Not to be too unspiritual, but the first thing that came to mind when reading this was "Did Mary and Zechariah really bust out into a freestyle hip hop battle during all of this?" From the looks of it, that is just what happened.
When I think of Joseph, this is almost more that I can even fathom. He is in love with the woman of his dreams, she comes and tells him that she pregnant with the Holy Spirit's baby (Yeah right), then he has a dream where an angel comes to tell him that his wife is going to give birth to God in the flesh and that his child will take away the sins of the world. Wow, what a day. That's more than I could handle. Now here he is, coming to his home town, not married with a pregnant girl.
When I look at the life of Joesph I see such obedience and submission to Christ even as a child. I wonder how hard it was for Joseph to look at this situation and be able to self evaluate his place? Do I leave her? Do I raise this boy? What is my role? How am I going to raise God? So many questions. I wonder what Joseph was doing when he finally decided that the best possible thing to do was to be selfless and just play his part? To lay aside his goals, his desires, his dreams, his life, so that he could play his part in the most influential time in all of history. What a great model he must have been for Jesus as he was growing up; having a father who was more interested in the plan of God rather than his own plan.
That forces me to ask the same question about myself.
1. How is Christ influencing my decisions today?
2. Am I modeling Joseph in which he was able to lay aside his goals, his desires, his dreams, his life, so that he could play his God given part?
3. What is Christ doing right now as I type this blog, to mold me into his likeness?
4. If it were not for Christ, where would I be today?
I believe that Christ is influencing my decisions in many ways. I hear his influence in the Word, sometimes in a song, and in general in the world around me. Jon & I have a lot on our mind lately and I find that God has been much louder, for lack of a better word. I know that I struggle at times with laying down my dreams and doing what God wants me to do. It took me 9 months for me to hear God telling me to quit working so much and stay at home with my children and I struggled with it for months and still do. Money gets tight and my first instinct is to quit staying home and go back to working full time instead of being patient and allowing God to do his thing. Christ is molding me by just bringing me into the influence of so many believers and if it weren't for Christ, I can't say where I would be but before I turned back around and started trusting God, I was living a life very unlike what I am today.
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