Joy: An Advent Devotional Bible Study 2022
The season of Advent is upon us! Do you and your family celebrate Advent?
Advent is the perfect time to prepare your heart for Christ this Christmas.
Advent Bible Study
To help you prepare for a Christ-Centred Christmas, I have the perfect Bible study for the Advent season!
There are 25 Advent devotionals with guided questions that you can download and print.
They are in a PDF format which means that you can read, pray and answer the questions in the prayer journal on your phone or another digital device immediately. (It also means that you can study God's word anywhere throughout your day in this busy season!)
All you need is a notes app such as Books, Samsung notes, or the inexpensive app, GoodNotes (super easy to use!)
25 days of daily Bible study focusing on 4 sections.
The Promise of the Messiah.
Christ is coming.
Christ is here.
Christ our redeemer.
It has a prayer and gratitude journal to encourage you to unpack what God is speaking to you through the various scriptures that have been selected for this devotional book.
What is Advent and why do we celebrate it
Advent is the period of four Sundays and weeks before Christmas.
The church's new liturgical year begins with the season of Advent. It is a time to help us prepare for remembering Christ in Christmas when we celebrate the fulfillment of our longing for the savior with the birth of Christ Jesus.
During this time we observe a season of prayer and reflection, and a time of expectation of Jesus returning in the future for His bride (us!).
The word, 'Advent' means 'coming' in Latin. It is obtained from the Latin word 'adventus' which is translated from the Greek word 'parousia'.
There are three meanings to this word, 'coming' in Advent.
1. The first one is when we remember that over 2000 years ago Jesus came into the world as a baby (miraculous conception) to live as a man and to die for us.
2. The second meaning is happening 'now' as Jesus lives in the hearts of us that have surrendered our lives to Him and know Him as our savior.
3. And the third meaning of this word, 'coming' will happen in the future when Jesus comes back to earth as King at the time of judgment.
A Christ-Centred Christmas:
During the Christmas season, the true meaning of Christmas can get buried in all our preparations with the decorating of our homes, gift buying and hopefully preparing for family gatherings.
Our Bible study for Advent contains a prayer and gratitude journal for you to write out the daily scriptures and to prayerfully consider what God is saying to you through these verses. Each day try to list three things that you are grateful for. This can change your whole perspective of the day ahead!
There are a few ways of following our Advent scripture plan:
Free sample: I have a list of 25 Bible verses that you can read daily with a sample of our first Advent Bible study. You will find it in the Resource Library.
Advent Bible Study: I have also written 25 daily devotionals that unpack each verse and give you a bit of context surrounding each verse. You can read all about that here.
Related: Joy - Advent Devotional Bible Study in pdf format.
Advent Bible verses:
This Christmas Advent Bible plan contains 25 portions of scriptures for 25 days that will bring you to Christmas Day. This Bible plan weaves its way through the Old Testament and through the New Testament of the Bible. All the Bible verses in the devotional Bible study have been taken from the New Living Translation Bible. You can look up these verses in other translations at biblegateway.com.
We will be just like the Wise men that had searched the scriptures and knew about the promised King to be born in Bethlehem. They had watched for these prophecies to unfold and they found Him! They found Jesus!
Now that we have found Him too, we also look forward with hope for His second return in the future.
Advent scriptures:
The Promise Of The Messiah
1. Psalm 98:1-9: Sing a new song to the Lord for he has done wonderful deeds. His right hand has won a mighty victory, his holy arm has shown his saving power! The Lord has announced his victory and has revealed his righteousness to every nation! He has remembered his promise to love and be faithful to Israel. The ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth; break out in praise and sing for joy! Sing your praise to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and melodious song, with trumpets and the sound of the ram’s horn. Make a joyful symphony before the Lord, the King! Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with justice, and the nations with fairness. ( We uncover some interesting facts about these verses in our Bible study!)
2. Isaiah 7:14: All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’). (we uncover the role King Ahaz plays in the background to this verse in our Bible study)
3. Isaiah 9:6: For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
4. Micah 5:2: But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf.
(we uncover the threat that Judah was under when Micah prophesied to them and all about humble beginnings in our study!)
5. Malachi 3:1: “Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
The Israelites were tired of waiting for their promised Messiah and they began to doubt. Their worship became empty and their morality slipped, also so did the priests! This is when Malachi comes along. Malachi prophesizes that the Messiah is returning.
Christ is coming
6. Luke 1:26-27: In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.
We discover Elizabeth in her late years is miraculously expecting a baby. Zechariah [ her husband] can't quite believe the angel Gabriel when he delivers the news to him, and he is struck dumb for not believing!
The angel Gabriel also visits Mary, a young girl, not yet married to Joseph and a virgin, and delivers similar news to her. Mary is from a lowly family and the city of Nazareth which was not a prominent town. We discuss the repercussions toward Mary in our study due to Jewish customs in our study. She truly was a brave lady that risked everything to become the mother of Jesus.
7. Luke 1:28-30: Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God!
God chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus. We will be reading in the days to come more about Mary and we will learn of her heart for God and how strong her faith in Him was.
8. Luke 1:34-36: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!” Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month.
We put ourselves in Mary's shoes in our Advent Bible study and consider questions like, What could it mean to have the Holy Spirit come upon you and overshadow you?
9. Luke 1:37: For with God nothing is ever impossible and no word from God shall be without power or impossible of fulfillment. AMPC version.
We read in the previous verses about the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would miraculously conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to Jesus - the Savior of the world!
She asked and wondered ' how can this be?' These familiar words spoken by the angel Gabriel are also spoken for us. This verse is a reminder for us to believe in God, regardless of the situation in our lives, and that nothing is impossible for our God.
10. Luke 1:38-41: Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her. A few days later Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to the town where Zechariah lived. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever wondered how Mary was able to be so calm and confident when she said to the angel, 'I am the Lord's servant? May everything you have said about me come true '. We discuss this and explore the question of whether you would be brave enough to say 'yes to God ' if He asked you to do something difficult for Him, in our Advent study.
11. Luke 1:42-45: Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”
Can you imagine being given the gift, of being the mother of Jesus?
Yesterday we read that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit when Mary arrived at her house. Upon being filled with the Spirit, Elizabeth immediately delivered a message inspired by the Spirit.