So Your Love May Overflow - Advent Devotional

"And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” (Phil. 1:9-11)

Daily Scripture Reading:   Philippians 1:3-11

  There is a story told about St. Francis of Assisi. One day as he was digging in the garden, Francis was asked, "If Jesus were to return to earth today, what would you do?" Without hesitating, Francis answered, "I would continue gardening."

  Would we be so calm if we heard Jesus was coming back today? Or would we be desperately scrambling to get our lives in order? Confident enough that he was ready to meet the King, Francis would peacefully keep on about his business until Jesus' arrival.

  In today's text, the apostle Paul expresses a similar confidence in the people in Philippi. Seeing all the good that God had begun in them, he was certain that God would continue bringing it to completion until "the day of Christ Jesus." (1:6) or also called in other scripture passages, “the day of the Lord.”

  As we take this journey again toward Christmas and we recall the events surrounding the first coming of Emmanuel, we need to remember: "God is with us!" We must prepare our hearts and minds to humbly welcome Jesus into our lives today and each and everyday.

  No place is this understanding more important than in the matter of our faith. Many of us may have grown up in the church. During this time we might have one or many defining moments of faith or as some might say a mountaintop spiritual experience. A high point of faith where God's presence was made more clear and real to us, perhaps it was at summer church camp, a youth retreat, a mission trip, Bible study, etc. Whenever it was, it stood out as a spiritual mountaintop experience. We were excited about our faith and may have made our most important commitments to follow Jesus Christ as a disciple.

  But later, we were likely disappointed when we discovered that the peak of spiritual emotion we felt doesn’t last. We went from a mountaintop spiritual experience and then had to return to the valley to live out our lives and we found the excitement of conversion or commitment dissipates. What followed may have been the exact opposite, a spiritual low point when our faith seemed as dry as dust and our commitments seemed a little foolish.

  In time, if we persevere in following Jesus, we come to understand that neither the highs nor the lows describe what the ongoing life of faith is. Some of us may see only despair in the cyclical nature of our emotions and faith, but to paraphrase the psalmist, they saw hope in it: “Okay, I’m down today, but God constantly renews life. I will be up again.”

  Advent can help to renew and refresh our faith and show us that God is always present in our lives during the highs and the lows. I find my faith renewed each and everyday by simple acts of worship, singing hymns, taking time in prayer, reading scripture, and being in fellowship with others in the life of the church. Even if your faith has reached a low and we have distanced ourselves from others in the church, we can make the decision to get re-involved because God is compassionately, tenderly and lovingly waiting for us to return. I share with Paul this same sentiment during these day of Advent:

"And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” (Phil. 1:9-1)