We Need Advent

Advent is a time of year we remember God fulfilling His promise of a Messiah. Today we discuss the three advents, and how Christmas is an amazing reminder not only of what God has done in Jesus, but what we are called to do every day in our physical and digital spaces. Our tech must be used in light of all three of The Bible’s Advents.

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Transcription:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today we are talking about advent, the season of expectation. As we look forward to Christmas and the arrival… As we remember the arrival of Jesus, we need to really, I guess, wrap our brains around this idea of what does that mean for our tech use, how does it apply to the season.

And it’s extending directly out of our conversation on being a nerd dad, but being a nerd in general, being so passionate about something we want other people to be passionate about it too. And this can apply to our sports and to our culinary pursuits, to art, to video games and technology, to our jobs, to our own children, and to our faith. And that is a beautiful, I guess, lead up into this advent conversation. So when we talk today, we’re going to be talking about our three advents and really what this advent tells us that we need to do, have, and be in terms of being Christians in this season and as it relates to loving God and using tech. So with no further ado, let’s get this conversation started.

Thank you to everyone who’s helped make this podcast possible. Thank you for listening, for liking, for sharing, for subscribing so you don’t miss any new content. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Those of you who have signed up for our newsletter, it’s a huge encouragement that you are regularly reaching out or bringing me in to speak or supporting us. Thank you for doing that. We are a nonprofit, part of Flint and Iron, a nonprofit dedicated to sparking positive purpose in youth, and that’s been awesome to be able to do this work because of generous supporters. So thanks for being a part of this. If you do, by the way, want to give, you can go to gospeltech.net/donate and you can give there.

All right, so first thing we need to cover is the fact that there are three advents, then we’re going to talk about how tech helps us understand expectation, and then third and finally, how do we advent well, I guess how do we expect well. What does that look like practically in our day-to-day life? Number one, we’re going to look at the three advents. So when we look at scripture, there are three arrivals we are told. Advent means the arrival, and in case of a celebrating advent, it’s the expectation of arrival, the expectation of the arriving savior. So let’s look at where we see that in scripture. First is the arrival of Messiah. In scripture for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, the Jewish people, the people of Israel were told you are going to receive Messiah.

And here’s one very famous example that would be perfect for our talk today is coming from Isaiah 9, starting in 1. “But there was no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former timeHebrought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the latter time,Hehas made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt at a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You’ve multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

For the yoke of his burden, the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior and battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness. From this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

This is read and Isaiah who’s been called to the people of Israel to preach the gospel, and Jesus says later he’s called to preach so that the people’s rebellion can be exposed, so that their hearts will be hard and their ears will be deafened. They will be ever seen but never believing. And the way He does that is by preaching this, by speaking just very clear prophetic truth of what God is going to do in spite of the faithlessness of His people. This is the Promised Messiah, advent number one.

700 years later, Jesus shows up and guess who He reads to talk about Himself? Isaiah. It’s the famous statement where He stands up to read scripture. So He has a scroll and He physically reads from Isaiah the prophet and then He rolls it up and sits down and says, “Today this has been accomplished in your hearing,” like I did this, proclaim the year of God’s faithfulness, that’s what I’ve just done. I am here, the Messiah, God in a bod as it were. So that’s our first advent we are living in expectation for, but Jesus points that that’s not the only advent we are to expect.

Instead, He actually tells us, and there’s a couple of spots I could have gone, but I’m going to go to John 14 where He says… Verse 16. He says, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.” That’s 15. So this is John 14:15, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments,” into 16, “And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows him. You know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.” So he’s saying this has not yet happened in history, it will. The Holy Spirit dwells with you, but He will be in you. Yeah, he’s been on Saul, and on David, and on Solomon, but he’s going to dwell inside you, he’s going to tabernacle, he’s going to take up residence in you. Expect it.

