00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 752 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Nick Pavlidis from the confessions of a terrible husband podcast. I challenge you to not be a terrible husband or wife or friend like me, by being intentional about stewarding your relationships. One way to be inspired, to be a better husband is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. See,
00:00:37 during this time of advent, we're reminded that we are in exile, just like the people of God. At the beginning, in this Isaiah passage where an exile, we are an exile we're lit strangers in a strange land and that these institutions that we build, whether it's the temple or whether it's anything else welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:04 If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's spiritual foundation episode about impacting the world.
00:01:36 I talk with you about the season of advent. Why this time of the year, it's easy to forget that it's not about looking back. It's about looking forward. And I also share why it's about hope not darkness in the church calendar. We're in the season now called advent. And every year when advent comes along, it's my moment to go. I can't believe that it's advent time already.
00:02:04 It, it can't be time already. It's too early. The year just started. And this year in 2020, that seems to be even more true. I mean, I'm just not ready for the year to end. I've still got a ton of things to do. My list keeps getting longer. The things that I've managed to get done this year seems to be less and less for everything that I do,
00:02:28 it seems like I add five or six more things to my list, my Christmas to do list and everything else is just continuing to grow. And in fact, I would argue that that is why in the Christian calendar, we have the season of advent now, because the truth is as we end the year, I think we need a reminder that it is time to get ready because we aren't ready.
00:02:58 And sometimes I, we even forget that there's anything that we should be getting ready for or worse. Yet, if we're thinking about the Christian year and church, we're thinking about the things from the past about observing something from the past that happened one time and that we should still be grateful for. And maybe we should try to live a little differently, but you know,
00:03:22 it's, it's old news. We've done this before, but the truth is that what we're looking for, what we're waiting for, isn't from the past, it's from the future, it's a new reality. It's a new encounter with a new state of being it's it's, it's recognizing that we need change. You know, I have a teenage son and a few years ago when I would send him to his room to clean his room,
00:03:54 I would go in a little bit later and he was laying on the bed and he's like, yeah, the room's clean already. Despite the fact that there was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, there's papers all over the desk. There was maybe some plates with some old food on it, on top of his counter. But to him it would look clean or at least clean enough.
00:04:17 I think advent is that season for us to take a look at our own lives and really say, is it clean or is it clean enough? It is what we're living in today. What we want to be living in because you know, the passage from Isaiah about tearing open the heavens and coming down is the first reading and advent. And it's, it's about shaking things up and about recognizing both the history to look back,
00:04:55 not to look back and whisk and hope for the good old days, but to look back and recognize when things come again to pay attention to what is and what might be not to simply look back at what was C during this time of advent, we're reminded that we are in exile, just like the people of God at the beginning, and this Isaiah passage,
00:05:23 we're an exile. We are an exile were lit strangers in a strange land. And that these institutions that we build, whether it's the temple or whether it's anything else, we began to take them for granted. But the truth is they're on shaky ground because if God needs to upset them, he will. And our lives are the same way. If God needs to upset it,
00:05:48 he will. We're not really reminding God of this. We're reminding ourselves. We're trying to use this as a moment to remind us to live differently, to get out of the moment of complacency. You know, when things are going well, that's when we're often can place it. But when things are hard, it's easier to see that we need to change things.
00:06:11 And again, this year of 2020, I think for a lot of us has been a wake up call about things that we need to change. And that moment that, that recognition of change, that is what the season of advent is about. It's a call for all of us to not just look at the past and to not just look to the future,
00:06:33 but to get ready and to clean things up so that when those things come to fruition, we'll be ready for them. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:07:06 If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact.