Come And Behold Him: Advent DevotionsНамуна

What Do You Do When Life Doesn’t Turn out the Way You Thought it Would?

What do you do when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought that it would?

Consider the life of Joseph, husband to Mary and stepfather to Jesus.

One day things were great—engaged to be married, a successful carpenter, a man of integrity with a good name for himself, an upstanding Jewish young man.

The next day, however, his life takes an unexpected turn when he learns his wife-to-be is pregnant.

In Joseph’s day that meant instant shame and finger pointing. He would have been pressured to break the engagement and abandon Mary, even put her on trial as an adulteress and make sure she was punished as a law-breaker.

The next day things change, yet again, because when he was still deciding what to do with his fiancée, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a supernatural dream with a world-rocking message:

“Joseph, one with the virtues of David, don’t hesitate to take Mary into your home as your wife, because the power of the Holy Spirit has conceived a child in her womb! She will give birth to a son and you are to name him, ‘Savior,’ for he is destined to give his life to save his people from their sins!” (Matt. 1:20–21TPT)

What would you do? Shrug the experience off as a hallucination? Or take it seriously?

What did Joseph do?

He obeyed.

He might not have understood what was going on—what man would have understood the idea of God conceiving his Son supernaturally through his wife-to-be? He was probably scared at what it meant for him and his life. But instead of running, instead of turning on God, instead of pointing fingers at him turning his life on end, Joseph obeyed. In hope, he trusted in the promises God spoke over him.

During Advent we often forget the man who stood in the shadows of his fiancée and stepson.

Yet Joseph’s story is a hope-filled one. May we remember the hope-filled example Joseph provides us in faithfulness and obedience to God, especially in those moments when life doesn’t turn out the way we thought that it would.

Advent Prayer of Hope

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the story of Joseph and for his example of obedience. May I follow his hope-filled example by trusting in the promises you have for my life—no matter how much life doesn’t turn out the way I thought that it would. Amen.

We hope you continue your Advent journey. For information on Come and Behold Him the Advent Devotional from which this plan was created visit broadstreetpublishing.com/come-and-behold-him/9781424550364/

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