbot was fond of saying, ‘The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.’
“The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.”
🎄 #12 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Mission Of God
December 12, 2020 0 Comments
“Advent is a season for thinking about the mission of God to seek and to save lost people from the wrath to come. God raised him from the dead, “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). It’s a season for cherishing and worshiping this characteristic of God—that he is a searching and saving God, that he is a God on a mission, that he is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving. That’s the meaning of Advent.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #11 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Indestructible Joy
December 11, 2020 0 Comments
“He may be doing it for you in this Advent season—graciously and tenderly frustrating you with life that is not centered on Christ and filling you with longings and desires that can’t find their satisfaction in what this world offers, but only in the God-man. What a Christmas gift that might be! Let all your frustrations with this world throw you onto the Word of God. It will become sweet—like walking into paradise.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 #10 The Glorious Incarnation ~ Divine Love
December 10, 2020 1 Comment
“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 #9 The Glorious Incarnation ~ The Mystery
December 9, 2020 0 Comments
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #24 ~ Hope For All That Is Coming
December 24, 2016 0 Comments
“Christmas split history. Foretastes of the future abound. Drink deeply on what he achieved for us. And be filled with hope for all that is coming.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #22 ~ Represent The King
December 22, 2016 0 Comments
We represent the King. We are His chosen ambassadors, doing His business “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). Then let’s represent Him this season! People are wide-open to the gospel these days. Forget about trying to impress others by what you buy. Spend more time imparting what you already possess.
Chuck Swindoll
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #21 ~ Message Of Hope
December 21, 2016 1 Comment
“Thus says the Lord: the meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed. The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can’t be changed—these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. It is God’s message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #20 ~ Theology
December 20, 2016 3 Comments
“No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology. “God is revealed in flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ — that is the holy mystery that theology came into being to protect and preserve. How we fail to understand when we think that the task of theology is to solve the mystery of God, to drag it down to the flat, ordinary wisdom of human experience and reason! Its sole office is to preserve the miracle as miracle, to comprehend, defend, and glorify God’s mystery precisely as mystery. This and nothing else, therefore, is what the early church meant when, with never flagging zeal, it dealt with the mystery of the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ…. If Christmas time cannot ignite within us again something like a love for holy theology, so that we—captured and compelled by the wonder of the manger of the son of God—must reverently reflect on the mysteries of God, then it must be that the glow of the divine mysteries has also been extinguished in our heart and has died out.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #19 ~ The Advent Virus
December 19, 2016 9 Comments
The Advent Virus
Anonymous via email
WARNING……WARNING: ADVENT VIRUS
Be on the alert for symptoms of inner Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to this virus and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.
Some signs and symptoms of The Advent Virus:
- A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
- An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
- A loss of interest in judging other people.
- A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
- A loss of interest in conflict.
- A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
- Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
- Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
- Frequent attacks of smiling.
- An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
- An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
Please send this warning out to all your friends. This virus can and has affected many systems. Some systems have been completely cleaned out because of it.
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #18 ~ Humility
December 18, 2016 0 Comments
“He [Jesus] was born in a barn to show what God thinks of human pride, of human ambition, of human loftiness, of human hardness…of those who turn to religion only because of what they think it can do for them…of those who always insist on having a place at the high table and are miserable when others are put before them…of those personal jealousies and those family feuds that mar the fellowship with God.”
[Handel H. Brown]
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation # 17 ~ God Can Be Trusted
December 17, 2016 0 Comments
“Christ came to prove that God tells the truth, that God keeps his promises. Christmas means that God can be trusted.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #16 ~ Full Of Wonder
December 16, 2016 0 Comments
“To those who recognize in Jesus the wonder of the Son of God, every one of his words and deeds becomes a wonder; they find in him the last, most profound, most helpful counsel for all needs and questions. Yes, before the child can open his lips, he is full of wonder and full of counsel. Go to the child in the manger. Believe him to be the Son of God, and you will find in him wonder upon wonder, counsel upon counsel.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #14 ~ Christmas Gift
December 14, 2016 3 Comments
“Say to the next generation again and again: God is truthful; God keeps his word; God does not lie; God can be trusted! That’s one blessing of Advent. Receive it as a wonderful Christmas gift, and give it to as many people as you can.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #13 ~ Take Time
December 13, 2016 2 Comments
Take Time to be Aware
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 196
“Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.
“An old abbot was fond of saying, ‘The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.’
“The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.”
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #12 ~ Mission Of God
December 12, 2016 0 Comments
“Advent is a season for thinking about the mission of God to seek and to save lost people from the wrath to come. God raised him from the dead, “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). It’s a season for cherishing and worshiping this characteristic of God—that he is a searching and saving God, that he is a God on a mission, that he is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving. That’s the meaning of Advent.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #11 ~ Indestructible Joy
December 11, 2016 0 Comments
“He may be doing it for you in this Advent season—graciously and tenderly frustrating you with life that is not centered on Christ and filling you with longings and desires that can’t find their satisfaction in what this world offers, but only in the God-man. What a Christmas gift that might be! Let all your frustrations with this world throw you onto the Word of God. It will become sweet—like walking into paradise.”
John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #10 ~ Divine Love
December 10, 2016 0 Comments
“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In the Manger
🎄 The Glorious Incarnation #9 ~ The Mystery
December 9, 2016 2 Comments
“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
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