In a world ruled by entropy, God promises a new world where desert wastelands erupt into flourishing life. But what do we do when we feel disappointed, discouraged, and even doubt that these promises will ever come true?
Advent names our disappointment and carries our doubt, while training our eyes to see—right in the midst of our waiting—that God’s future is already invading our exhausted present.
Additional texts: James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11, Luke 1:46-55
Songs of Waiting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tla4bHwi9fQ&t=1s
Generosity: https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
Everything seems to be collapsing, our certainties are gone, and it feels like the whole world is on fire—so what now?
Advent dares us to hope an incomprehensible hope—a dangerous hope.
Not a hope rooted in our wins or losses, but in a relentlessly faithful God.
In Isaiah 11:1–10, the prophet dares us to believe that God can pull peace from the wreckage, light from utter darkness, life out of death—and calls us to be a people who actually believe this will be true.
Songs of waiting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tla4bHwi9fQ
Generosity: https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
Advent begins with Isaiah’s vision of God’s mountain—an unshakeable kingdom of peace inviting us to walk in the light of its God.
Songs of Waiting - follow this link
Generosity: https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
The Church offers the world the gift of knowing and being known by God—the gift of what it means to be a human fully alive.
The Song of Songs reminds us that beyond all, the God who created the world is the God who delights in it–delights in us–and longs for all of creation to enjoy God together.
Journaling Prompts
What might it mean for you to enjoy God, enjoy others, and enjoy creation? Where might God be inviting you here?
How and why does the idea of delight as spiritual practice resonate with you or confront you? What assumptions are challenged and what hopes does it offer?
If God’s mission is to be with the world, and the Church exists as an embodied experience of that reality, how does that reshape what you imagine Church is for?
What shifts for you personally? What shifts in how you imagine our community’s life together?
Practice — Feast
This week, feast as a spiritual practice. Wherever you are—and whoever you may find yourself with—take a moment to see God’s gifts which surround you. And dare to enjoy them.
Whether you’re sharing an extravagant meal with people you can’t imagine life without—or a less than ideal spread with someone you don’t see eye to eye with—receive whatever is before you as gift.
Let this be a week of feasting that embodies the joy God has for you—and for the world.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
God’s story ends not with rescue from the world, but with God making the world His home.
Revelation gives us a picture of the world made new—a world with God. When we forget that ending, we forget who we are and what God is up to in and among us.
Journaling Prompts
Sit with the idea that God is the First and the Last, the Arche and the Telos, the source and the point, the means and the ends. Spend a moment writing your reflections.
How does the idea that God’s mission in the world is to be with us affirm and challenge your ideas of the Gospel?
If the Church is both a recipient and conduit of God’s withness, how does this shape your understanding of the point of Church? What are some common ways you’ve seen the church stray from this purpose? In what ways have you seen God fulfill this purpose through and maybe in spite of the Church?
Practice — Share
This week, what might it look like to join in the work of providing communion and encounter with God through Redemption Church?
If you’re new to Church consider that your next best step is simply to show up—to participate in what God is doing in our gathered worship. Your presence—sharing yourself—is what God desires most and is your most profound act of sharing. What might it mean for you to commit to showing up through the end of the year?
Or maybe you want to contribute to the ongoing work of Redemption— by supporting our work financially, by inviting a friend or neighbor to join you next week, or by joining one of our teams that helps make our Sundays what they are.
Take some time this week to pray about what it might look like to join in God’s work of presence happening in and through our community.
Generosity
The God who refuses to be without us forms us into a certain sort of people—a subversive alternative to the world’s divisive norms, where Christ’s table becomes participation in holy resistance. In Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus, we glimpse God’s new world: the sinner becomes a site of salvation, and divine welcome initiates a new social order.
Journaling Prompts
The God who refuses to be without us draws us in and forms us into a people. What hallmarks of that people—what ways of being—might most subversively reflect this sort of God in the world? Which of these feels exciting for you, and which feels challenging?
Christ’s nearness reorders Zacchaeus’s entire life.
Where might Jesus be rearranging some of your furniture? In what ways are you resisting this—or being invited to trust it?
