Today's team journal was written by our Conference Coordinator, Melanie Newhouse.

As a little girl, I remember my mama centering the wooden holder on our table, fixing the plastic holly wreath, and securing the candles in their places.  During dinner, I watched, transfixed, when she lit the candles. The flames flickered; melting, and dribbling wax danced before my eyes.  

Advent traditions have existed for centuries as a way to prepare the believer’s heart to celebrate the coming Savior, God Incarnate.  Advent is a word, with Latin roots, meaning ‘arrival’ or ‘coming.’ However, it was translated from its Greek counterpart, parousia, which the Outline of Biblical Usage defines this way:

1. presence, 2. the coming, arrival, advent; and 2a. the future visible return from heaven of Jesus, to raise the dead, hold the last judgment, and set up formally and gloriously the kingdom of God.  

This is a season to stop and reflect upon our Holy God sending His only, perfect Son to seek and save the lost, to set captives free, and to be our righteous Redeemer.

This Greek word is seen many places in the scriptures in reference to Christ’s Second Coming (Matthew. 24:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:13; 5:23; James 5:7; 2 Peter 3:4; 1 John 2:28).  Early believers used the four weeks before Christmas not only to celebrate Christ’s first coming to mark redemption for mankind, but His Second Coming to restore His Kingdom for eternity.  This is a season to stop and reflect upon our Holy God sending His only, perfect Son to seek and save the lost, to set captives free, and to be our righteous Redeemer. Through the years, our family has followed scripture reading plans, read devotionals and storybooks, decorated Jesse Trees, sang Christmas carols, all in efforts to focus on the reason for the season -- the coming Messiah, Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.

Recently, I was reflecting on how He announced His coming.  After His glorious baptism and His testing in the wilderness, we hear about the early start of Jesus’ ministry in the synagogues.  In Luke 4, we see Jesus, coming to His hometown, using a tradition to announce His good news:

16 And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth…

With the reading of this prophecy, found now in Isaiah 61, Jesus was announcing His arrival.  Simply speaking, this word left His audience in awe. Can you imagine sitting in that synagogue, hearing the original Author proclaim the fulfillment of the scriptures -- that the One they were waiting for was standing in the flesh before them?  Imagine how your eyes would be transfixed upon Him, marveling at the grace on His lips as He spoke this word with authority and certainty. What an awe-inducing moment it would have been! Unlike the majority of us today, the first century Israelites sitting in the synagogue would have known the rest of this passage from the prophet Isaiah.  Jesus was telling them, this is indeed the year of the Lord’s favor. I have come! I have come to give you a “beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Is 61:3-4).  I have come so you “may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:5). How beautiful is this announcement of His Coming!

When we study the prophets, we often not only see prophecy related to the coming Messiah who will dwell with man on Earth, but we see prophecy related to the future day of the Lord, His Second Coming when He will judge and reign over His Kingdom perfectly.  Isaiah 61 is no different. It concludes with the voice of the Messiah proclaiming: 

10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

This talk of the Bride and  Bridegroom is a beautiful metaphor, which points to His glorious Second Coming.  The apostle John, whose book of Revelation overflows with exquisite imagery, also compares Jesus to a bridegroom  and the people of God as His bride. He describes his vision of the second coming of our Savior this way:

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."... 9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, "Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb." (Rev 21:1-4, 9)

What a glorious day this will be!  Oh, sisters, during this Advent season, let us not only celebrate that Christ came, let us wait with great eagerness for His Second Coming.

Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King,
born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine all sufficient merit, raise us to thy glorious throne.

-- Charles Wesley, 1744

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Melanie Newhouse has called Christ her Redeemer since attending summer camp when she was 17. Shortly after, she began dating the man she calls her husband and best friend. They have had the joy of raising four boys together and, as a family, moved to Ohio from their beloved Michigan six and a half years ago. One of her favorite Scriptures is Psalm 119:169-176:
“Let my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding according to your word! Let my plea come before you; deliver me according to your word. My lips will pour forth praise, for you teach me your statutes.
My tongue will sing of your word, for all your commandments are right. Let your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.”

Our Team Journal today comes from our Tech and Design Coordinator, Mindy Braun.

“There comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where the voice inside us simply asks, Now what?” This is the same question I struggled with for a long time. And it wasn't until recently that I've felt like I understood the answer. 

For a few years now, I’ve had an itch; a yearning for something more. I felt like there had to be more to this life as Christian. I wanted to experience God in more ways, that the life of a Christian had to go beyond what I’d experienced in my own life. But I just kept telling myself to ignore it; the feeling was just the enemy telling me that my life wasn’t good enough. I told myself I was just discontent and I needed to work through it. It wasn’t until last year with IF:Dayton when I started reading the book Just Courage by Gary Haugen that I started to understand it. We read it as a book study; but instead of digging in and learning,  I treated this book like homework and skimmed it. But, God (oh, He's so good!) works even when we are skimming. There was a part within it that stuck out to me and forever changed my view on my life, on the cries of my heart and the work God has for me. 

