Come, Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

When we are familiar with things, we tend not to celebrate them as we once did. Familiarity tends to rob us of our wonder. And here’s what’s important about this: what has captured the wonder of our hearts will control the way we live.

when other things capture and control my heart, little room remains for wonder and worship.

Familiarity often means that what is very important may no longer exercise important influence over us in the way it should.

One of the dark character qualities of sin that we don’t recognize as much as we should is unwillingness. We’re often unwilling to do what God says if it doesn’t make sense to us. We’re often unwilling to inconvenience ourselves for the needs of someone else. We’re regularly unwilling to wait. We’re often unwilling to be open and honest. We’re too often unwilling to consider the loving rebuke of another. We struggle to be willing to say no to our own wrong thoughts and desires.

Let me define the brokenness of sin, which every human being shares, with five words: separation, inability, delusion, judgment, hopelessness. First, because of sin we exist in a from-birth state of separation from God, for whose glory we were created and in whose fellowship we were meant to live. Separation from God robs us of the core reason for our existence. Sin also renders us unable. It makes it impossible for us to think as we were made to think, to desire what we were created to desire, to speak as we were designed to speak, and to behave as God intended us to behave. How sad is it to be a human being, but not be able to live as you were created to live! Because sin blinds, it also leaves us in a constant state of delusion. We think we know ourselves well, but we don’t. We assess that we are more righteous than we actually are, and because we do, we don’t seek the help that we desperately need.

Sin makes us more focused on our feelings than we are about God’s will.

So we always feel the need to be in control. We hate it if we’re not healthy. We want to be affluent and surrounded by beautiful possessions. We can’t cope if we’re not surrounded by people who like and respect us. We want life to be predictable and easy. We don’t want obstacles in our way or suffering of any kind in our path. So because we can’t control any of these things, we’re perennially unhappy with life, and sadly, often with God.

It’s not wrong to want some control, or to want to be right, or to like beautiful possessions, or to be surrounded by a community of love, but it’s wrong and spiritually dangerous for those things to rule your heart.

So this Christmas remember that what you celebrate is a destination story. Jesus left what was his right, to guarantee for us a place that is not our right but is a gift from his humble hands.

To say that you’re a sinner is not just to confess to some wrong behaviors, but also to admit that you have a condition. Sin is a condition of your nature, and because it is, you can’t escape it. You have no ability to run from yourself. The Christmas story confronts us with our inability, because if we had any ability whatsoever to save ourselves from sin, the birth of Jesus would not have been necessary.

It really is possible to live in a state of Advent schizophrenia, where you celebrate the birth of the Messiah while actively denying your need for his birth, life, death, and resurrection.

The more we become comfortable with questioning the wisdom of God’s law, the more likely it will be that we will feel okay with breaking those laws.

You will always deny your need for God’s grace when you are more irritated than convicted.

What sense would it make for God to go to the extent of sending his Son to be born for our sake, and then to abandon us along the way? Since God was willing to make such a huge investment in his grace, isn’t it logical to believe he will continue to invest in his grace until that grace has finished its work?

singing focuses our hearts on what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what makes us laugh, and what we think is important.

Psalm 14 alerts us to the fact that at the epicenter of our foolishness is a denial of God. I don’t think that the psalmist is talking about philosophical atheism. What he’s alerting us to is the foolishness of living as if God doesn’t exist or as if you don’t need his authority, wisdom, power, and grace.

Every day that you live without God in your thoughts and his glory as your core motivation, you functionally deny the existence of God.

So here is another way to think of the Christmas story: our God of wisdom sent his Son, who is wisdom, to shed his grace on fools so that by his grace they would be rescued from themselves and become wise. A fool has no ability whatsoever to rescue himself from his own foolishness. A fool is always a person in need of external rescue. The Christmas story is about God being willing to provide that rescue.

Many of us are afraid of being known or afraid of honestly facing what’s inside us. Here’s the good news of the right here, right now benefits of the birth of Jesus. There’s nothing that could ever be known, exposed, or revealed about you that isn’t covered by the present grace that is yours because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Many of us are simply overwhelmed by what’s on our plate. We feel unable, and we think we are doomed to failure. God’s right here, right now grace assures us that God will never call us to a responsibility without also gifting us with what we need to do what he has called us to do.