2025 Advent | Light in the Darkness

This Advent season, we encourage you to prepare Jesus room. Be intentional to create space and time for him. We believe that it will be worth it! You will experience light dawning in your life and be equipped to be a light in the lives of others. For the next 12 days, we invite you to engage with 12 different practices to connect you to God. We know this time of year can be extra busy, so each practice has three levels of activations so you can find one that’s right for you. 


JESUS is the Light of the World (John 8:12)

Imagine the world Jesus came into. It was not the perfect world he created. His chosen people were living in darkness, under enemy occupation, in a long drought on hearing from God. Maybe this sounds like the world you are living in. Now think about the dark, broken, painful places of your life and be encouraged because those are the exact places Jesus enters into. 


YOU are the Light of the World (Matt 5:14-15)

Jesus calls us the light of the world. Our light will testify to others of God’s goodness. God intends for us to shine brightly in the darkness (Isaiah 60:2).


As you explore different ways to connect with God this Advent season, we encourage you to light a candle and continuously remind yourself that Jesus is the light of the world and as a follower of Jesus, you are called to reflect that light. 

The world tells us to do more to find fulfillment, but what if true fulfillment can be found in simplifying and prioritizing what really matters.

Our modern life can pull us in so many directions, we end up rushed, distracted and overwhelmed. Between work schedules, the needs of our home, after school commitments, responsibilities for aging parents, trying to make time for a social life and keeping up with the depressing news, many of us are worn thin. But this is not the abundant life that Jesus promised. The invitation of simplicity will free up space in your life to encounter Jesus as the light of the world and enable you to reflect that light this season.


Maybe, for you, reading about 12 different practices adds pressure and burden to your life. You are thinking: I need to do more, I’m not doing enough for the Lord. I can try harder. If that’s you, take some time to rest with the Lord, allow him to affirm that he sees you and doesn’t put heavy or ill fitting burdens on your shoulders (Matthew 11:28-30). Perhaps the part of your life that you need to simplify is your relationship with God. 


Baby step: Our phones can be a source of immense distractions. Take some time to set up features to limit screen time and notifications. Remove apps that are distracting. Turn off unnecessary notifications. Set up screen time limits and focus mode so your phone won’t be interrupting you all the time. 


Bigger step: Declutter your home in a way that makes your life simpler, reduces decision fatigue or decreases time spent cleaning. This will increase peace and time to slow down and encounter Jesus. 


Biggest step: Simplify Christmas gift giving. Instead of exchanging gifts with all the in-laws, consider having an experience together. Go to dinner rather than exchanging gifts with friends. Reduce the amount of gifts you give to your immediate family. This will give you the gift of simplicity, more time, money and focus for other things. 


Getting your family involved: Have your kids go through clothes and toys, donating anything they no longer use. Brainstorm ideas for how to slow down this season and how to open up space in your life for more of God. 

But let’s remember, even Jesus - the true savior of the world - took time to be alone with his Father. He allowed the needs of others to go unmet for a while so that he could be aligned with God.


How much more do we need to practice this?

We have so many demands on our time and our attention. It can often feel like we are on a hamster wheel or we have to maintain a delicate balance so the plates will keep spinning. This can lead to false assumptions and burden bearing - that it’s all up to us, everything depends on how well we keep meeting everyone’s needs. Spend some time truly alone with God. Leave your phone behind (or at least put it on silent), close the door and light a candle.


Baby step: God breathed life into Adam (Genesis 2:7), he breathed on the dry bones(Ezekiel 37:9-10). God’s breath revives us. Take a few moments to quiet your heart and your mind. Focus on your breathing. As you exhale, let go of your fears. Your frustrations. Your hurts. Breathe deep the breath of God. What is it he wants to fill you with today? 


Bigger step: Set aside your morning commute. Drive in silence or instrumental worship music. Rather than rushing to fill the silence with needs and requests, take some time to breathe slowly. Posture your heart before God and ask what is on His heart. As you exit a time of solitude, ask God to prepare your heart to reflect him as you meet the challenges of your day.


