Prayers For Advent

Happy Advent, Friends!

With each year that passes, I look forward to and savor this season more and more. It is a time to prepare my heart for savoring the beauty of the incarnation of Christ and the richness of blessings that His sacrificial life and death have made available to us!
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Additionally, the Christmas or Advent season not only compels me to consider and meditate on the first coming of Christ at His birth, but it also urges me to joyously anticipate His second coming, when He will usher in His kingdom! There is so much good and beautiful truth to ponder and to captivate my thinking during Advent. And if I am faithful in applying my heart and mind to this, my celebration of His birth will be all the richer for it!

One of the traditions in our family during this season is the lighting of Advent candles each Sunday of December leading up to Christmas Day. I wrote about this practice and its origins a few years ago in a different post. Each candle symbolizes a different aspect of who Jesus is and what He brings to us in His coming — hope, peace, joy, and love. The fifth and final candle, lit on Christmas Day, is the Christ candle, celebrating His birth, life, and atoning death.

While the lighting of the candles is a powerful visual reminder, the real focus of this tradition is the rehearsing of the truths the candles represent. For our family, lighting a candle means very little if we are not using the practice to propel our hearts and minds to dwell on rich truths and allow those truths to change the way we live. 

With this goal in mind, I have written out five prayers for myself for this Advent season — one for each candle. I want to spend each week saturating my thoughts in what it means to really behold my Savior as my hope, my peace, my joy, my love, and my Christ. I hope these prayers will be a blessing to you as you prepare your heart for celebrating our Lord this Christmas and all year, too. ​

Hope

My Blessed Hope, 
Thank you for piercing the darkness of our world and our hearts. If You had not lowered yourself to live among us, taking on our frailty and flesh, dying a death that is rightfully mine — I would have no hope, no confident expectation of anything other than loss, condemnation, and separation from the Father forever. Because You lived, died, and rose again, I have hope. I have hope for the here and now and also for the future. 

You have always been true to Your Word. You are steadfast and faithful. I have no reason not to place my hope in You. And yet, so often I cast my gaze around me and begin to lose confidence. I look to others to be my hope when You are the only one who is worthy and capable of such expectation. Forgive me and cause the “eyes of [my] heart to be enlightened in order that [I] may know the hope to which God has called [me], the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people” (Ephesians 1:18). 
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Remind my fragile heart that because of Your great mercy, I am “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [me], who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).

Thank you for being my Hope which never fades and never fails. Thank you, Lord, for keeping Your promises to Your children for thousands of years. One day, my faith and my hope will been seen with my own eyes! What a wonderful expectation! Amen.

Peace

My Precious Peace, 
When You came as a baby over 2,000 years ago, the world was in pain, much like it still is today. As humans, we desire peace, safety, and security, but we still look for it in all the wrong places. We look to politics and policies, friends and family, traditions and values to give our lives meaning and order. If I am honest, I am often guilty of looking to the idols of my heart for the peace I crave. 

Please forgive me, Lord, for looking to lesser things to bring me peace when You alone have promised and can deliver what my soul longs for. 

​Because You came and laid down Your life for me, I not only can have peace in the midst of the storms of life in this fallen world, but I can have peace with God. Before I knew You, I was an enemy of God. I hated Him and loved my sin. I was running with breakneck speed toward hell. I would not have sought God if He had not pursued me first. I fully deserved His wrath, not His grace. 

But because of You, I am no longer an enemy of God, separated from Him as a sinner. You are “[my] peace, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation” (Ephesians 2:14). No longer an outcast, I am invited into God’s presence as a beloved daughter. I am given an inheritance that could never be mine through my own merit. 

When I am tempted to despair as I look at the world around me, remind me that You are my Peace. You were “wounded for [my] transgressions . . . bruised for [my] iniquities; the chastisement for [my] peace was upon [You], and by [Your] stripes [I am] healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Whatever happens to me in this life, it cannot take away my peace because You are my Peace. Amen. 

Joy

Dear Joy of joys, 
In a world that recklessly chases the fleeting feeling of happiness, help me to remember You are my source of lasting joy. You have tasted the bitterest of sorrows so that I could feast on joy. In fact, You set Your rightful joy aside to pursue me unto death, so that I could know the Joy of the Father (Hebrews 12:2). You came to earth so that my joy may be full (John 15:11). 

Yes, I still face pain, sadness, and heartache. There are difficulties that have not been removed. But I can still have joy in You, for You are the Man of Sorrows and the Man of Great Joy. You comfort me in my pains, and because You experienced the greatest of all pains, I can know deep, abiding joy. 

Thank you for sacrificing Yourself on the cross so that I can know the joy of true and eternal fellowship with the Father. I have joy in the now and joy for the future! “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). Amen.

Love

Everlasting Love, 
You are how we know what love is. Your love was costly, selfless, and sacrificial. Your love humbles me because I am completely undeserving of it. Your love took on the weight of all my sins, faced the full wrath of the Father, obliterated my sin debt, and reconciled me to God. Your love pursued me in my sin and made me a child of God! (1 John 3:1)

Lord, every day You give Your love freely and without restraint. You love me even when I give the love and adoration I owe You to other lesser things. You love me generously, even though I am often stingy with my love for others. You love me when I am at my best and my worst. 

Forgive me for failing to love You as I ought — for setting my affections on people and things that can never satisfy. 

Forgive me for failing to follow Your example of love — for putting conditions on whom and how I will love. Help me to love the people in my life the way You have loved me. 

Thank you that nothing can separate me from Your love — no power, no person, no set of circumstances can keep Your love from me! (Romans 8:35-39)

Your Word tells me that “faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). When You come again, I will no longer need faith because it will become sight. I will no longer need hope because You will have fulfilled all expectations. But, Your love will last forever! I rejoice in Your love today and long for the day when I will enjoy Your loving presence for all eternity! Amen. 

Christ

Victorious Christ, 
Your first coming was hailed as “good news of great joy for all people!” (Luke 2:10) You fulfilled the promises and prophecies so many had clung to for centuries, and You set a course for the cross. 

We now await Your second coming. We anticipate with eager longing to sing praises and herald You as the angels did 2,000 years ago. And how much greater will that song be when You come to rule forever! 

While we wait, help us to be about the work of Your kingdom. Forgive us when we put our energy toward building our own little empires to ourselves and our desires. Align our wills with Yours. Cause our hearts to long only after You. 
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As we celebrate You today and rejoice in Your birth, keep us ever mindful that this should be our posture every day — looking to and rejoicing in You, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Keep us in steadfast hope, enduring peace, abiding joy, and resolute love. Amen.

​How can embracing the hope, peace, joy, love, and triumph of Christ during Advent transform not only your Christmas celebration but also your everyday life?

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