And we read Acts 1 and 2 and that’s what we see. Jesus is dead, they don’t know what to do. Jesus comes back, rises again into heaven, doesn’t float, doesn’t disappear, He is lifted into heaven and they go and wait and pray and worship for those remaining days between Jesus’s ascension. We’re told He’s there. Oh my goodness, I’m going to make it up now. It’s either 30 days and there’s 40 before Pentecost or He is there 40 days and it’s 50 till Pentecost. Sorry, I didn’t fact check that. But there’s a 10 day gap, I do know that, from Pentecost or excuse me, from Passover to Jesus’ time traveling and visiting to when He ascends and Pentecost arrives or the day of Pentecost, which was already celebrated, but the Holy Spirit arrives on Pentecost. Let me get my Bible facts straight there.

So Jesus says, expect this, the second advent. Expect the arrival of the Holy Spirit, I am alive, this work was done, god has defeated sin, Satan and death. It is good. And they were like, so now is the time you’re going to come and establish a kingdom, right? We remember Isaiah 9, we memorized it, we got it. So you’re alive, you’re resurrected, and you’re going to come take some names and kick some butt. And He goes, yes and it’s not the way you want me to do it. I’m doing this to glorify the Father and it’s going to glorify Him to dwell inside you, Holy Spirit advent. Christians, if you are listening to this, this means this is you. You trust and follow Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit, He won it for you.

In fact, he’ll go on later here in John 14 to say that That’s good. This is plan A. JD Greer wrote a great book called Jesus Continued and the subtitle is Why Having The Holy Spirit Inside You Is Better Than Having Jesus Beside You. The season of advent isn’t there was a baby born so Jesus could rise up, die for our sins, rise again and then go to heaven and one day things will be fine. Instead the new thing that God says he’s doing now is I’m doing a new thing by indwelling broken humans. How? Jesus paid for your sins, you become a tabernacle. You are right in my eyes.

We’re told in Hebrews that people were saved in the Old Testament by faith. Hey, they counted you as righteous. That was righteous, not because you’re good enough, because you believed me. Faith still counted as righteousness in the Old Testament even when they worshiped moon gods and had no idea what was happening. Abram is the specific example I’m using there. Counted as righteousness with no Bible written to follow at this point, but trusting God counts as righteousness. What’s the new thing? Yeah, faith. You’re saved by faith, by grace through faith. But in this case He says yes, and then what I’m doing is I’m going to indwell you.

Advent number two, as we learn in John from Jesus is expect it. There’s a Holy Spirit coming. Christians, we expect this too. The Holy Spirit is not weird. He is the part of the trinity. He is one of the three persons of our singular God. And it’s really, really important to know as Jesus accounts here in John 14, that He gives us wisdom to understand scripture, He gives us reminders of what Jesus has said, and He allows us full empowerment by God to live the life we are called to live in Christ. You’re not here doing this on your own. Whatever you’re processing, struggling wrestling with or succeeding at, the Holy Spirit is instrumental in that.

And that’s an incredible blessing that pivoted the face of the world and the way history goes because human hearts are no longer simply talking to God as an outside idea, He’s dwelling inside each and every one of us. Each and every one of us who puts their faith in Christ, we’re made new creations die to ourselves and are raised to new life with him. Holy Spirit is a one-to-one for every single one of those people. That’s huge.

Which brings us to our third advent. Our third advent comes out of Revelation 21. When Christ returns as victorious conqueror, yes, there’s war and there’s raging and there’s battle and there’s all those things, but then there’s this. “Then I saw,” this is Revelation 21:1, “a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.’ He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.”

That’s not yet come. We are anticipating the day when God makes everything right, when the lion lies with the lamb, when the child can play with the adder, when creation is as it was intended to be, that is God’s greater goal for His glory. God’s glory is number one because God deserves that glory, God is the source of goodness. So anything that takes His glory is therefore a detraction from good. It’s sin, that is the definition of it. But in this case, we have an advent that hasn’t come yet. We’ve got three of them. So we remember Christmas because we remember what God did through Christ coming as a baby, dying for us and offering us new life, setting us free from sin. It’s not a metaphorical, it’s not a well one day you’ll eventually be okay, we’re free now. That’s huge.