Biggest step: Set your alarm clock early. Light a candle, spend time breathing in and out and quieting your heart and mind. Start your day alone with God. Consider the following prompts: 

As you light the candle, pray to Jesus and invite him in to the dark places in your story. Prepare him room. Sit silently before him and imagine light beginning to breakthrough in those places. (Isaiah 9:2) Once you've invited Jesus into your darkness, brokenness, loneliness, pain, fear, poverty, do not worry if the floodlights aren't flipped on right away. Jesus will accept your invitation, but the light might not come the way you expect. Remember the way Jesus came into the world. Almost imperceptibly. In the darkness of night, quietly, humbly. The light will dawn in your life, but like the dawning of a new day, it will slowly but powerfully dispel the darkness. 


Now think for a moment about the darkness of the world. What are some areas that need the light to shine upon it? Maybe it's close to home - a neighbor struggling financially, a friend who can't see through the tears of grief, chaos and discord in your office. Or perhaps it is something far from home, but near to your heart - the Toposa tribe, the Syrian refugees, the horrific slaughter of Christians in Somalia. Ask Jesus how to be the light in this darkness. Pray for the light to come. And do something tangible to let your light shine (Matthew 5:16). 


Getting your family involved: While your family can’t practice this with you, you can still have conversations about the importance of solitude (especially for your extroverted child!) and inform them that you are going to prioritize alone time and they might need to be patient if you are unavailable for a while. Ask your family if there is anything you can do to help them have space for solitude.

Fasting is a way of emptying ourselves to create space for God to fill. In a season of perpetual feasting, take some time to practice fasting.

God loves to fill empty wombs (Genesis 21:1), jars (2 Kings 4:1-6), stomachs (Matthew 14:13-21) and hearts (Mark 6:34). When you fast, bring to God the empty places in your life and ask God to begin to fill them. Ask him to give you insight into what fullness in those areas looks like. Maybe you are an empty nester and your home and schedule aren’t as full as you are used to, maybe you are in a season where you lack close friendships, maybe you are out of work. God can fill those places in your heart and life just as easily as he filled Hannah’s womb.


Baby step: If you are new to fasting, ease into the practice by fasting for one meal or trying a Daniel diet. Begin sharing with God about the experience. He is interested in your whole life. Ask him for help through cravings. Consider what else you are hungry for.
 

Bigger step: Fast for a whole day. As you fast, consider the people who regularly go without meals out of necessity. Ask for God to bless them and increase your compassion for them. 


Biggest step: Consider a two or three day fast. Or fast multiple days in one week. As you are consistently denying your flesh, ask God to increase your spiritual hunger and awareness (Romans 8:13).


Getting your family involved: our walk with God is not meant to be solitary. Here are some ideas for practicing fasting with your family (or community). Pick a day to do this with your family or small group. Check in with each other about how it’s going, focusing not on how hungry you are, but what you are sensing or experiencing from the Lord. Are your children old enough to consider skipping a meal? Take the opportunity to teach them about the practice of fasting and invite them to join you. Maybe they are too little to skip a meal, but they could consider giving up a special type of food for a few days. And if fasting from food isn’t an option for your children, consider giving up time playing video games or watching TV. Remember it isn’t about what you aren’t doing or eating, it’s about inviting the Lord to fill that space. Pick something to pray about as a family or use the time you aren’t eating to worship together. 

When God finished creating the world he dreamt of, he rested and took delight in it.

In our modern world, we can get so consumed with creating the world we dream of that we fail to take the time to truly enjoy it. Let’s follow God’s lead and take some time this season to rest and enjoy our lives with the people God has given us.


Baby step: Sabbath moments.

We’ve all been there scrambling to get somewhere on time, only to be slowed down by traffic, long grocery store lines or family members who didn’t get the message that we needed to leave 5 minutes ago. In these moments that feel like chaos, remember God’s will for you is peace in all circumstances. Surrender your overwhelm, frantic anxiety, and stress to God and ask for his peace and calm in this circumstance. Your calm presence can reveal God's peace to others and what a gift that would be in this world that is constantly stealing peace. 


