
Advent lasts for four Sundays leading up to Christmas. The time before Christmas is Advent, a season of preparation for Christmas. Christians prepare for celebrating the birth of Jesus by remembering the longing of the Jews for a Messiah. In Advent, we’re reminded of how much we ourselves also need a Savior, and we look forward to our Savior’s second coming even as we prepare to celebrate his first coming at Christmas.
This year 2017 Advent began on Sunday December 3rd and ended on Sunday December 24th, Christmas Eve.
This blog series will be posts on the themes most often used for the four weeks of Advent, Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. This is the third in the series. The first was“The Hope Of Advent”, the second "The Peace Of Advent" the third post The Joy Of Advent, and this last post to end the Advent Season;
Before we starts let’s review:
Hope. (a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.). Advent teaches us to not only to expect hope for eternity, but we can expect hope for today.
Peace (freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.)
This peace is not just a psychological state of mind; this peace is spiritual peace. This is the peace of people whose sins are forgiven
Joy
Our joy should rise above circumstances. This joy is not produced by something external that makes me feel happy. It is supernatural result of a life filled with the Holy Spirit of the living God.
Love
In the fourth century, Saint Augustine wrote, “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.”
Advent gives us space to step back and love. By taking the focus off ourselves we are able to see the needs of others.
Deuteronomy 10:17-19 (HCSB)17 For the LORD your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and taking no bribe.
18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.19 You also must love the foreigner, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
John 13:34-35 (HCSB)34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.35 By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It was new in that the love was to be exercised toward others not because they belonged to the same nation, but because they belonged to Christ. And it was new because it was to be the expression of the love of Christ, which the disciples had seen in life and would see also in death. Such love would inevitably be a testimony to the world.
God’s love for us is so great, so powerful; so perfect and unconditional that He sent Jesus to bridge the gap that was caused by sin.
John 3:16 (HCSB)16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
He knew that we were powerless, without hope apart from Him. The Lord knew that there was no way we could ever enter into His presence on our own merit, so He who knew no sin became sin for us. God pursues us with His relentless love. He desires a relationship with us so much that it compelled Him to pay the ultimate price on the cross in order to bring us back to Him.
The only way to have and express this kind of love which is agape love. Which when translated from modern Greek is "love: the highest form of love, especially brotherly love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God."
Romans 8:38-39 (HCSB)38 For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, ⌊hostile⌋ powers,39 height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Paul broadens out the experiences, the personalities, and the things that confront the believer: death or life, angels or angelic rulers, space above the horizon or space below it, or any created thing. Then he emphatically declares that none of these things shall be able to separate us from the love God manifests, this love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The power of God's love is a theme that can never be exhausted. - The Wycliffe Bible Commentary.
1 John 3:16-18 (HCSB)16 This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers.17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his eyes to his ⌊need⌋—how can God’s love reside in him?18 Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action.
That’s the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (HCSB)1 If I speak human or angelic languages but do not have love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.2 If I have ⌊the gift of⌋ prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited,5 does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs.6 ⌊Love⌋ finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.7 ⌊It⌋ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for languages, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.10 But when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things.12 For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

David L. Allen
John 3:16 (HCSB)16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 15:12-13 (HCSB)12 This is My command: Love one another as I have loved you.13 No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.
Verse:
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only Son.
The Son gave His life for me,
when He died on Calvary.
There is no greater love,
nowhere, you won't find it
than a man would lay down His life for a friend,
there's no greater love, no greater love
than a man would lay down his life for a friend
Chorus 1:
There is no greater love,
there is no greater love,
(there is no greater love)
(no greater love)
Bridge:
No greater love,
no greater love
no greater love
no greater love
(than a man would)
(He would lay down His life for a friend.)
for a friend
for a friend
No greater love,
no greater love,
no greater love,
no greater love.
Vamp 1:
Jesus went to Calvary
to save a wretch,
like you and me;
that’s love, that’s love.
(repeat as directed)
Vamp 2:
They hung Him high,
they stretched Him wide.
He hung His head, for me He died;
that’s love, that’s love.
(repeat as directed)
Vamp 3:
That’s not how the story ends,
three days later He rose again;
that’s love, that’s love.