“Please just listen to me and do what I asked!!!” I raised my voice in frustration. I had tried to speak calmly and extend an above-average amount of patience but the constant “why” and “why not” was becoming a bit frustrating. My daughter is 9 years old now and has been attempting to stretch her “teenager legs” as I like to refer to them. In other words, she’s getting older and is beginning to think she can now make her own decisions about most issues. We are quick to usher either of our children (gently or not) back in line if they are, as my grandmother use to say, “getting too big for their britches.” While we want to encourage independence and confidence in their decisions, we also endeavor to teach them submission to authority and other lessons that will serve them well in life. It’s a tight-rope walk that constantly threatens to throw you off balance and send you plummeting to the ground. The response I long to hear is, “Sure, Dad. I trust your judgement and know you want what is best for me.” The response I receive is more along the lines of how I use to respond to my own parents—yeah, I know…you reap what you sow. This fact gives me hope my daughter and son will come to this realization at some point, as well.
In the past few weeks I’ve been studying the stories surrounding the birth of Christ. I was struck by Mary’s instant submissiveness to the angel’s message to his informing her she would carry the son of God. Luke 1:28-38 states, “Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. [you would have freaked out if you’d been visited by an angel, too!] “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!” Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. For the word of God will never fail.” Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.” The angel, Gabriel, didn’t rebuke her when she asked her question signifying to us her response wasn’t spoken from lack of faith but of genuine intrigue (those angels could be a tough bunch and had no problem putting people in their place but that wasn’t so in this particular moment).
Here are a few valuable lessons (though there are many more) to be learned from Mary’s story.
- To experience the promise, you must be fully submissive to the will of God. That doesn’t mean the road to your promise will be easy or will even make sense to your human mind but submissiveness is key.
- When God instructs you to do something, He will confirm it. If you continued reading you found that Elizabeth was, indeed, pregnant (which was a miracle as she was well past child-bearing age). The spirit in Elizabeth bore witness and stated Mary was carrying the Son of God before Mary had the chance to utter anything more than a simple greeting upon arrival. God’s instructions to us may seem odd. Be assured, if it’s God, He will confirm it to you. It’s important we keep our eyes and ears open to His leading. The Holy Spirit is always speaking to us. But the question remains, what voice are we actually listening to?
- Your response should always be, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” Blind faith isn’t always comfortable or predictable but, stepping out of your comfort zone lends to a miraculous experience that could only be created by the hands of Almighty God.
Becoming a believer doesn’t ensure life will be an easy journey. In most cases, it’s quite the opposite. But we should always have a different outlook from the world. We’ve been give hope. He is our hope!
Merry Christmas, my friends! I pray the coming year will find you blessed beyond measure by the Lord as you work for His kingdom.
Side note: This will be my last submission for 2017. I will be focusing on my family and celebrating our Lord for the next few weeks!