I’ll return to this at the very end, but that’s huge, to understand that am free. I mean not live like it, I may not understand it, I may not be mature enough to really see beyond the end of my nose, but to know that that is what scripture is telling us is important for Christmas. And then third and finally that this, yet to come. This isn’t our final home, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, and when bad stuff happens, we must set our hearts and minds on praising God that that’s not the norm, that he’s not okay with it.

And when bad things happen, because they will, that we can question God, but we don’t have to because we know who God is. Instead, we recognize this third advent is yet to come. So that’s our first piece here and that’s really important. Walking from prophecies of old about Jesus to Jesus’s promise of the Holy Spirit that’s now been delivered to everyone who dies in Christ and has risen to new life in Him now, new creations on the inside to the new creation that’ll happen for all of creation when things are made right.

And I think for our tech conversation, this fits really well because, well, tech shows us expectation. There’s a lot of ways we could go and my notes on this were all over the place because I want to say three different conversations at once, but I don’t think all three of them would be productive because that’s a lot of words. So here’s where I went. If we look at how we misuse technology, there’s really two sides of that coin.

The first is I’m stressed, I’m anxious, I’m depressed, and I expect technology to make me feel better. Why do I just gorge myself on shows? Why do I escape to my music? Why do I hunger for video games and adventure at no cost with tons of reward? Why? Because I medicate with that. Because running away to social media is how I can feel okay, because I forget all the problems in my life and it just kind of numbs it. Doesn’t fix anything, but it certainly makes today bearable. And then when things get low or things get stressful or things get boring or things get whatever, fill in the blank, that technology is always there for me.

So that’s on one side of this coin. I expect technology and watch me run to it. I run to it much more quickly than I run to my Bible. I make space for it and little nooks and crannies when I could pray, sure, I could seek the Lord, I could do any number of things, but I don’t. What do I easily do? I easily drift back into my technology without even thinking of it. Sometimes I look up from tech and I’m like, “What was I even supposed to be doing?” I’ve distracted myself that effectively. Actually, as an example of this, this last week I got a chance to speak to a bunch of ninth graders and I asked them in a number of other questions like, “What’s your favorite tech? What’s your favorite tool tech? What are you using well?” And then towards the end, “What tech do you see as the biggest problem amongst your friends? Where do you see your friends really struggle to make good choices?”

Across the board, it was social media. Leading the charge was Snapchat actually, which that was surprising to me. Also, everyone’s listening to Drake. Maybe that dates me here, but I didn’t know Drake was still a thing. But Drake, whatever you’re doing, well done sir. Apparently all middle schoolers are listening to Drake again, which was weird. That was bizarre.

But that’s beside the point. They said social media, Snapchat was number one for the least healthy, TikTok number two, Instagram number three. Also, I didn’t know any kids in middle school high school age were using Instagram. We see that for these young people and basically what they say is, my friends don’t have the ability to set up boundaries or when they were talking about themselves, they would say, “I don’t like how I feel afterwards. I go there because I feel bad and I leave feeling worse.” And that’s a fascinating admission from a young person. These are 14, some of them 15 year olds, actually a couple of them 16. But my goodness if we don’t resonate with that as adults, right? We run to technology because we’re anxious, depressed, and I mean just generally sad. I think that’s really important when we talk about this conversation because that’s side one.

Side two is when we are greedy, when we are lustful, and when we are prideful. Now these might extend from similar roots, but I see them being used differently. Because in one case, I run for escape and in the other I run to it for acquisition, I run to it for accomplishment, I run because I want to take something, I want to window shop so I feel better or I want to really shop so I feel better, I want to go be a part of simulated one directional relationships where I can take intimacy with no cost, no requirements and no relationship. I want that because it makes me feel good. I want to go on there and be right all the time so I’m going to read all the forms and be in all the chats, and I’m going to jump on social media and just generally troll people. Why? Because I think I can win and it makes me feel good, not because I necessarily have prayed about it.

