{"id":34264,"date":"2022-09-10T21:21:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/advent-and-riding-bikes\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T21:21:39","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T02:21:39","slug":"advent-and-riding-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/advent-and-riding-bikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent and Riding Bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent blog post, Mark Roberts writes: &#8220;Why is Advent like learning to ride a bike? Because we have a very hard time learning to ride a bike if we focus on not falling down. The more we pay attention to the negative&#8212;don&#8217;t fall down, don&#8217;t fall down, don&#8217;t fall down&#8212;the more we are magically pulled to the ground. But, when we begin to focus on the positive, looking forward, moving ahead, keeping vertical, then learning to ride a bike is easy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Similarly, if, when it comes to Christmas, we focus on the negative&#8212;less secular, less consumerist, less rushed, less superficial&#8212;chances are, we&#8217;ll have a hard time achieving the goal of a deeper, truer and more authentic Christmas. Advent allows us to focus on the positive, on our need for God, on our hope for a better world on the first and second advents of our Savior.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In my experience, the more we focus on the positive&#8212;Advent&#8212;the more we will be able to redeem Christmas and make it a time of drawing near to God and celebrating His coming among us. Miraculously, we&#8217;ll find it easier to let go of the consumerism and secularism that threatens to strangle the true spirit of Christmas.&#8221; (Click here to read the full article.)<\/p>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_container the_champ_horizontal_sharing' data-super-socializer-href=\"https:\/\/www.preaching.com\/articles\/advent-and-riding-bikes\/\">\n<div class='the_champ_sharing_title' style=\"font-weight:bold\">Share This On:<\/div>\n<div class=\"the_champ_sharing_ul\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style='clear:both'><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent blog post, Mark Roberts writes: &#8220;Why is Advent like learning to ride a bike? Because we have a very hard time learning to ride a bike if we focus on not falling down. The more we pay attention to the negative&#8212;don&#8217;t fall down, don&#8217;t fall down, don&#8217;t fall down&#8212;the more we are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/advent-and-riding-bikes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Advent and Riding Bikes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}