Advent: A Practice of Learning How to Wait

Advent is here and the waiting and sense of expectation are upon us. Tonight I begin a two week Advent series entitled, “Waiting” for our Wednesday Night gathering at First Cleburne Student Ministry. As I have been preparing the messages for this series, I have spent a lot of time thinking about waiting in our current culture. Surprisingly we don’t have wait in our culture, in fact, we are encouraged almost every moment of every day NOT to wait.

I am exposed to this more times than most by working with young people. Marketing loves our youth; they are big consumers, and they have the marketing all but perfected in how they encourage them to consume. It seems in the 21st century however we consume a lot of things, but not things that sustain us, build us, and help us live an abundant life.

We consume, yes, but the question is what do we consume?

I had an interesting experience with Verizon Wireless as of late. Verizon gave me a call and informed me in this call that I was due for an early upgrade, here is how the convo went down:

Verizon Salesperson: (VERY EXCITED VOICE) Mr. Alexander I am calling to inform you that you qualify for an early upgrade on your phone! 
Me: Really? That’s interesting. I was under the impression that I was due for an upgrade on November 29th. Is that not the case? 
Verizon Salesperson: Mr. Alexander, yes that is when your upgrade is due, but you can early upgrade right now! 
Me: Well, why would I do that? What is the benefit to getting a new phone right now? 
Verizon Salesperson: The price would be the same so the only benefit is getting a new phone, but if you do it right now I will throw in a new case and external battery! 
Me: No thanks I will wait until I am set for the upgrade. I am a man of my word and when I say I will sign a two year contract I will do that full two years. Thank you for the offer, but I will wait.
Verizon Salesperon: Ok…just so you know there is no charge to upgrade now. It will be a free upgrade.
Me: I understand that, but I will wait. 

The salesperson didn’t know what to do with that. The conversation ended very awkwardly, but it ended nonetheless. Additionally Verizon called me two more times in the month of November, and I had the same conversation, and I also received many text messages as well. They simply didn’t know what to do with the idea of waiting or delayed satisfaction.

As Disciples of Christ a majority of the time we are waiting. It is all in God’s perfect time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a well-known German theologian from the 1930 and 40’s, once said about advent that: “celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten. We want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. Greedy eyes are soon disappointed when what they saw as luscious fruit is sour to the taste. In disappointment and disgust they throw it away. The fruit, full of promise rots on the ground. It is rejected without thanks by disappointed hands.

I love the imagery that Bonhoeffer uses by saying we want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. We don’t need what we think we need. Our inability to wait always leads us to a place of emptiness and bitterness, and God wants for us a fulfilling life! A life that is joyful, loving, and full of grace. An abundant life in Christ!

When we wait on God and follow His timing, we are always led to a place of fulfillment and joy! In John 10:10 Jesus as an full fledged adult talks about that He came to give life and give it abundantly. Let us consider further in closing what Bonhoeffer says about Advent:

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!”

Advent and Waiting go hand in hand, and with them we are compelled to REJOICE as we wait! REJOICE!

Genealogy

“This long genealogy is given for a good reason: to show how this Jesus fulfills the prophecies that tell us the Anointed One will be a descendant of Abraham and David. Some of the women in Jesus’ line are given to show how God is gracious to everyone, even to prostitutes and adulterers. Because some of the women listed weren’t Israelites, but were strangers and foreigners, they foreshadow all the foreigners God will adopt into His church through Jesus. Some of the children in God’s family are conceived under strange circumstances (like Tamar’s twins being conceived as she played the harlot, and like King Solomon being born to adulterous parents). Now that it has been established this is an unusual family, what happens next shouldn’t be a surprise – the conception of a baby under very strange circumstances.” (The Voice New Testament) 

Last night at Pulse Wednesday Night we started a new focus that I am really excited about, what makes it so awesome in fact that it is so simple. Sometimes in youth ministry we can invest so much time in looking for the best curriculum ever and we trust someone from another state in completely different church to give us the curriculum that we need, but the bad thing about this is that the writers don’t know the students at St. Philip’s, and really if I am honest I don’t know a lot either.