Gary had a name for what I was feeling: divine restlessness, a holy yearning for more. “It’s the moment in which we can see all the work that God has been doing in our lives and in the life of the church is not an end in itself; rather, the work he has been doing in us is a powerful means to a grander purpose beyond ourselves. This is the supernatural moment when the rescued enter their divine destiny as rescuers.” Our rescue was never the end result; there is more to it. We are rescued and redeemed for an even bigger, better purpose.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is constantly teaching and asking his disciples to look beyond themselves, to see the world lost and desperate for a Savior. He wants his disciples look beyond their own desires, beyond what their eyes could see and their hearts could imagine and take in the greatness of their calling. He was showing them that they were each important characters in God’s grand plan, that their true calling was far greater than they ever imagined. 

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“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

— Matthew 5:14-16

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The rescued become the rescuers. The restored become the restorers. The equipped become the equippers. We were brought out of darkness so that through Jesus, we can be the light of the world. We are the ones through whom God works out his plan to rescue the world.

This world we live in is a dark and scary place. It’s lost and hurting. God, the Creator of all things, has one plan to bring light to it through Christ. We are that plan. How amazing it is that we get to be a part of that redemption story! Through grace, we get to be a part of the story that forever changed the world. It's so much bigger than us, goes beyond what we can imagine. As small and insignificant as we may feel, He chose us to be a part of it. He chose us to keep the momentum going.

Could it be done with out us? Yep. But that's that beauty of it. He chose to bring us along for the ride to see His beautiful story play out. So are we taking him up on this offer? Are we hopping in and joining the ride? 

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Mindy Braun is an Ohio-born-and-raised, small town girl who has grown to love the city of Dayton. Her family resides in East Dayton.  While she's not being mama to her two kids, she and her husband run a photography business out of their home. Mindy has a love for deep friendships, fried chicken, sleeping in, the outdoors, serving the Church, and Oreos after bedtime.

This guest post comes from DWITW Team Member, Sami Hudgins. Sami shares encouragement for those of us stuck in the cycle of striving and achieving. She asks us to ponder what are longing for apart from Christ, whether those longings have eternal value, and how Jesus fulfills all our longings like nothing else can.

Step after step, the sweat drips down my arms and falls onto the revolving machine.  The stair climber is torturous, but I find some reward in pushing through the pain.  After my time is up, I push “stop” and look up at the mirror wall.  In that moment, I ask, “Where have you gone?” My mind immediately kicks into gear: “...Well, I burned some extra calories and perhaps earned myself an extra ounce of endurance…” But the Lord stops me there before I can go on. Again: “Where have you gone?” This time, my heart screams, “Nowhere. I have gone nowhere. I have accumulated hours on this machine, taken thousands of steps, and still, I have gone nowhere."

We do this so often in life: we strive to reach our next big goal; we work to achieve the next standard.  We exert all of our energy to climb these mountains. We work for days, weeks, or even years, only to find ourselves stuck in the very place we began.  This is the image that God gave me so clearly: I was stuck at the bottom of a mountain, exhausted.  I had given all that I had left in me with no reward or victory.  The energy I gave was wasted. The time I spent was unused.  And, really, I had nothing to show for it.

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“Hear my cry, O God; Give heed to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

— Psalm 61:1-2

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With this sitting heavy on my heart, he whispered ever-so-gently into my ear, “Take my hand, I will lead you higher. Follow me to places you could never imagine. Don’t come back here to climb anymore.”

Do you find yourself climbing? Trying to move up the ladder at work? Trying to accomplish your next fitness goal?  Trying to earn enough money to move up in status? Trying to be affirmed in your group of friends?  Trying to win the ‘mom of the year’ award in your neighborhood? Serving to exhaustion so others will see you as a top-notch member of your church? The list is endless. The world gives us an infinite catalogue of titles, achievements, and goals to strive for. 

It is the work of the Lord that gives us everlasting joy. 

We can work all of our lives for the fleeting feeling of success. We may even have some papers that assert our “job well done” hanging on our walls or accomplishments worth writing home about. But do awards, a bigger bank account, a better body, or a fuller schedule fulfill your soul? I can assure you that the delight of these things will last only a short while.  It is the work of the Lord that gives us everlasting joy. The heart of the true believer desires nothing more than to see Him glorified. So, as it says in 1 Corinthians, may we do all for the glory of God!

It is His work alone that will lead us to victory, for His victory is already won!

Ponder this: where is your time spent? Where does your faith lie? Is it in the to-do list or the calorie-count? In the job title or the social status? No! Our faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, who will lift us up to the top of the mountain by His divine power. It is His work alone that will lead us to victory, for His victory is already won!

He doesn’t promise that the climb with Him will be easy.  We will endure suffering along the way. But take comfort in knowing that our suffering is shared with Christ.  He has already climbed these mountains, and promises to be by our side the whole way.

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“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”

— 1 Peter 2:21 (ESV)

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We must not return to the stair-stepper machines that hold us in place by means of exhaustion.  Of course, this is not a call to quit exercising specifically. This is a call to listen to the Lord earnestly about His will for your time.  What is he asking you to courageously walk away from? Allow him to lead you on His path, up to the summit with Him, where you can declare His glory.

Lord lead us higher so that we may shout your name from the top of the mountain to all of the Earth!

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Samantha "Sami" Hudgins serves as the Event Coordinator for Dayton Women in the Word. She is an Air Force wife and fur-baby-mama to Charlie. Her heart longs for women to join together to seek and find truth in God's Word.