Tag: Following Jesus

Morning Musing: Luke 1:43-45

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“How could this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How trusting of a person would you say you are? That depends on a number of different factors, doesn’t it? It could be that your parents weren’t so good about keeping their word to you, and so you default to believing everyone around you is lying. Maybe you’re a very trusting person by nature, but that trust runs along the edge of naiveté and has gotten you in trouble a time or two. There’s a balance point here. You don’t want to be blindly trusting because people do lie, but if you don’t trust anyone, you can’t have any relationships. There is one person, though, who should always have our trust.

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Morning Musing: Matthew 1:21

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“She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The first Christmas involved faith. A lot of faith. It involved a great deal of individuals no different from you and me being willing to trust God on a series of adventures they didn’t plan on, and which – if they were being honest – they didn’t even want at first. But in the end, they were all willing to take their plans, hopes, dreams, desires, and set them aside in favor of His. The result was nothing less than the world being irrevocably changed. We talked about one of these stories yesterday in Mary. Today, let’s take a look at Joseph’s story.

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 1:34-38

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“Mary asked the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?’ The angel replied to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth – even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ ‘See, I am the Lord’s servant,’ said Mary. ‘May it happen to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been asked to do something that seemed impossible? How about this: Have you ever been asked to do something that was going to cause serious disruption to your life? The first you can’t do. The second you perhaps can, but you don’t want to. It is not impossible for you to accomplish, but rather is impossible for you to consider. Mary was asked to do both. What the angel asked of her on God’s behalf was both impossible as far as she knew, and the furthest thing from what she would have wanted to do given the plans she no doubt had for her life. How she responded has something powerful to say when God calls us to do hard things in our own lives. Let’s continue our Advent journey this morning by looking at what Mary was called to do, and what she did about it.

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Morning Musing: Ephesians 5:20

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“…giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This is a day for giving thanks. It is Thanksgiving, after all. At least it is in the United States. If you are one of the many folks reading somewhere else in the world today is probably just Thursday where you are. A few other nations around the world have some sort of national day set aside for giving thanks, but not very many. There is a reason for this. As you pause for a moment in your busy preparations for food and family (and probably football) later today, let’s talk for just a moment about why we give thanks.

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Morning Musing: Isaiah 30:18-21

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“Therefore the Lord is waiting to show you mercy, and is rising up to show you compassion, for the Lord is a just God. All who wait patiently for him are happy. For people will live on Zion in Jerusalem. You will never weep again; he will show favor to you at the sound of your outcry; as soon as he hears, he will answer you. The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher, and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: ‘This is the way. Walk in it.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The most common characterization of God people have from the prophets is that He is angry. He is filled with wrath and is waiting up in heaven to catch us in some wrongdoing so He can smite us. He’s like a kid with a magnifying glass on a sunny day perched over an ant hill. The first time we show our head out of the pile, He’s going to smoke it off with a blast of lightning. And, there are some passages scattered throughout the prophets that would seem to justify such an image. But what you perhaps don’t realize is those are the exceptions, not the rule. The rule throughout the prophets is something very different and entirely more New Testament-y in their flavor than you might expect. This morning as we finish up our short look at Isaiah 30, I want to set before a passage that is much more in line with the major picture of God we get from the prophets. Let’s talk about it.

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