I think sometimes we have points that we know are so right, we don’t believe they need to be prayed about. Of course Jesus agrees with this, I’m going to go do what I want. Please be cautious on that, believer and listener. I see this in my own heart when I’m like, no, I know for a fact I’m convicted, I know the Bible verse and it needs to be said and I don’t pray about it. I would say that desire to not pray is important. There’s something about my delivery of truth in that case that probably is off and I need to submit even my delivery to Christ because otherwise it’s coming from a place of greed, lust, or pride.

When we use tech and expectation, we expect it to fix us. How do we know? We pursue it effortlessly and relentlessly. It takes no thought to do it, and we do it all the time. So look at the way we’re using our tech. We use things like our reset for that, right? Does it impede my relationships and responsibilities, emotions, sleep, enjoyment, time? Yeah. That’s my heart. Okay, well, what do I do now? Aha, this is where we’re getting to. Yes, advent means expectation, tech shows us how we expect. I would add on the expectation piece, we all have ways we expect tech, yes, to make us feel good in these kind of two sides of the coin, the escapism, self-medication, or the accomplishment, self glorification, self righteousness, self establishment side. But there’s also just expectation of we look to tech to provide something even if it’s not those internal pieces. Like have you ever waited for a movie to come out or watched a trailer for a game and been excited or sat out for an iPhone back in the day with the lines around the corner and you were, “Open, open, open.”

We expect technology to be awesome and we act accordingly. And that’s what I want to get at with this last piece is, as we look at this advent season, let’s act like we expect God to be awesome. Not because we understand it perfectly, not because we exactly know how that’s going to work, but because we expect it of Him. God, we know you’re great, God, we know you’re glorious, God, we know advent, people expect Jesus and people expected the Holy Spirit and we’ve got them both. Now we expect you to show up, and I think this is where as Christians, this is what I want to help my children do. It’s not easy, and that’s why this last part exists is let’s talk about how we do this. I want my kids to expect God to show up, but I have to do more than tell them, “Expect God to show up.”

The example I’ve used before, my buddy Rob used, but the example of when I was waiting for sports that I would expect my mom to arrive. And even if she’s five minutes late, like, all right, my mom’s late, I expect her to show up. Why? Because she showed up before. And if she’s never shown up before and someone’s like, “Your mom’s picking you up today,” and I’m like, “I don’t know.” I might make a plan B. But we can expect God to show up because He showed up consistently over and over again. Because the two advents of the three have already happened, we can trust that He will show up for the third.

I love again that John 14 reminder that He’s given us His Holy Spirit. When we look at, “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you,” and then again later it says the same thing, verse 26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I’ve said to you. And then peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,” and goes on to say many other wise and amazing things to encourage his disciples and to remind us of who He is and what He’s doing. We pray then an expectation.

The first area expectation shows up in our advent season as we pray like God is listening, pray as Jesus teaches us, our Father who is in heaven, holy is Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us. This prayer is beautiful because it immediately starts with remembering who God is. Pray like God is listening. Ask Him for what we need, ask Him for healing because we know that He heals. He is our God, the healer. Ask Him for protection.

We see this. If you don’t know how to pray, start reading through Psalms, read them out loud as a prayer. There’s a whole section of the five chunks of Psalms that are just lamenting. They’re just, God, why is my life so terrible and why is my heart so sad, and how do I remind myself of your goodness? Pray like God is listening in asking for big, but also in acknowledging where God is supporting, so thankfulness. You read Colossians, you’re going to see the word with thankfulness show up a lot. Thankful, be thankful. Thank God, thankfulness.

Turning our hearts back to what God is and has done is huge in this advent season. Why? Because we know God is listening, because we know God is working. We don’t think He needs to be reminded of the promises He’s made, we do. Praying about them as part of how we remind ourselves beyond the fact we praise God by telling Him things He’s already done. Read the Psalms. What [inaudible 00:21:25] doing? Recounting the acts of God to God in song, in worship.