Bigger step: Dedicate phone free time.

We are so connected to our phones. And this is a big driver of stress in our lives. Plan to put your phone away for some true quiet time today. No alerts. no urgent messages, no dividing your presence between your phone and the people you are with. Try to do this twice - once on your own and once with people, while sharing a meal. Enjoy the present moment. Allow yourself to truly listen to the people you are with, to yourself and to God. 


Biggest step: Practice sabbath for a whole day.

Consider if there is anything you need to say no to in order to give yourself this time. How can you prepare ahead in order to more fully embrace a day of rest? Invite someone else—perhaps someone exhausted or overlooked—to share a peaceful meal, a walk, or quiet conversation.


Getting your family involved: In our individualized Western culture, it can be so tempting to want to rest from the work of taking care of a family. Talk with your family about what kind of day everyone would find restful and replenishing. Also talk with your family about how everyone can help prepare for that day. Taking a day of rest usually means planning ahead to ensure it doesn’t become another day filled with to-do list items. Have everyone contribute to doing extra chores earlier in the week. 

Prayer connects us to the very heartbeat of God. It’s a conversation with your creator, not a chore on your to do list. It allows us to exchange our burdens and anxieties for peace and rest.

Prayer is an invitation for God to move on your behalf and on behalf of those you bring to him in prayer. It is an opportunity to be molded into the image of Jesus. As you grow in the practice of prayer, it will become natural to flow in conversation all day - processing everything you experience with the one who knows your heart the best. 

Baby step: When you are tempted to grumble, complain, vent or gossip about someone, turn it into a prayer of blessing for the person who frustrated or hurt you (Romans 12:14).


Bigger step: Pick a well known person to cover in prayer this season. So often celebrities and politicians and influencers are torn down by people’s words. But you can build them up through your intercession.


Biggest step: Host a prayer night in your home. Invite your friends, neighbors, small group and or family to share their prayer requests ahead of time. Spend time praying for personal requests and pray for your city and nation. 


Getting your family involved: Talk about your prayer life with your family. Pray out loud with them, so your children can hear what your prayers sound like. Your children encounter frustrating people, too! Teach them to pray for those people and situations rather than complain about them. Ask your family members if they have ideas about who needs prayers. Start a prayer jar to keep track of answered prayers. 

The word of God is alive (Hebrews 4:12), it is God-breathed and useful for building up the believer (2 Timothy 3:16-17), it is a light to guide your feet (Psalm 119:105).

The word of God is essential to guiding the believer, especially with so much deception and confusion in our media and news. Choose to be grounded in the truth. 

Baby step: Pick a verse that’s relevant to you currently and memorize it. Try to share it if a fitting situation arises. By filling your mind with God’s word, the Holy Spirit will be able to remind you of it in the right moment.


Bigger step: Choose a passage and spend time reflecting on it through drawing or journaling. Engage your right side of your brain. Reflect on how the verse reveals something different/new to you as you engage with it in a new way.


Biggest step: Tithe your time. Spend 2 hours and 24 minutes reading the scriptures today. Set a timer and go. Or break into smaller chunks throughout your day. Reflect on whether you need to listen to that news story, watch the show or check your phone… little moments really add up.


Getting your family involved: Encourage everyone to pick a verse to memorize. Or memorize the same verse. Share what you think it means together and how you applied it. Read the bible or a devotional together as a family to make the Word of God a central part of your family time. When your kids have questions, look to see if the Bible has answers. 

The more familiar you are with your own story, the more natural it will feel to share it in conversation with others.

The Bible instructs us to always be ready to give an answer for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15). But if we don’t spend time reflecting on our story and our encounters with God, it’s easy to be caught off guard. When the demon possessed man was healed, he desired to go with Jesus, but Jesus sent him back to his family and town telling him to share his story (Mark 5:19). This same town had just rejected Jesus, but Jesus knew that sharing a personal encounter with God was a powerful way to connect people to him. 


