Welcome to the You Were Born for this podcast with Father John Ricardo. I'm your host. I'm Father John. I'm the executive director at Acts 29. We talk about anything and everything related to transforming the church. And as always, I'm here with my dear friends, family members, teammates, Nick and Mary, guys, happy Advent.

Happy Advent. It looks a little bit more like Christmas out the window in Detroit today

is God's blessing us with a little snow. Isn't that delightful? It's the first snow. It's beautiful.

It is. It's the second snow that I don't like so much, but yeah, it's great, isn't it? But it's

not Christmas yet. It's Advent, and that's going to be kind of what we're talking about today, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. So today's topic is watch, because Advent's a season of watching, and maybe a lot of

us haven't heard this before. Maybe we have. I mean, I don't know. I was pretty new to it last year, Father John, when you gave me some great wisdom and spiritual reading for Advent season, because I really didn't know how to approach Advent very well. I'd heard some things over the years, but I was struggling. And so if you're someone who is like me and sometimes struggles with, what is the purpose of Advent exactly? I think you're going to find this podcast very helpful. So Father John, you open up this watchfulness

with a prayer. Yeah, I'd love to. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Father, we thank you for these days that we're in this time, this season in the church that you give to us to

not only to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the incarnation of your son becoming man for us

so as to rescue us,

but also of this season, which is a time to prepare for that very real day, which will come,

when we will stand before that same son of yours. And with our eyes, we will see him,

and with our ears, we will hear his voice.

But we ask for your grace to make the most of this time, that we might prepare our hearts,

keep vigil, and work on those areas in our lives which we know we need to work on so that when he comes, not if, we might be ready.

We thank you in advance for your kindness, your grace, your mercy, your patience in our lives.

We just pray for your anointing now upon our conversation, that it would be hopeful and

encouraging and also appropriately sobering for us in these days.

We ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

The name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

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