I know who does though.

God knows my students better than I ever could.

So, thanks to my genius intern, Marianne we decided to read the entire gospels with our students on Wednesday Nights. By reading a chapter a week we can slowly let the great story ever told sink into the hearts and minds of Pulse Students.

Like I said I am very excited.

Last night we talked about our preconceptions about people.

Sometimes as humans we have the habit of thinking we know more about people than we really do and I think that through Matthew 1, God tells us what He thinks about people. Throughout the genealogy we find plenty of people that really have no place in the family the comes before Christ. Tamar, seduces her father-in-law to keep the family line alive, Rahab is a canaanite prostitute who helps foreigners sneak into a foreign land, and lets not forget the whole David-Bathsheba thing. 🙂

Point is God truly saw these people for who they really were.

He knew their story intimately.

After all He created them and His own image.

Let this be an encouragement as you live your life know that there is no limit to God’s love and grace. The family that God has chosen to associate with is most definitely unusual, but isn’t interesting how unusually amazing and brilliant God is.

His grace is for all people.

Amen.

Simply Amazing.

This past Sunday at “Pulse Sunday Night,” we unveiled something that I find high value in. It’s not a new thing, but every time I have done this in Student Ministry it has been an amazing experience. This past Sunday for our worship component we lead Pulse Students in doing prayer creatively with the use of prayer stations.

We had four stations: Prayer doodles, Joys/Hopes/and Concerns Wall, Making a Bracelet to “wear” what we have learned on Sunday Nights, and lighting a candle as you prayer for someone in your life.

What is so amazing to me about this experience was that for 30 minutes I got to view teenagers engage and embrace the quiet and communicate with God.

I mean seriously of all the things that teenagers hear about themselves this is groundbreaking to experience.

I saw first hand Christ living within the students at St. Philip’s UMC. There was this connectedness to something divine that left me wanting to do  more and more. During this experience I was challenged to do more with my communication with God, because the simple fact is that sometimes the students at Pulse Student Ministries teach me how to be a better disciple.

Simply Amazing.

Real Ministry?

Sometimes as a Youth Worker I am asked when I will grow up.

OK.

I admit I am asked this a lot, if you know me you know this to be very true.

All joking aside, sometimes I am asked this in regards to my career choice and no I am not referring generally to the ministry career, because that is many things.

What I am referring to is youth ministry.

“Brad, when are you going to grow up and do real ministry?”

This begs a question.

What is real ministry?

Sometimes I can take this personally that sometimes we think youth ministry is just a social group of crazy teenagers and insane adults who willingly hang out with these crazy teenagers.

But I ask again what is real ministry?

Isn’t real ministry where we talk about being disciples and following the life that Jesus laid out his life for us to live? I think Jesus says it best when he says that a true friend lays down his life. This does not necessarily mean physically dying, but willingly hanging and be present with a certain group of people that may try and even kill your patience.

Because here is the thing.

As much as my teens sometimes get on my nerves I know that Jesus died for them and they deserve to have someone be present with them and love them as they are and accept them as Christ has accepted them. His grace tells us that no matter what we do in our life His grace is always here for us.

So I pray that today we realize that we all need Christ’s love and caring and that a part of that commitment we take on as His disciples is extending that love and grace to all that we come into contact with. My students at St. Philip’s deserve to have someone say to them:

Jesus loves you, and I love you and I am here.

That’s real ministry.

Amen.

YS Palooza Recap

Yesterday and today Jocelynn Stewart (our new Director of Fusion Student Ministries) and I had the pleasure of joining with many other youth workers in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in going to this years YS Palooza. There are far too many things to blog about in one post so I am going to split up the posts over the next week.

Overall this event was an amazing experience for all of us to reconnect and hang out with those that really understand the work that we do week in and week out. God has taught me so much these past two days and I can’t wait to share it with you all! Stay tuned!