Baby step: Spend time reflecting on your story with God. How did you first decide to follow Jesus? What has your life been like since then? What are some of your favorite encounters with God? Write these down. Thank God for them. Ask him for more encounters. Even if you haven’t been able to share it with someone else, this process will help you be ready, encourage your heart and build up your faith. 


Bigger step: Pray for opportunities to share your story. Actively look for them. Consider sharing your story on social media.


Biggest step: Tithe your time. Spend 2 hours and 24 minutes reading the scriptures today. Set a timer and go. Or break into smaller chunks throughout your day. Reflect on whether you need to listen to that news story, watch the show or check your phone… little moments really add up.


Getting your family involved: Does your family know the details of your story? Or why you follow Jesus? Do you regularly share about experiences you’ve had with God? Make a point to share these stories with your kids. Pay attention to their own experiences and help them to see when they’ve been hearing from and experiencing God in their lives. 

Jesus modeled community so clearly.

He gathered together his friends and they lived life together. They shared meals, they traveled, they talked. Community wasn’t just another thing to have to fit in their week, it was a natural state of existence.

In our modern world, finding true community is a challenge. Our schedules and physical distance from others make it difficult to connect this way. 


Baby step: Technology can often exacerbate the problem of community by giving us an illusion of closeness, but not really bringing hearts together. But it can also be a powerful tool in keeping you connected when being in the physical presence of another isn’t an option.  Pick a person or a small group of people to start a text conversation with. Check in with each other several times a week. Include prayer requests, praises, scripture, encouragement, revelations from the Lord. You can be connected all week, not just during small group meeting time.


Bigger step: Not only did Jesus model community in the way he lived, he sent the disciples on mission alongside another (Mark 6:7). Our walk with the Lord and our mission were never meant to be solitary pursuits. Seek the Lord for a friend to live on mission with. Take a prayer walk together, host a small group together, choose an area of ministry to serve together. 


Biggest step: Tithe your time. Spend 2 hours and 24 minutes reading the scriptures today. Set a timer and go. Or break into smaller chunks throughout your day. Reflect on whether you need to listen to that news story, watch the show or check your phone… little moments really add up.


Getting your family involved: Sometimes family can make community more challenging. Between earlier bedtimes and kids’ schedules, it can be difficult to add something else to your schedule and meet the needs of everyone’s conflicting schedules. But your family is also your first community. You don’t have to look anywhere to find it. You already have natural rhythms and live life together. Invite others into your home. If your children are older, encourage them to form communities of their own. 

Jesus came to the world not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28) and as his followers, we are commanded to do the same (John 13:14).

Service is more than the ministry teams you choose to be a part of. It’s a humble way of life that pauses to notice and meet the needs of others. It is the middle of the night soothing of a child’s fears. It’s a gentle and encouraging response to the weariness in your server’s voice. It’s invisible acts of service to lift the burden off your spouse’s shoulders. Remember our service to others is considered by Jesus as service to himself (Matthew 25:40).


Baby step: Think about the people you are around most often - family, neighbors, coworkers. Pay attention to their lives, especially their burdens and needs. What is one small way you can share their burden? Can you make the coffee for your spouse? Bring in the trash cans for your neighbor? Assist your co-worker with a project? If possible, do this anonymously and without seeking attention. Your father in heaven will reward you (Matthew 6:3-4). 


Bigger step: Jesus was constantly and consistently living on mission, and yet, stunningly, he allows himself to be interrupted by us. It can be easy to be so focused on our own tasks, responsibilities and mission that we are not as responsive to the needs of those around us. But Jesus knew that is the mission. Slow down so you can hold open the door for the mom with a diaper bag, baby in the stroller and toddler hanging on to her shirt. Slow down so you can take your neighbor’s kid to school when their car won’t start. Slow down so you can have a conversation with the receptionist who seems discouraged. 


Biggest step: If you aren’t already serving in some regular capacity, take the Find Your Fit assessment and get involved at church. If you are already serving, consider how you can make service to those you encounter most often an instinctual part of your life. It doesn’t have to be in the church or for a ministry. You already have plenty of people who need to experience the love of God by your regular service to them. Spend time in prayer to determine where your unique combination of traits and skills and capacity aligns with the many needs around you. Then serve consistently and quietly.


