Advent 2025: Give us…Forgive us | Josh Harrison
Advent, Attentiveness, and the Lord’s Prayer: A Year Shaped by Watchfulness and Expectancy
We find ourselves in the season of Advent, the threshold of a new church year, and in a series reflecting on the words and wisdom of the Lord’s Prayer. In this sermon, Josh offers a sweeping meditation on why and how Advent invites us into two essential, but often under-emphasized, Christian virtues: attentiveness (or biblical watchfulness) and expectancy. Both are not just seasonal attitudes but foundational rhythms—practices we are invited to build into our lives all year long.
Cultivating Attentiveness and Expectancy
Advent, at its heart, is a season of “awaiting and anticipating the arrival of Jesus.” But, as Josh notes, the call isn’t simply to count the days until Christmas or to be passively hopeful. Instead, we’re invited to practice an “eyes peeled, ears open” vigilance—like someone on safari, scanning the landscape for signs of life. Such attentiveness means waking up each morning actively searching for the movements of God, minimizing distractions so that the Spirit’s whisper doesn’t go unnoticed.
Expectancy follows watchfulness. It’s not just believing God might act, but trusting He will: “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find.” To live with expectancy is to enter each moment—work, family, worship—not only hoping for the presence of God but anticipating it, believing “His mercies are new every morning.”
But this won’t happen accidentally. Gathering together for worship, encountering God’s Word, making space for prayer and community—all are deliberate habits, carving out the quiet “corner of the world” that makes space for God to act. Josh Harrison invites us to imagine the stories we might tell a year from now if we truly pursued these virtues.
Learning to Pray Like Jesus
The sermon then travels into the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, noting the natural progression Jesus offers: first, recognizing who God is (“Our Father, who art in heaven...”), then surrendering our will (“Your kingdom come, Your will be done...”), and finally arriving at the place of personal request: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses...”
Here, Josh Harrison insists, Jesus is inviting not stoic, impersonal prayer, but real, whole, honest conversation. The prayer is not for “heroes” who have transcended personal need, but for children willing to bring their raw, daily desires—the stuff of life—before God. Yet, our requests are shaped by what has come before. Knowing God is both transcendent and intimate, and having surrendered to His will, our prayer naturally becomes simpler, more immediate.
Pray the Wilderness Prayer
Instead of asking for massive abundance or future guarantees, Jesus models a prayer for “daily bread.” This summons us back to Exodus, to the story of God’s people collecting manna in the wilderness—just enough for each day, a continual act of radical dependence. We are called, not to self-sufficient independence (an “Egypt prayer”) or deferred prosperity (“promised land prayer”), but to embrace the vulnerability of the wilderness. Each day, each hour, we are invited to eat from God’s hand, to admit, “Lord, I need You—every hour I need You.”
Human beings, Josh reminds us, were not made for independence. The world itself exists because God sustains it, every day, every breath. The call to prayer, therefore, is a call to embrace dependence—with all the risks, and all the intimacy, it entails.
Forgiveness: Bread for the Wilderness Journey
But the daily bread God provides isn’t only physical; it’s also forgiveness. The wilderness journey of Exodus was marked by failure, complaint, rebellion—but God always made a way for atonement, a path back into His gracious presence. In teaching us to pray, “Forgive us our debts,” Jesus was looking forward to the cross: the once-for-all sacrifice that guarantees forgiveness for all who sincerely ask.
Yet forgiveness received must become forgiveness extended. Josh challenges us with the “algebra” of mercy: the measure of forgiveness we offer others should be shaped by the forgiveness we ourselves so desperately need. This radical grace isn’t easy—it costs us something, just as it cost Christ—but it is the very thing that can change the world. Why else would Jesus include it in the heart of His prayer?
Key Lessons from This Sermon
Attentiveness and Expectancy Are Foundational Virtues
Advent urges us to cultivate a posture of watchfulness and expectation—not just for a season, but for the year ahead.Jesus Teaches Us to Pray for Daily Dependence, Not Independence
True Christian living is not a pursuit of self-sufficiency or entitlement, but of radical, honest dependence—trusting God for each day’s bread.Prayer is an Invitation to Bring Our Real Selves to God
Sincerity is central: God wants us to pray what’s genuinely on our hearts, shaped by surrender to His will and confidence in His character.Receiving Forgiveness Must Lead to Extending Forgiveness
The mercy God gives is not only for us; it is meant to flow through us into the world. The measure we receive becomes the measure we share.
As we journey through Advent and into the new year, may these lessons shape our prayers, our expectations, and our life together. The wilderness is not without its challenges, but it is the place where God’s presence, provision, and forgiveness are most deeply and personally known.
