It’s A Wonderful Life: Endure It Sunday, November 29, 2025

Introduction:

Good Morning! We are going to do something a little different this holiday season and encouage everyone to practice advent.

Before we begin, let’s take a moment and talk about Advent and why we are choosing to put it into practice this year. Advent roots are traced back to Gaul, Spain in the sixth century. Its practice then and now is to help prepare for Christmas, a time that is designated to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. It was usually accompanied with a practice of fasting and meditation on God’s word. While not explicitly mentioned or commanded in the bible, it is a practice that can help focus your mind on Jesus, instead of the hustle and bustle of the commercialized Christmas that celebrates a fictional character, instead of the real reason for the season. Let me give you 5 reasons you might want to practice Advent.

1. It slows you down in a hectic season

December tends to be loud, rushed, and stressful. Advent creates intentional pauses. It gives you permission to breathe, reflect, and not get swept up in the noise of holiday pressure.

2. It reconnects you with the bigger story

Advent isn’t just a countdown to Christmas. It’s a season that reminds you:

Christ has come (the incarnation)

Christ is present (with us today)

Christ will come again (hope for the future)

This anchors your faith in something larger than consumer celebration.

3. It cultivates spiritual habits

Advent helps build rhythms like:

Prayer

Scripture reflection

Waiting on God

Practicing hope, peace, joy, and love

These habits strengthen your spiritual life going into the new year.

4. It teaches you the discipline of waiting

We live in a “right now” world. Advent is countercultural because it says: “Some things are worth waiting for.”

It trains your soul to trust God’s timing, not demand your own.

5. It reshapes your expectations

Instead of focusing on getting gifts or creating a perfect Christmas, Advent directs your heart toward preparing room for Christ—in your priorities, relationships, and hopes.

So, I invite you into the practice of Advent by inviting you to see that Jesus is our eternal hope. Our theme is It’s a wonderful life…Endure It…Hope In It…Believe It…Trust It…Treasure It. We are going to look at some scenes from Frank Capra’s, It’s A Wonderful Life, each week to introduce our theme and then go to God’s word to see what it has to say about our theme.So, let’s begin

If your house was like mine growing up, It’s A Wonderful Life, was a part of your yearly holiday schedule. But it did not start out that way. When the movie was released in December of 1946, it was a huge failure, losing $525,000 at the box office. It was such a failure that the movie was shelved and the studio allowed the copyright to lapse. When TV execs learned of this in 1974, they began to add it to their schedules because it was free TV. It became popular because it was often on TV, many times on different channels at the same time. Today, it is considered a classic.

Most of us know the story of George Bailey. All he wanted to do was to get out of Bedford Falls, see the world, build modern cities and make money. He had plans, but his plans never came to fruition. In fact, the turning point of George’s life is when he decided to take his life and jumps from a bridge. God showed George the significance of his life by sending an angel named Clarence. Clarence shows George the difference his life has made, teaching him to value life and see his God given place in it.

But before all that, George had a last dinner with his father where he talks about his plans for his life, it is here we will pick up today.

Show Clip.

Monologue

That enduring path that keeps us all moving forward is hope. Life has thrown me a curve ball the last few weeks. Finding out that I am am needing open heart surgery has been a struggle to be honest. I know you would like to hear me stand here, confidently, without fear and say “God has got me and that it will all be okay.” It will be. It will be okay if He chooses to take me on the operating table next week and it willbe okay if I recover and live many more years and for a guy, who is not ready to go, this path is scary.

I have wrestled with my significance.

I have relationships I want to repair.

I have people I want to help to know Jesus.

I have many more camping trips I want to take with my wife and hopefully one day grandkids.

So, hope can at times be scary, but it also brings freedom. Freedom because I know that no matter what happens, God’s will for me will be accomplished and if he chooses to take me now, I have confidence that I will be in a better place.

This journey has brought me to a deeper awareness of something Scripture teaches again and again: that God’s sovereignty doesn’t collapse when our plans do. And that’s not a lesson just for someone facing a major surgery—it’s a truth for all believers.

Most of us have lived long enough to see our plans held loosely in God’s hands. And these quotes remind us of that reality:

5432 Man makes plans; God changes them.

Anonymous

351 The Lord frustrates our plans, shatters our purposes, lets us see the wreck of all our hopes, and whispers to us, “It’s not your work I wanted, but you.”

Anonymous

So utterly was Christ emptied of self that He made no plans for Himself. He accepted God’s plans for Him, and day by day the Father unfolded His plans. So should we depend upon God, that our lives may be the simple outworking of His will.

Ellen Gould White

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” ― Allen Saunders

Life is rarely what we plan it to be, but that does not mean there is not purpose to life. It does not mean that there is no creator planning good works for us to do. It does not mean that when life throws us lemons, that we cannot make lemonade. It means we lea into trusting that God will see us through no matter what derails us.

