choosing – KARLA LEES

Until you commit to the goal of connection, all the relational tools in the world are not going to help you. It’s only when you decide to take responsibility to pursue connection that you will discover just why you need these tools. It’s only when you commit to moving toward someone that you will seek the knowledge and skills necessary to reach them. – Danny Silk, Keep Your Love On

It’s only in the choosing that our pursuit ignites with purpose.

If you encountered someone who was deaf, and you wanted to communicate with them, you would seek out sign language to help you do so. If they were blind, you might learn to write them a letter in braille, or add more descriptive words to your dialogue.

When we choose to love someone, we decide to study them and find out what they love, then discover how we can best offer them our love.

And we can only do so when we chose to do so whole heartedly.

Jeremiah 29:13 reminds us that God promises those who chose to wholeheartedly seek Him will find Him.

When we are intent on learning more about the ones we love, we will discover who they are.

And when we discover who they are, we are able to love them more deeply and whole heartedly in response.

It all begins with our choice.

Will we press in for deeper connection, or settle for surface level fluff?

Like cotton candy, which tastes good going down but doesn’t satisfy your hunger, surface loving never satisfies our deeper longing to connect with one another.

Because God ultimately hardwired us to connect with Him, and to one another.

I have decided to throw off my usually cover of restraint and purposely chase after God with all I am and have.

And I am choosing to do the same in all my relationships.

With God as the primary lover of my soul, and His guidance, I will discover how to love more, deeper, stronger and better.

For when Love Himself is your pursuit, and promises to be found by all who purpose to seek after Him?

With Him, I can love as He intends. With all my heart, for His glory and his honour, to better His Kingdom. Loving those about me as He has designed them to want to be loved, and as His love overflows through me to and for them.

I was very struck by God’s choice of Mary.

Not because I don’t think she was a good choice, but because she wasn’t the obvious choice.

Most of us, if we are honest, would have chosen a gal more like Elizabeth: wise in experience, settled, already married.

Not a teenager still living at home.

But we look at this part of the Christmas story from our own time in history. Our culture, our values, our biases.

God looks at it as an important part of His Story. His values, first and foremost.

Mary had a deep faith, and likely deep dependence upon God based on her life experience and background. The Word doesn’t mention her upbringing, so it was likely a normal one.
Our hope for our daughters is for them to be lovingly well suited in marriage, with a good job, and a nice place to live.

I am sure Mary’s parents wanted the same for her that my husband and I do for our’s:

His best.

God chose Mary, whom He considered His best, as the mother of His greatest gift to us.

Mary must have been quaking in her sandals at the thought of the enormity of responsibility being placed on her shoulders.

The Messiah was going to grow in her womb, despite her innocence.
The one who will save His people.
The one they have been waiting for for generations.

There must have been quite the inner revelation going on in Mary shortly after, likely the following key questions:

1) What will my parents think?

2) What will Joseph, my fiancee, think?

3) What will my community think?

4) What’s going to happen?

In those days, (mostly our days too) a pregnancy is an obvious sign of bedroom activity. Which in God’s design is supposed to be reserved for the marriage bed only.

Any one of Mary’s family, her fiancee or her neighbors all would have had the right to publicly accuse her as her pregnancy became evident, and the price if convicted? Stoning.

Right off the bat, this baby literally just conceived is in danger.

And so is His mother.

Yet there is no evidence of Mary worrying written in the Christmas story.

She must have had some awesome rock solid God is going to do it if He says He will and I am safe in His hands no matter what kind of faith. He has said (through Gabriel) He was with her. How she must have clung to that truth.

In those days and times, when the Romans were invading the land, and the Jews were getting restless under their tight reins, God knew the timing was right for His son to be born.

For such a time as this.

God chose Mary, as she was the right choice.

His choice.

Since He is God, after all, Mary was the perfect choice.

God has a habit of choosing what the world would see as foolish to reveal more of His glory as a result.

Of course He would do so in the greatest gift giving He was preparing to unveil!

#AdventuresinAdvent
#TheMaryChronicles

Tag: choosing

pressing in for connection

entrusting a teen with the King