Re-Advent Your Life

Are the hectic holidays derailing your devo time with God? If so, we’d love to have you join us in our new digital Advent study called Re-Advent Your Life. We know you’re busy, so we’ve designed it to take only 15 minutes a day. This downloadable (immediate access) PDF works on any of your devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It’s fillable, so you can type with your keyboard or write with a smart pencil directly in it. And for those who prefer paper, it’s also printable.

28-Day Advent Devotional

Join us on our 28-day journey of small daily steps to life transformation. Each day in the Advent devotional you’ll answer three questions and choose one small step to take toward your ultimate Re-Advent Your Life goal for the study. We’re hosting this study at our new sister website Spaces of Grace.

More Information

For detailed information about our Advent devotional, click on the button below. We’d love to have you join us as we journey through Advent to Christmas together.

MORE INFO

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. As a child, I remember the solemn mass of Ash Wednesday and being anointed with ashes in the sign of the cross on my forehead. As an adult, I attend a Protestant church, but I’ve always loved the traditional church calendar recognized by the Catholic Church. There is something special about marking the start of church seasons, don’t you think? 

What is Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. It is called Ash Wednesday because of the practice of putting ashes on worshipers foreheads as a sign of humility before God and as a sign of mourning for the death and destruction that sin brings into the world.

What Is the Purpose of Lent?

The season of Lent spans 40 weekdays beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending with Holy Week: Holy Thursday, (Maundy Thursday),  Good Friday, and concluding the Saturday before Easter. Today, Lent is used as a time of prayer and preparation for Easter. We can look inward to see what needs to be confessed and changed in our lives. Some Christians fast and/or give up something for Lent as a sacrificial offering, while others focus on doing good deeds to help others. 

I love author Ruth Haley Barton’s take on Lent. She makes us think deeply by recommending we all ask ourselves this question, “Where in my life have I gotten away from God, and what are the disciplines that will enable me to find my way back?”

Ideas to Make Lent Special

As Ruth’s question suggests, marking the time of Lent in a thoughtful way will help you to prepare your heart for Easter. Perhaps you could even invite a family member or friend to join you in this journey. If you have young children, they may enjoy starting their own mini-ministry (see the last bullet point) or reading short prayers or scriptures with you. Here’s a list of suggestions, or feel free to try one of your own.

• Give up a favorite food as a sacrifice to God.
• Work on breaking a bad habit you have.
• Add a new beneficial habit that you’ve been meaning to start that will improve either your body, soul, or spirit.
• Practice Lectio Divina, also called sacred reading.
• Practice a spiritual discipline that sounds interesting: meditation, prayer, fasting, study, self-denial, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, or celebration.
• Read Lent selections from the Book of Common Prayer or other prayer books.
• Start a mini ministry of encouragement. Each day find some way to encourage others: a quick note, a piece of candy, a hug, and so on. (More on mini ministries coming soon).

Let’s all take some time to settle in with God during the season of Lent. We’d love to hear your ideas on making this a sacred season. Please share below in the comments.

Blessings,

I love Christmas. I love the displays, the music, the food and the lights, but this was overwhelming. Despite the fact that it was night, I needed my sunglasses. The light emanating from the Christmas display of a neighboring house was overwhelming. Think air-traffic control tower…light house…l.e.d. headlights straight to the retinas. I’m sure this display can be seen from outer space.

In addition to the garishly flashing lights, I counted 25 plus Christmas inflatables ranging from a snowman sporting camo and a rifle to a shark with a Santa hat. To escape the multi-sensory overload, I shifted my eyes from the display to the house across the street. And what did I see?

Just Jesus

A simple manger scene graced the velvety lawn of the house across the street. silent. holy. calm. In the inky darkness, a simple cut-out of the Holy Family illuminated by a single soft light emphasized the beauty of the Gospel. Shadows whispering the simplicity of God’s plan.  Just Jesus.

Simply show them Jesus.

This simple display speaks a lesson directly from heaven straight to the heart. This is just what our lives should be, what our lives should do–leave behind the noise and blinding distractions of the world and simply point to Jesus.

