Advent Sermon Series

This year I'm preaching a series of sermons for the Advent Season. The series is on the Experience of God.

The series is a response to the questions of a parishioner. I tell the story of those questions in the first part of the first sermon, the one I preached on Advent 1, December 2.

Can we have an inner experience of God? Can we have a direct experience of God with us? Can we have God inside our hearts and know it? We hear people say that they have Jesus in their hearts---can we have that too?

I should say here, in passing, that the classic Reformed answer is Well, no, but yes.

I've been composing these sermons by studying the usual Advent Lessons (from the Lectionary) with these questions in mind, and then seeing what kind of sermon comes out.

I'll say this: it makes for very different sermons than what I preached on these same texts three years ago. Just for the fun of it, I'll post some of the sermons from three years ago too. Maybe it shows how rich and suggestive these Advent lessons are, to yield such different applications.