GETTING BEYOND OUR CONCERNS
Father, thank You for bringing me to this place and this time today. I ask You to speak to me right now, and to let Your Word breathe life into my heart. Please use these next few moments to bring me to more of a fullness of You and to learn more of Your Glory and how to leave the footprints of Jesus everywhere I go today. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen!
Read Luke 1:26-38
This is a special devotional for me to write. God used a Christmas Eve sermon by a former professor, over this passage, to inspire me to quit talking about this project and to take action. These verses bring much to my mind. One thing that I love though, is that once again God is showing up asking someone to do the seemingly unthinkable and impossible. I mean hasn’t He been doing this since the beginning. He asked Adam to give every creature a name. He asked Noah to build an ark when it had never before rained. He asked Abraham to trust Him and to be willing to sacrifice his son. He led Joseph to go from tending sheep, to imprisonment, to leading Egypt. He asked Joshua to conquer (wandering in the desert for 40 years is possibly not the greatest military training program). He asked Elijah to defeat the false prophets. He asked David to defeat Goliath. He asked Nehemiah to lead the rebuilding of Jerusalem, when he knew nothing of construction. There are a multitude of other instances of this. Now, at the start of the New Testament, He is doing it again. Asking a young girl, (probably early teens) to give birth.
I love Mary’s practicality in all of this; the first chance she gets to respond, she brings up the fact that she is a virgin. I am sure to her; this seemed like an incredibly legitimate point. I know I respond to God in a similar way all the time. He leads me to something, and I bring up all the different obstacles I can think of. I am sure many of you do the same. I am not talking about small petty excuses such as: I have to be somewhere, or I do not know what to say. I am talking about legitimate verifiable excuses, or what we would deem as such. Maybe we tell God I do not have a passport or I have financial limitations. I wonder if we are so busy reiterating our excuses at times that we fail to hear God’s response. His response, delivered to Gabriel, to Mary was quite clear. Gabriel did not gloss over her concerns or berate her for having them: instead he gave her a specific answer. Is God that direct with us? If so, do we just not hear Him? If we do happen to hear Him, do we keep insisting on our excuse, or do we have the faith to echo Mary’s response and simply say, “may it be to me as you have said”?
Today leave His footprints by hearing God address your concerns, then believing in His power to accomplish what He says.
Leave His footprints as you walk today!
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