The Love of Advent: Connecting to the Goodness of God

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Advent season reminds us that God created us for connection. The arrival of the infant Jesus transformed our understanding of the trinity—empowering us to interact with God using our senses and human characteristics. This new way of connecting with God functions as a bridge for grasping our connection with him spiritually. Though important for us to celebrate these events, the first coming of Jesus and the anticipation of his second coming, this podcast focuses on the day-to-day impact of Jesus—provided we pick up our cross each day.

Over the four weeks of advent and the celebration of Jesus’s arrival, we will cover how our connection with God:

• Provides hope that humanity’s broken heart, corrupted at the fall, will be reconnected with God.

• Enables peace as Jesus works to remove corruption and restore our wholeness.

• Empowers joy as we begin to experience life as individuals and in community according to God’s intended design.

• Envelops us in love as we surrender our lives to his plan for us and receive the full measure of his goodness.

• Actualizes our relationship with God, connection with ourselves and engagement with others through Jesus's arrival as a Damascus Man—fully God and fully human.

So let’s dive in

Welcome to the fourth week of our Advent series. We've journeyed through hope, peace, and joy—and now we arrive at love. And I'll be honest with you—love is challenging to talk about. It has so many applications, so many meanings in our culture, that it becomes hard to narrow down and present well what it means for us in the light of Advent.

So here's how I want to frame it for today: Love is our relational connection within the spiritual community—to love God, to love ourselves, and to love others. Love repairs the brokenness of the "heart connection" of our central nervous system—our passions, our purpose, our character—all of which were severed during the fall.

SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIPS FIRST

Our first passage of Scripture sets the focus of love squarely on relational connection in the spiritual realm. And I'm warning you—it might sound harsh at first. But stay with me.

Jesus says in Matthew 10:37: "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."

Later in the Gospel of Matthew, his family arrives at his location, intending to set his priorities straight. They're worried about him, probably embarrassed by the controversy he's causing. And Jesus responds by asking, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"

Pointing to his disciples, he says, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

Now, that sounds harsh, doesn't it? Denying the family connections. But here's his point: Relationships with God and between believers empowered by the Spirit connect deeper than even the most intimate relationships found in the physical realm.

I don’t minimize his connection with Mary—just look at how he cared for her at the cross. Use that to understand the depth that empowered love connects believers. We're talking about something profound here.

THE PRIORITY OF LOVING GOD

Even in the Old Testament, the first commandment sets love for God as the priority above all else. It emphasizes our need to love others by first loving God.

And here's where this gets really practical for us today. Family, work, and—yes, I'm going to say it—even pets can consume so much of our emotional energy that they displace God. And when that happens, we've elevated them to a god-like status. They've become idols.

When Jesus arrived on earth, he modeled a clear priority: First, connection with God through the Spirit. Then, connection with himself—by taking time to abide with God away from people. And then, connection with people.

Because we live immersed in a corrupted and broken world, we need to be empowered by the Spirit to love properly. And that includes taking time for our own rest and recovery. Otherwise, we become slaves to others, we deny ourselves, and we end up resenting God.

SEGMENT 3: PUT YOUR OXYGEN MASK ON FIRST

You've probably heard the airplane illustration directing passengers to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. Let’s use it here to understand connection.

Connect with God first—that's your oxygen. Clear your head by breathing that oxygen. Then connect others and offer them oxygen.

When we kill ourselves—or our families—to serve others, driven by our brokenness, our guilt, or our penance, our priorities need to flip.

I see this all the time in church settings. People get manipulated into roles instead of waiting for a calling. They struggle to understand the joy of helping others because they're operating from exhaustion and obligation, not from overflow. Then its not really love

Putting on our "oxygen mask" first—by abiding with God and allowing him to heal and teach  us—this is what allows our gifts, talents, and mission to emerge with clarity. We learn who God designed us to be.

When we feel loved by God, we naturally exude that love through the works we feel called to offer.