Which patterns of Christ’s table—inclusion, forgiveness, unity, embrace, and others—most challenge the way you want to relate to others, especially those unlike you?
How might the simple act of sharing Christ’s table become an act of holy resistance in your corner of Houston? Don’t let this stay theoretical—get practical here.
What might it look like for you to extend Christ’s welcome to someone through a shared meal—one rooted in enjoyment, not expectation or agenda?
What’s holding you back?
Practice — Feast
This week, share a meal with others.
Grab lunch, host a dinner party, or invite someone new to family dinner—perhaps someone outside your usual circle, of a different generation, political ideology, or socioeconomic background.
As you eat, practice delight.
Be curious. Listen.
No agenda, just enjoyment.
Let the table you share act as an extension of Christ’s table—slow down, create space, be together.
Break bread as an act of holy resistance.
Generosity
The story the Church tells is the story of a God who refuses to be without us—the poor, the helpless, even those who’ve made God our enemy.
In the story of David and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 9), we see the heart of God: a God of communion. And we realize the table God sets is a table of strange friendships.
Journaling Prompts
If God’s work in New Creation is all about communion, what kind of world is God making? What might that world feel like, look like, sound like?
What could participation in that world look like for you now—and what obstacles stand in the way?
If God’s desire is to be with you, not use or fix you, how does that change the way you imagine what God is up to in your life and what responding to God could look like?
When we consider that God’s communion involves strange friendships, who might be missing from the table and what keeps them (or you) from sitting together?
Practice — Feast
This week, share a meal. Consider someone who might represent a “strange friendship”—someone outside your usual circle, perhaps someone of a different generation, political ideology, or socioeconomic background.
As you eat, practice delight. Be curious. Cultivate a friendship rooted in enjoyment of who they are, not what they do for you (or you for them).
Let the table you share be an extension of Christ’s table—a place of presence and enjoyment. Who knows, this may be the beginning of something beautiful—a strange friendship in the making.
Generosity
How’s your prayer life? If that question makes you sigh, you’re not alone. Maybe prayer isn’t something to perfect or dutifully perform. Maybe it’s the life-giving response to the God who is already with you.
Journaling Prompts
What portion of the Lord’s Prayer challenges you the most right now?
What might it mean for Redemption to become a community that inhabits the Lord’s Prayer? What would this mean for you personally?
How might asking even though God already knows make prayer more approachable and practical for you? In what ways might you begin to awake to God’s presence through approachable prayer?
Practice — Pray
Read the Lord’s Prayer slowly.
Find a phrase or refrain that feels important for you to speak back to God right now (ex. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us). Take some time to repeat that portion of the Lord’s Prayer multiple times back to God.
Share with God whatever else is in your mind. Speak freely. God already knows.
Conclude your time praying the Lord’s Prayer.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
How’s your prayer life? If that question makes you sigh, you’re not alone. Maybe prayer isn’t something to perfect or dutifully perform. Maybe it’s the life-giving response to the God who is already with you.
Generosity:
In a world crowded with our words, preferences, and interpretations, Recovering the Bible means listening to the voice of the risen Christ who still speaks to us here and now.
Journaling Prompts
How does the idea of Deus Dixit—that God has Spoken—challenge your understanding of the Church, the Bible, and what God is up to in both?
Has there been a time in your life where your engagement with the Bible looked different? What changed, and why? What do you think this could look like in this phase of your life?
What might it mean for you to engage with the Bible sacramentally—as a means of encounter of the Risen Jesus who still speaks?
Practice — Listen
Do the following alone or with a small fellowship of others.
Slowly read Job 38:1-40:5 & 42:1-6. Let the text speak for itself. If there are things you don’t understand or questions that arise, set them aside for now—or jot them down and come back to them later. For now let the text read you as much as you are reading it.
Don’t read looking for takeaways but read anticipating that God speaks through these words still.
To be clear. You will likely not feel anything. You are not broken. You are not doing it wrong. God’s speaking in the scriptures often works in us and on us slowly—often imperceptibly.
Consider sharing how the practice went with those you read with or with someone you trust after the fact.
