Day Thirty

For this last day, I am thankful for the season of advent. I am thankful for the first advent with the coming of Christ and the journey to the cross for our salvation. I am thankful for the hope of the second advent when Christ returns. For our first sermon of this advent season, we learned that the coming of Christ and the gift of salvation he gave us, allows us to say yes to life. Not just in the here and now, but after the grave. The coming of Christ is God's answer to your lives and to a hurting world. We say yes to Jesus and Jesus is God's yes to life. Furthermore, if we want to live and experience the best of life we must say no to ourselves being the god of our lives. We must sacrifice it. Only when we do that and say yes to Jesus, can we truly experience God's best. Nothing great is ever achieved without sacrifice.
There is more to it though. We must cultivate the soil of a receptive heart. We can say yes a thousand times, but if the soil is rocky, nothing will grow. We have to weed out all of the things running through our lives that stifle growth. Jesus always has new seeds to sow in our lives so that we can have a new harvest, but we cannot grow un less we cultivate and keep the soil of our hearts receptive to him. We have to weed out the hindrances and the areas in our lives where we are still saying no to God By saying no to god we deprive ourselves of the joy of knowing and living in God's plan. We deprive ourselves of growing and harvesting those new seeds. We deprive ourselves of cultivating the gifts and talents God has given us. The first advent gave us the opportunity to say yes to God. The first advent still gives us the opportunity to say yes to Him and No to self every day.