He is all we need.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” 

Col. 1 :15-18

Just Jesus, each day, every hour, every minute. He is all we need. Merry Christmas.

Please leave me a comment below about how your heart is doing this Christmas. I’d love to hear from you!

By Mary Kane

All rights reserved. Copyright 2020

Resources:

Get to Know Jesus by Joyce Meyer

4 Steps to Become a Christ Follower

How can you go about “re-adventing” Advent and Christmas in the midst of the unfamiliar, the challenges of 2020? What does this look like for you and your family? If you’re feeling discouraged about your holiday celebrations, hold on. In this video and PDF, we have some suggestions.

That’s the topic we shared with a group of MOPS moms in St. Louis. We were honored to be invited to speak with them for an Advent event. Due to Covid, we recorded a video instead of speaking in person. We thought it might be helpful for others too.

Mary and Joseph in Isolation

In this Re-adventing Advent video, we discuss how Mary and Joseph responded to their unusual situation that first Christmas. Life changed in an instant for both of them. They had to deal with challenging circumstances and outright danger as they were isolated from family and friends and all that was familiar.

We also are having to give up much of the cherished and familiar in our lives this year. Let’s discover what we can learn from their example as we journey through an Advent and Christmas that looks different this holiday season. How can we make it special?

We hope you’ll join us by listening to the video. We’ve also listed some ideas in our Re-Adventing Advent PDF (available at the bottom of this post) that you can download and use through the season.

Ultimately, our prayer for you is that in Re-Adventing Advent 2020, as you have to let go of the familiar, you will find the Divine.

Thank you for journeying with us. If you would like more resources on Advent, you can check out our book Advent-urous, Seeking Jesus This Season and join our Advent Facebook group. We’d love to hear your comments on how you are re-adventing Advent this year. Questions? Contact us here.

Advent is just around the corner (it starts on November 29), and what better way is there to get our minds off of ourselves (or Covid or politics or …)  than by cozying in with God as we prepare for the arrival of Jesus as Messiah?

Journey with Us

We would like to invite you to journey with us through Advent. This has been a challenging year, and I think all of us could use some time to seek God and prepare our hearts for the holiday season. Mary and I will be leading a group of fellow adventurers on our Advent-urous: Seeking Jesus this Season Facebook group. Simply click on the link to check out the group and join. We’d love to have you. 

We will be using our Advent-urous Kindle devotional book that is available on Amazon. (It happens to be free if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited.) This is a light time requirement. We have one reading/theme per week (5 weeks total) with suggested activities to explore the theme as little or as much as you’d like over the next seven days.

Activities

Many of our activities are simple and don’t require lots of preparation or resources.

• For example, for the first Sunday, one of our activities is to try a new prayer posture.
• Another is to pray by candlelight.
• There are a few others that take a bit more preparation, but we tried to do a nice mix between the two.
• If you wish, you can then share your thoughts and activities on our Facebook group page as you journey through the week.
• For 2020, we’ve updated the book with a poem and a Christmas Eve Liturgy read aloud that you can add to your Christmas celebration with your family and friends if you’d like.

We hope to see you in our Advent-urous Facebook group. Just let us know in the comment section if you have any questions.

Advent Podcast

We wanted to share another resource with you. Several years ago, we recorded an Advent podcast. We hope it also helps prepare you for the season as we delve more deeply into the Christmas story.

Happy Advent!

Ash Wednesday marks the start of the season of Lent on the Christian calendar. Lent is the time when believers prepare our hearts for the coming of Easter; it’s the time for reflecting on the sacrifice that Jesus made for each one of us when He went to the cross. We can do this in several ways:

• Prayer
• Repentance
• Practice of spiritual disciplines
• Attending services
• Denying ourselves something (such as giving up a favorite food)

Let’s Humble Ourselves

On this first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, we humble ourselves before God. Some faiths remind us of this by placing ashes on their congregants’ foreheads with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In that spirit, we’d like to revisit a post we wrote previously to help you start Lent in a humble, reflective manner. Here is the link to the Ash Wednesday pdf:

Ash Wednesday

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below, and we pray you and your loved ones have a blessed start to this season of Lent!