Generosity:
What is the Bible for? Many of us have a complicated relationship with Scripture—it has been misused as a tool of exclusion, harm, and control. But what if Jesus is right, and the Word of God is actually a good gift meant to give us life? Recovering the Bible begins with receiving God’s word, not as a weapon, but as a locus of divine encounter where we are formed into a liberated people of hope.
Journaling Prompts
What does your relationship with the Bible look like right now? Why do you think this is? What do you wish it looked like? What would a small first step in that direction be?
In what ways do you see yourself reading the Bible to gain information? In what ways is this helpful? In what ways is it restrictive?
Does the idea that the Bible is a gift of God for the people of God resonate with you? Why or why not? In what ways does this challenge or change what you expect from the Bible?
Practice — Lectio Divina
Do the following alone or with a small fellowship of others.
Lectio: Read Luke 4:1-13 slowly, notice any words or phrases that stand out.
Meditatio: Pause and ponder what God might be bringing to your attention.
Oratio: Respond to what’s been unearthed in prayer with your own words, desires, hesitations, or questions.
Contemplatio: Rest in God’s presence by sitting in silence, receiving His love and peace as a generous gift.
Consider sharing with those in your group or with someone later what God impressed upon you through meditating prayerfully on this passage.
Generosity
In God’s gift of worship, we are caught up in a counter-liturgy that makes us a different kind of people — a political alternative to the world.
Journaling Prompts
Where have you seen the Church lose the plot of Jesus’ story in the way it shows up in the world? Where have you seen it offering a hopeful alternative?
What might it look like to center “worship” on strange fire—forms of worship that seem more powerful or practical but deviate from the story of Jesus? Which of these more common forms are you tempted toward—ideology, morality, vibes, something else?
In what ways does our gathered worship serve as “an embodied counter-vision” of your life in the world? Are there particular moments you find compelling and others you find challenging? Why might this be the case?
Practice — Reflection and Community
Read Hebrews 11-13 and notice the story these chapters place us within.
Take a few moments to ask where living into Jesus’ story in gathered worship resonates with your vision of the world and where it disrupts your vision of the world.
Take some time either at a Redemption Table, or over a meal with a friend, unpacking what you noticed. Listen to their reflections as well.
Spend a moment praying with and for one another.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
Recovering a vision for what Church is meant to be begins and ends with Jesus.
Journaling Prompts
When you hear the word worship, what pops into your mind? Where, if at all, does Christ being our High Priest fit into that picture? Consider why that might be.
What is your relationship with “Church?” How does the claim that the Church is necessary as a worshipping community compatible or incompatible with that current relationship? What resistance to this idea do you feel? What relief?
How does worship being something Christ does for us rather than something we do for Christ help you begin to reimagine worship’s place in your life?
Practice — Silent Prayer
Set aside a few minutes of quiet. Draw your attention to Christ mediating you to God and God to you—to the commune you have with Godself in Jesus.
As you are able hold this reality in your mind: in Christ, you are being offered to God, and in Christ God is being offered to you.
Simply sit in that reality. God is with you and you are with God in Christ. In this moment you need not do or say anything, have nothing to prove, nothing to perform—just be with the God who is with you.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
In the midst of manipulation and deceit, God sees Leah, hears her, and listens. God elevates the otherwise overlooked.
Generosity
In a world devastated by famine the Widow of Zarephath shows us what it means to be in the care of a God of abundance.
Prompts
A World of Scarcity Where does your life feel like it’s lived in a world of scarcity? Where do you feel stretched thin—stressed, afraid, or at the edge of what you can give?
A God of Generosity How does it strike you that God doesn’t just deal with scarcity from a distance but actually inhabits it? In what ways might this challenge your assumptions about what God asks or desires from you?
A Life of Feasting God doesn’t promise to solve every problem right now, but God does promise to be with us in them—inviting us to live from that place of “with-ness.” How might God’s presence reframe how you see God’s provision and your own scarcity?
Practices:
Living into Generosity
Consider the places where you feel most stressed, overwhelmed, or stretched thin. What might it look like to live into God’s vision of abundance in that very place?
This week is there something small worth sharing—an hour, a meal, a kind word, a resource—with someone else you might otherwise want to hold on to? Rather than tending to your scarcity, consider a small way you can give in an act of entrusting yourself to the God of abundance who is with you.
