Advent Reflections: Waiting in Hope

What is the cry of your heart? What is the prayer you've been whispering over and over again to God until you wonder if you should even keep asking? But the longing lasts, and you wait in the hope of knowing that God promises to hear your prayers and that He always answers your prayers, maybe not in the way you imagined, but always out of His divine love and grace towards you.  Advent is a time of waiting. As we look back to the first Christmas. God's people had been waiting for the Messiah to come for thousands of years. The world was a broken and dark place. God's chosen people lived under oppression.  And then God himself stepped into the brokenness. To bring light into the darkness.  We remember their waiting, and now we wait for Jesus to come again to take us home to heaven. Over these past few years, I've found myself asking the Lord many times, how long, Lord until you come back? The world feels so broken. How do we learn how to wait? As I was writing my book Promised Rest, I learned a lot when I slowed down and spent time reading the stories of God's people. They were familiar stories, and yet there were details I had never noticed before I saw how God was with His people, and I watched His people trust Him in circumstances beyond their control. Promised Rest is five months old, and I've heard from different people how they, too, have learned from these stories, and I've been asked if I could do more of that with women from the Bible. And so I thought, let's take a look at the lives of the three women of Christmas and their stories. What can we learn about waiting from them? So I invite you to ponder the promises with me. Let's look at their stories and rest in the promises. Let's learn from Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna by resting in the promises. The Peace in His Presence Podcast is sponsored by Michelle's book Promised Rest; if you would like to find out more about the book, you can visit michellediercks.com/rest