Advent is the difficult season for me as a preacher and a hearer because it is that now and not yet stuff that goes on. We know we are getting ready for Christmas so let’s just be done with it already. We know the Kingdom of God is at hand so let’s get on with it already. Christ will come again in glory so “Come Lord Jesus”. At the same time there us a sense that we may need a bit more time for God establish HIs rule over our hearts and minds because we feel the slippage and we sense that if the Spirit does not constantly call we may be lost. Richard Caemmerer meditated on Luke 17 and Advent and letting the Kingdom come when I was about 7 years old.
To seek the kingdom of God means to desire urgently that God may come to set up His rule in our hearts. This is to be a major plea of our every prayer (Matt. 6:9, 10, 33). And yet so many things compete with this desire (d. Matt. 6: 19,23-25), the desire for physical satisfaction; desire for political advantage. Hence -and this applies to the whole Christian life to the very end – every Christian needs constant help not merely that the Kingdom keep on coming to him but that he keep on seeking its coming. This takes new birth by the Spirit of God (John 3: 5 ), and it takes the support and maintaining of this new birth by the selfsame Spirit.
Hence the constant refreshing of the heart that would seek the Kingdom must be the pondering of that Word of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5: 21); the looking not afar or in the worldly orbit for political signs and tokens of God’s rule in Christ but the yearning for the return of Christ as Lord, the final coming of the Kingdom, only because He has already come as Lord in the redemption. (V. 25 ) He becomes poor that we might be made rich. He becomes rejected by earth-born men that we might be seized by Him to be twice-born men. We show forth His death -and resurrection -till He come, that we might remain faithful in our citizenship in His kingdom, till we enter into the glory of it. Hence we pray evermore: “Keep the Kingdom coming!” The whole waiting time this side of Judgment Day is Advent-tide!