Generosity:
Eve is best known as the Bible's Original Sinner—but she is also and more importantly the Bible's Original Believer. In the face of loss and hardship, she continues to recognize and testify to God's goodness and God's help. She names her son Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the Lord" (Gen 4:1).
Generosity:
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
The little-known story of Zelophehad's daughters reveals a God who hears and responds to the vulnerable and overlooked.
Journaling Prompts
A God who sees, hears, and reconciles. How does this story invite you to believe that God sees and hears you—and is including you in the reconciliation of all things?
Justice as relational wholeness. How does this shape your understanding of salvation and what God is up to in the world?
Joining God’s work. What would it look like to join God in what God is doing, given his heart for the marginalized and vulnerable?
Practice
Extending the Table
Take a moment to consider who around you might feel like they are on the outside—overlooked, unseen, or unheard. Extend hospitality to them by sending a text, grabbing a coffee, or sharing a meal. Do this not as an act of charity, but as an act of communion—extending the embrace of the God who sees and hears them.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
It can feel as if nothing can stand in the way of tyrants and empires. Yet Shiphrah and Puah remind us that God sees the oppression, sees us, and invites us to join the emancipating God—even in small acts of resistance.
Journaling Prompts
Where and how do you see “empire” at work today? Where do you believe God is most present in what you’ve named?
What are the “little bits of good where you are”? How can you show up there as one shaped by the reign of Christ?
Shiphrah and Puah’s resistance was a tremendous act of justice, yet it did not stop the empire’s plans. How does that tension sit with you? How do the larger stories of the Exodus and Jesus help you place this tension in context and speak to your present experience?
Do you struggle to believe that Jesus reigns over all powers, authorities, rulers, and empires? In what ways do you embody this—and fail to embody this—in your daily life?
Practice
Listen
Sit with the claim that Jesus reigns over all powers, authorities, rulers, and empires. Ask Christ to open your eyes and heart to the spaces and opportunities for Christ-like resistance—however seemingly small or significant—in your life right now. Write down what comes to mind, then end with a few moments of prayer
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
We like to think life with God is neat and quiet. But Tamar shows us otherwise. She refuses to stay in her place or accept her lot—and in the drama, the scandal, and the silence, God is with her, bringing about a story more redemptive than she could have imagined.
Journaling Prompts
What did it feel like to see a woman like Tamar featured in God’s story of cosmic redemption? What assumptions or biases did this challenge in you?
How does the injustice in Tamar’s story—and God’s blessing of her—speak to the responsibility of the community? What might this reveal about God’s heart for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized? Who might be a modern-day equivalent, and how are you being called to care for or include them?
Is there a part of your story that feels “too messy” for God to work with? How does Tamar’s story invite you to believe God might be at work—even there? What doubts or fears come up when you consider that possibility?
Who have you believed God couldn’t be working in or through? What would it mean to expand your sense of God’s mercy and presence to include them? What hesitations or boundaries do you feel around that?
Practice
Respond.
Take a few moments to name the places in your life that feel especially “messy”—complicated, painful, or unresolved. Ask yourself: Do I believe God could meet me here? What emotions or resistance rise up?
Then, spend a few minutes in silence, resting in the presence of the God who sees you, stays with you, and does not turn away from the mess.
Generosity
https://www.redemptionhou.com/give
Money can be all consuming, a never ending cycle of desire. But Jesus invites us into a way of living free from greed, reflecting God’s divine philanthropy as the church.
Journaling Prompts:
“The alternative to the world of greed is a people capable of participating through worship in the love of the Father for the Son through the Spirit.” - Stanley Hauerwas
Reflect honestly on your relationship with money - do you feel like you never have enough? Do you save to avoid being without? Do you spend out of enjoyment? Be honest and vulnerable before God. He can handle it and loves you through it.
In God’s upside down kingdom, where we share out God’s goodness in giving us what we need - Where do you see opportunities?
Practice:
Gather together and share where God is working, ask the tough questions, listen and pray with one another. We are not meant to do this journey alone.
Generosity:
redemptionhou.com/give