Two passages we will look at this morning, will give us perspective. It will help us learn to live life, even when we are frustrated, fed up, finished and depressed. They will remind us of the reason we live and what we are to do in the waiting.

TEXTUAL STUDY:

Isaiah 2:1–5 NIV

This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.

This is a vision from God to bring hope to His people who are in exile. They are captives. They have been removed from their homes and their land. They have been settled in a place that is not their own, where they did not want to go. Here they are forced to do work they do not want to do, see things they do not want to see and they are losing hope. Will God ever again establish the Israelites as His people? Will they ever again see Jerusalem. Here in Isaiah 2, God provides an answer:

· He will reestablish His temple on His mountain.

· All people will pour to this mountain to worship God.

· They will seek His teachings and walk in His ways.

· He will be king.

· Peace will reign.

When will this happen? The vision does not specify. But it leaves them with instructions of what They are to do until He returns. They are to walk in the light of the Lord. This is still valid for us today. Whether it is relational problems, health concerns, struggling with identity, dealing with depression, money problems, any problem you are facing, the call is for us to continue to walk in the light of the Lord, no matter how hard or scary it gets.

Four hundred years later, Jesus Christ came to bring God’s people salvation. During His three-year ministry, before His death, He points the Israelites back to the true worship of God. He teaches them and us to walk in his ways. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus talks about the end times, the day of judgment.

Matthew 24:36–44 NIV

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

This passage does not seem to fit the advent theme of hope. But bear with me. For it contains secrets for life that we need to hear.

Jesus begins by describing what might be the lives of people we know, maybe even our own. He describes people who are living their lives, not thinking about their future. People taking it day by day, moment by moment. They eat, They drink, They are Merry. Their marrying, divorcing, remarrying. They are living their lives doing what makes them happy and some of them don’t have a care in the world.

All of these people have in common this... they are not ready for what is coming next. Accidents, illness, failure, no. They are not ready for the life, after life.

Jesus uses the analogy of a homeowner and a thief. He tells us if the owner had known he would have put up better defenses, called the police, hired some guards. He would have been ready.

And there is the secret. We must be ready. How do we endure this life? How doe we prepare for life, after life. We do it by being ready. What does this mean for us today?

Here are my thoughts on it:

1. Find you purpose and pursue it passionately. God has made us in His image and calls us to be fruitful and multiply. Eden was a Temple where God dwelled with man. Our job is to maintain Eden and spread it to the ends of the earth. Find the way God has created you to maintain Eden it and do it.

2. Keep yourself busy with kingdom work. Remember God has prepared good works in advance for us to do. So, let’s pursue those plans first.

Matthew 6:33 NIV

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

When God guides your plans, you will find purpose and fulfillment in all of life because His purpose for you will become the lens that you make plans through.

3. If you plan to spend time with God in eternity, now is the time to start preparing for it. Don’t wait until it is too late.

4. Mentor someone. Maybe it is someone who you wish to help find a relationship with Jesus.. Maybe it is someone who you have a skill you can teach. Maybe it is someone you see potential in or a young couple you can share Godly wisdom with. When we share our lives with someone else, we find deep meaning that God created us to find in relationships.

5. Take time to rest. This may not seem beneficial, but it is only in times of rest that we dream big dreams and ask God if they are His plans for us. It is only in times of rest that we find ourselves stopping to ask the right questions. It is only in times of rest that we really appreciate what God has given us. Take rest on a mountain, on a hike, in a hammock, wherever you like to find it, but take rest.

Conclusion:

This advent season, I want us to focus on how the life of Jesus has brought us life. A wonderful life. Sure, there will be days with challenges, seasons of time where we find darkness, when life will throw its worst at us. Remember, that now we live in a fallen world. But like the prophet of Isaiah, I want to remind you:

In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

As we walk through this life, let us keep our eyes open for the joy God places before us. Let’s look for His purpose woven into our days, notice the good works He invites us into, and hold fast to the hope of our Lord’s return. It truly is a wonderful life.

I want you to know:

I want you to hear this clearly: pursue your purpose with passion. Root yourself deeply in the Kingdom. Live each day preparing for the moment when our hope is made complete at the return of Jesus.

This Christmas season, we celebrate His birth because it opened the door to a relationship with our Savior that will carry us through every trial, every fear, and every unknown. It’s a relationship that lasts into eternity—no matter what we may face while we are here.

I want you to do:

If you choose to participate in Advent, I want you to get out your phone, take a picture of this screen and spend some time this week meditating on these questions:

Where do I need to invite the hope of Christ into my life right now?

Where is my heart anxious, tired, or uncertain?

What would change if I truly believed that Jesus is already present in that place, already working for my good and His glory?