During the Christmas season, we are often told we need things. I saw an ad the other day that told me I needed a L.O.L. Surprise! Tweens Fashion Doll. It makes sense if kids want these, but as a 34-year-old man, I don’t think need is quite the right word.
Our culture loves to make us think we need things. It’s part of the sales pitch: You need this, you just don’t know it yet.
If you are anything like me, you’ve become a bit jaded to this talk about “need.” We recognize we don’t need that Tween doll, that new tool or that brand new shiny car they keep trying to convince us to give as a Christmas present. We can probably use some of these products, but it’s not a need. And we’re used to our culture talking, implicitly and even explicitly, about things that we want as a need.
How our culture talks about this stuff puts us in a hard place when we get to our faith, because we do need Jesus. Which leads us to the Advent theme of hope.
Advent and hope
Advent is a strange word. We don’t talk about the advent of things anymore. Literally, advent means the arrival of a notable person, thing or event. The example that a quick search gave me was “the advent of television.” The coming of television. I was someone who experienced the advent — the coming — of the internet.
Advent for Christ-followers is much more than the arrival of television or the internet. It is a time of preparing to remember the first coming of our Lord Jesus to a world in need of hope.
Hope. Every day I am reminded that we need hope. I read it in the headlines. Our world needs hope. We all need hope. Each and every one of us.
And friends, there is hope for us. This season, most of all, we recognize there is hope for us. The hope of the world is Jesus.
A Scripture that talks about hope is Philippians 4:4-7:
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
While this sounds more like a passage for Thanksgiving than Advent, I think there is a link between being thankful and hope.
Verse 6 says, “tell God what you need, and thank him for what he has done.” Tell God what you need. We talk about this as prayer; something we are invited to do. We pray individually and as a church. That’s why our church has a prayer chain.
Telling God what we need makes a lot of sense to us. But without taking a breath, without even a comma in the original Greek, Paul (the author) tells us to thank God for what God has done. This call to thankfulness happens in conjunction with our prayers for what we need, what we hope for.
Thankfulness points to hope
Thankfulness and hope are related in this Bible passage. They go together, because we are grateful for what God has already done, and we have hope because of what God is doing and will do in the future. Our thankfulness, our gratitude, points us to hope.
But this is not the kind of hope that the English word conveys. When we say hope in English, it’s like, well I hope that happens. I was talking with someone a few weeks ago and we agreed, this word hope doesn’t hold up. There’s not a lot of confidence behind the word hope in our culture.
But the word “hope” in our Bible isn’t the English version of the word. It is the Greek word elpis. It means hope/faith. This is a confident hope/faith. This hope and faith is grounded in what God has already done and what God is yet to do.
It is because of our thanksgiving that we are confident in our hope. When we give thanks, when we are grateful, it reminds us that it is not a flimsy, maybe-it-will-happen hope that we have. It is hope with surety. That’s not the kind of hope we have in our culture. But it is the kind of hope we find in our Lord.
Our ultimate hope is that Jesus has saved us to eternity with him. During Advent we are reminded of this hope. What we celebrate at Christmas is Christ’s first advent—when Christ came to earth as a human being, to teach us the way to live, to connect us to God, to save all of us.
But our hope is not that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, was resurrected and then left. Jesus did not say, “Well, I did what I came to do and now I’m out of here.” Our hope is that Jesus is coming back. Advent, the time in the church year that we celebrate Jesus coming as a baby, reminds us that Jesus is coming back as Lord.
“Remember, the Lord is coming soon,” writes Paul in this passage. “Soon” has been both a really long time and will be here before we know it. And whether the Lord’s return happens in the next minute, month, year, century or millennia, Jesus was Lord, is Lord and is coming back as our Lord so we can be with him.
A prayer of hope
This gives us hope, and we can be thankful. My wife, Caitlin, and I didn’t get to do much of any of the things we planned over Thanksgiving. We missed the chance to see my family in Oklahoma because we were sick, which turned out to be ok because so were they. But on Thursday night Caitlin and I gave thanks, and then talked about our hope.
How can we be thankful and hopeful this week? Giving thanks can be as simple as writing down or sharing with someone what we are thankful for in the past year. Being hopeful can be saying or recording what we hope the next year will be. We can also spend time in prayer, asking God what he wants from us as we look ahead.
I trust if we spend time doing this, we’ll experience that connection between giving thanks and hope. And we’ll look forward to the day when we celebrate the final Advent.
One of the small groups at Cornerstone created a psalm of thanksgiving when they met in late November. This psalm can help us see that hope and is a prayer to close this essay.
Where are you when I am in the valley?
Where is your voice?
I know you haven’t left me, oh God.
This is not how it’s supposed to be.
Your love oh never-ending must hold me just a while longer.
I always want to feel your love even when I don’t love you back.
Oh Lord, I am yours crafted by your hands and saved by your amazing grace.
You are my rock always and forever.
Ben Friesen is lead pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Topeka, Kansas. He is married to Caitlin Friesen, a former pastor at North Fresno Church, a USMB congregation in Fresno, Calif. Friesen enjoys reading, disc golf and the occasional trip to the zoo. He is a graduate of Tabor College and Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary.