SEGMENT 4: LOVE EMPOWERED BY THE SPIRIT

It simply comes down to this. Love must be empowered by the Spirit. It needs to be fused to every aspect of our nervous system and saturate our hope, our joy, and our peace.

Colossians sums it up beautifully. Listen to this, from chapter 3, verses 12 through 14:

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Over all these virtues, put on love. It binds everything together in perfect unity.

SEGMENT 5: JESUS'S LOVE IN ACTION

When I ponder Jesus's love, one encounter stands out above all others—the woman caught in adultery, from John chapter 8.

The religious leaders drag this woman before Jesus, verses 4 through 11 tell us. They're ready to stone her. They want Jesus to condemn her.

And Jesus responds: "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

Think about what he did there. He equalized her worth to that of her accusers—the self-righteous Pharisees.

His lack of condemnation for her and his simple declaration, "Go now and leave your life of sin," restored her sense of value. It stabilized her nervous system. It opened the door for empowerment.

He acknowledged her guilt. He required transformation. But his extension of mercy offered connection and the posture of remorse versus the condemnation that comes through shame and fear.

This encounter paired love and truth together. That's what those verses in Colossians are all about.

SEGMENT 6: THE DISCIPLINE OF GENEROSITY

I find it important to look back throughout history to capture expressions of love from those who went before us.During early church celebrations of Advent, believers participated in something called almsgiving—financial gifts to those in need.

Today we call this the discipline of generosity. And it encompasses financial giving, yes, but it can expand way beyond money to include time, talents, and more—really any support that your heart offers with gratitude pleases God.

The discipline of generosity pours out of a heart of love. It provides hope, peace, and joy to this war-torn world. And its key stems from God's abundant generosity toward us.

But here's something I want you to consider. In today's financially strong and digital economy, giving often gets disconnected from relationships. We click a button, we send money, and we're done.

To reconnect relationships to your generosity, try to find opportunities for generosity that require face to face exchange of love to personally engage the person or family who receives the gift.

And here's a word of caution from Jesus about generosity: Authentic giving shuns an audience. If you need validation for your actions from other people, you're acting from your brokenness.

SEGMENT 7: THE DISCIPLINE OF SIMPLICITY

I expressed this idea of love earlier in this episode as our relational connection within the spiritual realm—to love God, to love ourselves, and to love others.

There's a discipline that helps us live this out. It's called simplicity.

Simplicity is a submission discipline. It shifts our corruption and chaos to the simple goodness of the spiritual realm. It encourages us to evaluate our lives—our relationships, our hangouts, our activities—compared to Scripture.

Simplicity asks: What do we hold fast to when disaster hits or when daily life weighs heavy?

It challenges how we allocate time and what busyness consumes our focus and energy.

Do our actions match our profession of love for God? Or do we ignore God most of the time and engage with stuff that grieves him?

But ironically simplicity is hard, impossible in fact without the Spirit. To shift our lifestyle and worldview toward goodness only happens by abiding with God. Simplicity occurs as a response to a surrendered and healed heart, and then it affects behavior.

By allowing God to change your feelings and your nervous system, you show gratitude toward him. Behavior changes when your core understanding prefers to hang with him instead of the old ways.

Jesus didn't behave to draw close to God. He modeled connection, simplicity, and action—terms we understand as love God, love self, and love others.

CLOSING: THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

So when you think about love this week, I want to challenge you with a question. And I want you to really sit with it.

Do you love yourself as much as God loves you? Are you willing to give yourself your best gift ever by separating from activities, and yes, even your family, by sitting with God and letting him love on you?

Most of us will be unable to answer that first question. Because our coping strategies drive our motivations and protect us from the pain that lies beneath them. The wounds of our brokenness are too painful to face, so we choose what we know and keep going, gripped by fear.

But you deserve better than that.

We celebrate love this week for Advent because Jesus wants us to experience true life—the stability of an empowered, healed, and stabilized heart.

Hold fast to the Trinity. Spend time asking them to connect with you.

Christmas celebrates Jesus coming to earth to connect with humanity. He came here to connect with you.

Have a great week.

High five.

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