Helpful Resources to Help Your Family Observe Advent

The Advent season is almost upon us! I recently preached a sermon about what Advent is and why it can be beneficial to practice it especially in relation to God’s commands for His people in Deuteronomy 6:4-7 (which still applies to us today). You can listen to that here. In the sermon, I mentioned several helpful resources you can acquire to lead your family in worship in the Advent season and I was asked to make those links more easily accessible. Below you will find a list and links of resources that can help your family focus on Christ this Christmas season.

For Kids:

If you have The Jesus Storybook Bible then you can access a free pdf here, which will help you celebrate Advent with your small children. This is great because it includes activities and it’s free. All you need is the Bible itself.

This resource called A Jesus Christmas looks excellent. I will most likely use this once my girls get older. If this one looks appealing to you, I would recommend either getting it for Kindle or finding a different source to order from as it appears that it will not arrive in time for you to use it this season.

Lifeway has a great free resource for families with young kids that you can get here. It may be helpful in that it isn’t day by day, but week by week and you can break it up to do small things throughout your week. There are scriptures to read, activities to do, questions to ask, and devotions so there’s really something for everyone here.

For Adults and Families:

My wife and I will be going through a devotional this year called Love Came Down at Christmas by Sinclair Ferguson. It explores 1 Corinthians 13 as it relates to Christmas and it looks excellent. You can purchase it here. And watch the trailer below.

Paul Tripp has an excellent Advent Devotional that we used one year called Come Let Us Adore Him. It’s a really nice hardcover book with a book marker inside. You can buy it here.

If you’re looking for something shorter, this Advent book called The Expected One by Scott James is a nice little resource. You can grab a copy of it here.

Cheap Kindle Resources

I’m a big fan of reading on a Kindle, but even if you don’t have one you can download the app to your phone or tablet. Kindle books often go on sale and can be had for very cheap. Here are some Kindle Advent resources that can be had for very cheap right now.

Finding Christ in Christmas: An Advent Devotional from the Writings of A. W. Tozer is on sale right now for 99 cents!

A Guide for Advent: The Arrival of King Jesus is also 99 cents right now!

You can get the Kindle edition of The Dawning of Indestructible Joy by John Piper for 3.99 on Kindle right now (but see below because there is a free PDF version if that’s more your thing).

Free

When I was unsure if Advent was something I was interested in practicing, I looked for free resources to give it a shot the very first time. Below are a couple of good and free options for you.

You can find a free PDF of John Piper’s The Dawning of Indestructible Joy here. This was what I used for my very first Advent and it was and still is fantastic.

Piper has also since released another Advent devotional for free called Good News of Great Joy. You find it here for free and you can download it in your preferred e-reader format.

The Village Church in Texas whose pastor is Matt Chandler provides a full church calendar pdf with guides to observing significant events that happen every year within the church calendar. They say this about it, “The Church Calendar seeks to redeem our time and space through the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Through readings, prayers, songs, fasts and other practices, these seasons reorient our hearts and minds toward the Christian story.” You can find that guide available for free download here.

Conclusion

Advent helps us focus on Christ during a busy Christmas season where the world is imploring us to make Christmas about anything but Christ. Hopefully you will find one or several of these resources helpful as you seek to glorify and enjoy Jesus this Christmas season.