For many people, HOPE is a desire or a wish that things will somehow get better. We live in a broken world full of sickness and disease, war and terrorism, broken relationships and broken homes…death—sometimes it feels like HOPE is a rare commodity, or maybe just a dream.

For the people of God, HOPE is more than just a desire or a dream. It is the confident expectation that God Himself will one day set all things right, that He will restore all things completely. This restoration is made possible by the Advent of Jesus Christ, our Everlasting King.

The word Advent means “coming” or “arrival.” When we use this word at Christmas time, it reminds us of the anticipation, expectation, and HOPE held over hundreds of years by the people of Israel as they waited for the coming of their Messiah and promised King.

As we light the first Advent candle, representing HOPE, we are reminded that just as the people of God long ago hoped for the coming of the Messiah, “the light that was coming into the world,” today, we also HOPE and long for His second coming. The Advent season is a season that grounds us in the HOPE that only comes through Christ.

To be human is to long for PEACE. In Scripture, PEACE is not simply the absence of conflict. It is a word that describes completeness, wholeness, fullness, the way things are supposed to be. God created all things to be at PEACE.

Yet, PEACE is not a word that describes our world today. Sin disrupts the PEACE that God desires for His people and His world, a world full of conflict and brokenness. Mankind’s only hope for true PEACE is the coming of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus was born as a human, He came to restore harmony and order, and He did so through His death, burial, and resurrection. He offers this PEACE to any who will trust in Him alone for their salvation.

Jesus promises that, one day, He will come again to completely reverse the curse of sin and restore all things back to perfection. The Advent season reminds us of our secure hope for PEACE through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The second Advent candle represents PEACE, the shalom, unity, and harmony that comes into the world through Jesus Christ.

JOY. On the night of our Savior’s birth, the angel said, “Fear not, for behold, I bring to you good tidings of great JOY which shall be to all the people.” The announcement of Christ’s birth was the announcement that true JOY had entered into the world.

True JOY is much more than just a happy feeling that comes and goes.
It is an eternal perspective. It is gratefully celebrating what God has provided for His people – peace through His Son. We can rejoice, even in our waiting, because we know that Jesus Christ has reconciled us to God and secured for us an eternal destiny marked by infinite JOY.

Our JOY is expressed by our praise. It is the joyful overflow and expression of our righteous standing before our Holy God. Because we are one with Jesus Christ through faith, the one who possesses “pleasures forevermore,” we can “rejoice always.”

When Jesus comes again, we, as the people of God, will experience a lasting and uninterrupted JOY, praising His glorious name forever.

We light the third Advent candle of JOY to symbolize the JOY that entered our joyless world when Jesus arrived.

LOVE. One of the great wonders of the world is the fact that God loves us even though we don’t deserve it. Throughout Scripture, we see promise after promise that God loves His people with an unfailing, never-ending, steadfast LOVE. His ultimate expression of this LOVE is displayed in His Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because God loves us, He sent Jesus to be born as a human.

Because God loves us, He commissioned Jesus to grow up and die as a sacrifice for our sins.

Because God loves us, He resurrected Jesus from the grave and claimed victory over sin, death, Satan, and hell. God’s LOVE for His people is not abstract—it is tangibly expressed in the reality that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and that this Word, Jesus Christ, broke His body and shed His blood to pay the penalty for our sin.

The LOVE of God makes possible the forgiveness of our sins, so we can have peace with Him. It paves the way for entrance into His eternal kingdom, and all of this is ours by grace through faith in Christ alone.

The fourth advent candle represents “LOVE,” the immovable, irrevocable, unconditional LOVE of God for us.