God knows, but it’s us that forget. And I can know the facts, but I forget the impact, and that’s part of what prayer does. Pray like God is listening this advent season, asking Him for your needs, but also just pouring out your heart. He can handle your anger, He can handle your hurt, He can handle the wrong that’s been done to you and the wrong you’ve done because He’s God and Christ has paid for it. And what He needs is a contrite heart when we… Anyway, I won’t go on that. But the contrite heart, the bending of a knee is a key part of faithfulness, of trusting God and it being counted as faithfulness. That’s part of it is knowing that you need God and praying is a beautiful way to do that.

The second is to live from that expectation. So 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that when we are in Christ, we are new creations. The old has gone, the new has come. New creation has happened. That’s not something you’re trying to earn. So then if we are new, then we have everything we need for life and godliness. This is coming out of 2 Peter 1:3-5 starts off, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence by which He has granted us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.”

So because he’s doing this, you now may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. You now can accomplish divine righteousness, not because you’re good enough, but because of what Christ did. And because of that, you’ve escaped from the corruption that is in this world, not because you’re good enough, not because you had the rules, not because you’ve checked all the boxes, but because of what Christ has done, you are free.

Now, does that mean that when you’re struggling with addiction, you’re going to just walk out of addiction? No. Sometimes there’s very real chemical things happening in your body, sometimes we’re talking like actual substances, like drugs and alcohol, sometimes it’s gambling and sex or pornography. But there are real addictions that need to be processed in a real flesh body that God’s already set you free from. You are a new creation. Not once you get clean, you’re a new creation, once you get your marriage fixed, you’re a new creation, once you get your kids to talk to you again, you’re a new creation. You are a new creation. Once you finish serving your sentence in prison for the wrong you did, then you’ll be a new creation. Nope, you’re a new creation in the exact same cell you’ve been living in because Christ has changed you, you died to your old way of life, you were risen again to new life, and that then gives us this beautiful reminder.

What do we do with this in this season of advent as we remember the promises of God and what He has done and expect what He will do? Colossians 3:1-3, “If then you’ve been raised with Christ,” 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Peter 1:3, Colossians 3:1, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Oh man. All right, and then it goes on from there. So read Colossians 3 if you need some pump up, but we’re going to live from this expectation. All right, I am a new creation and I’m hidden in Christ and I have everything I need for life and godliness because of what God has given me by his Holy Spirit that He won for me through Jesus. This was plan A for God’s glory was that Jesus would ascend and the Holy Spirit would come and dwell inside each and every individual who’s covered in Christ. Awesome, right?

What does that mean? That means you can now parent despite your brokenness. That means that technology is no longer the greatest problem in your household, human hearts are, and the greatest solution is no longer the perfect software, hardware, it’s new hearts. Now, software and hardware deals with my flesh. I want to make good decisions and sometimes my flesh don’t want to. So now I pray against it, I live from expectation, I set up loving and healthy boundaries, but I have to start with washing my heart and my mind with the word to set my mind on the things of God. Romans 8:5 says the exact same thing, that those who set their minds on the things of the flesh live according to the flesh. But when we set our minds on the things of the spirit, we live according to the spirit because those who set their minds on the things of the flesh cannot please God. They can’t. It’s a physical impossibility to please God when you’re living for your own kingdom. That’s not the way that works. You’re stealing God’s glory in that case.

What do we think about then in this advent season? We know that Jesus has come, the Holy Spirit has arrived to empower us, and we are looking toward the day when all things are made new, understanding that God has patiently planned, waiting for that date in our space and time continuum when He will come back, when every knee has bowed, when every child has come in, when all of the wheat has grown, then he’ll come back and everyone will bend their knee and declare that Jesus is Lord even those who are on the opposing side, even those who are enemies of God will have to do that because it’s what we do when faced with awe, wonder, and terror all at the same time from a perfect, holy, and glorious God. But right now he’s waiting for me, for you, for our kids, for all who will come in. We want to make sure that we recognize that’s what we are expecting. So when you go to your job, expect it. Expect opportunities to love and serve broken people as a broken person.

