Help When Life's Direction is Fuzzy - Part One

An Attitude of Anticipation

I Cor 13:12-13 the Message
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God [Faith], hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And best of the three is love.

Only You Can Determine What your attitude is going to be.

Advent - is the period of time prior to Christmas. For many people this time of year raises many anxieties and concerns which must be faced head on as it concerns our attitudes.

Have you ever been driving down the street and found yourself facing a head on collision? The Streets of downtown Concord are now new and improved. They have new One Way streets all over the place and you need to pay attention, not just to what you are doing but to what other people - people you don't even know are doing. Several times I have been driving down the street, minding my own business and around the corner, or turning onto the street heading straight for me is a car coming head on and I have to swerve, and honk to alert the other driver that he is headed the wrong way. Advent is like that. If you do not prepare yourself mentally you will suddenly find yourself in a head on collision with attitudes, expectations and anticipation that will collide with you and wipe you out if you are not careful.

A T T I T U D E by: Charles Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes. I want to encourage you today, to get a grip on your attitude as you face a time of uncertainty, time where you are between what has been and what will be. As we enter this Advent season. We are filled with anticipation, expectation and even fear and trepidation. It can be a time where things are unclear in your life and even confusing, where if your attitude is not right you will not know how to steer clearly through feelings and events that seem to turn on to a One Way street and head right for your headlights.

Our text for this morning and our theme for the coming weeks offers us some valuable instruction. It is found in a translation of the Bible called the Message, I Corinthians 13:12-13.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God [Faith], hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And best of the three is love.

This passage is perfect for this season, because Advent is a time of waiting for what is coming, where we can't see exactly what is ahead but we have specific direction on how to live in the mean time. Today we are going to talk about Advent attitudes.

The coming weeks we will discuss faith, hope and love - attitudes that give life and meaning to Christmas. Advent is the season prior to Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ. The Jews looked forward to the coming - the Advent of the Messiah - the one who would deliver them from all forms of bondage and usher in a new age.

Churches in many areas began to observe this period of preparation as early as the fifth century, soon after the origin of the celebration of Christmas. The failure of the Hebrew monarchy, paved the way for the emergence of a messianic hope. The prospect entailed a coming deliverer, usually of the Davidic family but also with priestly connections, who would restore the kingdom to Israel and be a kingly figure.

The Song of Solomon gives the first positive identification of the coming redeemer of Israel with one whom the Lord anoints as His Messiah.

The prayer runs: "See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the Son of David . [and] their king is the Lord's anointed" (Song of Sol. 17:21,32; compare 18:7). The scarcity of allusions to the Messiah before the New Testament period is probably to be explained by the fact that Israel's hope took on various shapes. Often it was God Himself who was expected to visit the nation in deliverance; sometimes it was His angel or messenger who would herald the onset of the new age (Mal. 3:1,2; 4:5,6).

The term "Messiah," figure who, as a member of David's family, would usher in the restored kingdom. For Christians, Christ's first coming only makes sense in light of his promise to come again.

The two cannot be separated without damage being done to both: without a first coming there could be no second coming; without the second coming, it becomes difficult to believe that current existence is somehow the kingdom of God. Advent not only points backward to the first coming, but also forward to the second, providing us with a vision of the future and toward the future. Advent, then, is a time of expectation: it is the acknowledgment of the fact that , although God has acted decisively on our behalf in Jesus' birth, there is still much more He will do.

It is toward this future completion that the Advent season directs us. The Advent season calls us to anticipate in the present that which has been begun by Jesus, and will be completed in his second coming.

1. Relationships between people: The kingdom of God will be a kingdom of peace and justice. The call to anticipate that in our lives means to love and seek out others. The kingdom is not one of exclusion, but of inclusion; not one of revenge, but compassion; not one of justice alone, but justice tempered with mercy.

Summary of a Dale Carnegie course:
If you want to keep friends and have people like you, \ there are three things you must never do. Each one of these begins with a "C". The first one is, "Never complain"; the second, "Never condemn;" and the last one, "Never criticize."

2. Naturalizing of our civilization:
All creation anticipates the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay
Romans 8:22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children,

Understood as the call to anticipate the kingdom of God, Advent calls us to recognize that the kingdom extends to all of creation. The kingdom of God is often interpreted as referring to the ultimate redemption of the human world and its history alone.

The kingdom of God is also the ultimate salvation of a creation "groaning" under severe ecological stress.

3. Making the kingdom of God the church's lodestone: Finally, Advent calls us to reorganize and recenter the church on the kingdom of God; it calls us to evangelization and liberation of ourselves, others and nature. A church that is truly awaiting Christ's coming and anticipating it through its actions attempts to "bring liberty to the oppressed, human dignity to the humiliated and justice which is their due to people without rights."

Advent is a time for taking stock of our lives and actions in light of the kingdom of God which entered human history with Christ, but still awaits completion. Our expectation of the coming Lord demands that we anticipate in our actions the kingdom with which he has identified himself and will bring to us.

Attitudes Matter Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Ethics, makes an interesting observation: "The tree of knowledge of Good and Evil produced the ability to choose our own good or our own evil." Both choices may take us equally distant from God. We have a third alternative, God's will."