Getting your family involved: Look for ways to serve your family. Encourage your children to look for ways to serve their classmates, teachers or friends. Find ways to serve together. Is there a ministry at church that your whole family can be part of? Can you clean up the neighborhood or shovel driveways together? Make service a natural part of your life. 

Worship is standing in awe of God and living accordingly. Worship reminds us of the greatness of our God and properly aligns our heart to God and the world around us.

As God becomes bigger in our minds our problems become smaller because we are growing in confidence that our good God can handle it. Worship is a way to enter into his presence (Psalm 100:4).


Baby step: This year, skip Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman. Create a playlist of worshipful Christmas music and listen/sing along all through this season. Train your heart to focus on the miracle of Emmanuel, God-with-us.


Bigger step: Oftentimes we can get very comfortable in how we worship or we can limit it to singing before and after a sermon. Try to become even more undignified than this (2 Samuel 6:22) by worshiping in a way that might be unfamiliar to you. Lift your arms, kneel down, dance, shout out his praises. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable in your own eyes to bring him the praise he deserves. 


Biggest step: Go on a worship walk. Spend time enjoying God’s beautiful creation and letting it lead you into a worship experience. Take time to appreciate the beauty you see and thank God for it. Turn it into expressions of worship as you connect with the one who created such an intricate and beautiful and abundant world.


Getting your family involved: Read the nativity story (Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 2:1-21, Matthew 2:1-12) and pause to thank God for each time you are struck with his goodness. Have a worship dance party with your kids. Spend time before bed thanking God for his goodness to you that day. 

Hospitality is more than opening your home. It’s having an open heart to love others, especially those who are strangers or marginalized.

Hospitality is at the heart of Jesus’ instruction to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39) and to welcome people who are unlikely to return to the invitation (Luke 14:13). Think more about how you can have a hospitable heart and less about a meal plan to serve guests. 


Baby step: Practice the listening skills we’ve learned from the Art of Listening sermon series. Take the time to listen to people’s hearts and needs. Being authentically seen and heart is something every person needs. 


Bigger step: Open up your home for a meal and fellowship. Specifically look for people who may not otherwise receive an invitation. Or accept an invitation from someone you know needs a friend. Sometimes hospitality is as much accepting an invitation as it is extending one. 


Biggest step: Talk to your spouse about fostering a child. Or welcoming a long term visitor who needs a safe and healthy home. Maybe it’s your son’s friend whose home life isn’t safe. Or maybe it’s a student who can’t quite make ends meet right now. Maybe it’s your aging mother-in-law who would rather be with family than live in a nursing home. 

Getting your family involved: Talk to your children about the classmates who never get invited to the birthday party or who always eat alone. Encourage them to practice hospitality by befriending the lonely. 

As you consider the invitation to be generous, remember that everything you have belongs to God and is entrusted to you as a steward. 

We follow a generous God. When Jesus turned the water into wine, it was 120-180 gallons, which is around 5 bathtubs full or 3,840 glasses of wine (John 2:1-11)! When God led the Israelites to the promised land, it was a land flowing with milk and honey and clusters of grapes so large, it took two men to carry (Numbers 13:23). When God created the world, there was nothing lacking and every good thing was ours to enjoy with the exception of one tree (Genesis 2:16-17). In response to his generosity, let’s be generous.


Baby step: Buy coffee for the person behind you in line or a meal for a homeless person. Linger for conversation, if that seems appropriate.


Bigger step: Generosity isn’t just about sharing your financial wealth. It can also be sharing your time or your knowledge and experience. Give freely when someone asks of your time (even if it is something as small as letting a car merge in front of you in rush hour traffic) or expertise.


Biggest step: Buy groceries or Christmas presents for a family you know is struggling financially. Or sponsor another child through MOHI. 


Getting your family involved: Have a family conversation about all the ways God has been generous to you and ask about the ways we can be generous in response. Start a generosity savings account and use it to freely give without having to consult your budget for each opportunity.