When you raise your kiddos, expect it, expect your kids to do dumb things on purpose, and you as a broken person to intervene in that situation say, this was not right. I’m bringing to light God’s truth, hope and love and loving you from the strength he’s given me, not because you’re good enough or because you have all the answers. As a single person, this is how I’m dating, this is how I’m working, this is how I’m handling my singleness, is recognizing my identity is in Christ, and I’m expecting the new creation to show up in me today and for me to be able to live out of it in the days and the weeks and the seasons that God gives me.

So today, as we look towards advent and Christmas, my goodness, I hope you’re excited for Christmas and that you give great gifts to the ability you can and the time you’ve got. But know that that’s not where we find our identity, that instead those gifts matter because we’ve been given a better gift and you have it today. And if you don’t know Jesus today, would you pause this podcast right now? Would you listen to the end and then do this? Would you today acknowledge your need and ask Him for help because He meets you not just with a theoretical new set of rules, but instead with a power to want newness, meaning He’s going to take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, a heart that caress. He’s going to give you a heart that feels and a heart that is in dwelled by his spirit so that it’s no longer you calling the shots in your own life. Instead, you get all the joy and glory in life that comes from a loving, living God doing that inside you.

That’s incredible, and I’m excited for this and I pray that this makes sense and that this can go into our technology with us, that when we go to social media, when we play our games, when we design social media and games, we have people from all of the major trillion dollar companies listening to this podcast right now, I pray that you feel encouraged in your workspace to be light, yes, through action, and through relationship, and through development, and product procurement, and R&D, and pushback on ideas that are unhelpful, just simply asking the question, how do we know this is going to line up with the goals that we have as a company, as an organization, as a society. Is this helpful? That’s what we need to be asking because we have a greater hope. Tech isn’t the end game, it’s simply another way to reflect the greatness that God is showing in the world around us and is showing through us by His Holy Spirit.

So I hope this is encouraging and helpful for you. I hope that you have an amazing advent. Last, I would say, if you want some help wrapping your brain around advent season, three resources. First is these awesome… I’ll put them in the show notes, but awesome little advent cards, family conversation cards. They’re from, She Reads Truth, they’re like under 30 bucks, but they’re awesome. You just buy them now or wait until after Christmas and maybe they’ll be on sale. But buying them now, you can run through them just every other card. It’s not a specific, it doesn’t make sense if you’ve only read five or 10 of them, but they’ll give you a Bible verse to read, a little advent reminder showing you advent the promise of the Messiah from Genesis all the way through Jesus’s arrival and ascension.

Then a second option would be, there’s a great little, if you need a devotional, Ruth Chou Simons’s Emmanuel is a great little devotional if you want to read it. I know it’s one that Anna loves and I’ve really appreciated. It’s definitely lots of flowers if you know Ruth Chou Simons. So gentlemen, if you’re reading that, just know there will be flowers involved. We should like flowers, they’re amazing.

But third is just a free resource. If you want to go check something out today, again, it’s in the links, but it’s Watermark Community Church out of Texas, put together an awesome PDF of five days of simple readings, but with some Bible verses that’ll help you get into some of what did the prophets say again and how did that tie into the New Testament and what’s been done. It’s a really simple, easy read to start with, if that sounds intimidating. And that’s a great option to use with advent candles. One per Sunday of advent, and you simply light a candle and then read God’s promises and what He has done and is going to do, and a great way to start conversation and repeat truths for your kids. So the cards, the book, the free PDF with some advent candles. Sometimes they’re purple and white, sometimes they’re just candles. It’s not really that important.

But what is important is talking about season of advent, and I hope that this was an encouraging, helpful conversation in that. So share it with a friend, send some questions. You can write [email protected] and show up next time as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.