11/28/2023
This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent Season, a four-week period of preparation for the nativity of Jesus Christ and excited anticipation for His second coming. We are talking about Christ himself and what God has done for us by sending his son.
This will not be a Hallmark, feel-good, kind of blog. I’m just letting you know; in case you want to stop reading and go browse the lingering Cyber Monday sales.
Since you’re still reading, I want you to think with me for a few minutes about Advent—preparing the way for Christ. Secularism wants us to live under the illusion that things will always be the way they are. But just as God broke into space and time, in a manger in Bethlehem, the things that now seem so real, so ultimate, will also come to an end.
When the Light of the World returns, will you be ready? Are there things in your life that you’d rather not be seen by God (and everyone else)?
Thirty years ago, I had a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer framed, and I’ve kept it in my line of sight in every office I’ve had since then. Bonhoeffer wrote,
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses, for fear and longings may lead you away from the path you should follow. Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them. Only through discipline may a man learn to be free.
It’s no mere coincidence that the words discipline and disciple stem from the same root. To be a student, follower, learner requires discipline, but not discipline cloaked in severity and devoid of joy. No, discipline as a Jesus follower flows from grace, is empowered by the Spirit, and leads to joy.
Like discipline and disciple, charis (grace), charisma (gift of the Spirit), and chara (joy) share the same root and flow from the same source. God’s grace manifesting through God’s Spirit results in godly joy. Being a “disciplined disciple” of Jesus is joy-filled.
But here’s where the rubber meets the road. Being a disciple of Jesus still requires discipline. We work out what God has worked in through His grace, by His Spirit, resulting in His joy. We develop necessary habits to “govern our souls and our senses” while we “steadfastly seek the aim set before them.”
Augustine wrote that habit defines us. Before we have quality of character, we have habit. Character is forged on the crucible of daily routines, small tasks, and healthy rhythms that may seem insignificant in and of themselves, but collectively produce a harvest in due season if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9).
If you look at your life and are unhappy with what you see, the way forward is through the doorway of discipline. Improve your habits, and you will improve your character. Improve your character, and you will expand your joy.
So, at the start of the Advent season, “prepare your hearts and minds for action. Stay alert and fix your hope firmly on the marvelous grace that is coming to you. For when Jesus Christ is unveiled, a greater measure of grace will be released to you. As God’s obedient children, never again shape your lives by the desires that you followed when you didn’t know better. Instead, shape your lives to become like the Holy One who called you. 1 Peter 1:13-15
