When God Turns Your World Upside Down

Where do you go when the blessings of God are too much to handle or understand?  What do you do with the information or gift He has bestowed upon you?  There will be times when God brings a blessing and it is immediately follow by—joy, peace and ease.  However there are also times when the blessings brought by God’s gift will (in affect_ cause our world to be turned upside-down.  It may even cause us to want to run away because His gift will cause our lives to never be “normal” again.

This story is found in Luke 1:24-56

Last week I spoke to you about Mary, the mother of Jesus click to read. Go back with me to our 14-15 year old girl who has just been told by an angel that she would be pregnant even though she had never been with a man.  Naturally speaking, for Mary, God’s timing was so inconvenient.  This is God we are talking about here, when He shows up to do something great for us, life is supposed to get simpler and better–well as we define simpler and better anyway.  However, through my own adventures and blessings with God I’ve learned that, the bigger the blessing the greater the requirement that is placed on you.  At first glance I know that this may sound like a bad thing, but it really isn’t.  God always works in ways that are for the benefit of His people and His Kingdom.

Things were about to get crazy for Mary, the announcement of a baby growing in her body before she was married would place her life and unborn baby in danger.  If Joseph, her soon to be husband, wished it so, at his word he could have Mary stoned in accordance to the law.  So what does a teenage girl do when she finds out that she is pregnant?  She gets on her donkey and runs away to a place where she can think and wait, of course.  When the angel announced to Mary that she was pregnant, he also told her about her cousin Elizabeth and how she was also pregnant.  Now Elizabeth was way too old to be pregnant so this made the news even more amazing.  It was a good move on Mary’s part to do this.  Going to visit Elizabeth would help her get a handle on her own life that seemed to be spinning out of control right now.

Where is Your Elizabeth

Do you have an Elizabeth in your life?  Elizabeth became Mary’s comfort, her place of encouragement and opportunity to know that she was not crazy.  Is there someone in your life that you can retreat to when life starts to get out of whack?  Mary needed to go and see her because even though Elizabeth’s situation was different, she needed to be around someone whose life was complicated by God’s plan as well.  If I were Mary, I would wonder if I really saw an angel.  I would question everything I saw because everything what the angel was saying was so farfetched.  I would think that maybe I was just seeing things.  I would also think about what I would have to tell my fiancée.  My trip wouldn’t just be to find a place of comfort but it would also be an opportunity to run from the vision.

Mary makes the long trip to her cousin.  When her eyes fall on Elizabeth, Mary saw right away that what the angel had said concerning her cousin was true; her elderly cousin (who was passed childbearing years) was 6 months pregnant and counting.  But that means if the prophecy of Elizabeth was true…then the prophecy about her was true as well!  What went through her mind?  Why didn’t the scriptures say right at that moment that she rejoiced?  Why didn’t it say that she praised God?  I mean the Messiah was coming and it was coming through her!!  Well her rejoicing and praise was coming, but it wasn’t going to happen yet.

The teenage mother dismounts her horse after a long trip and to her surprise, when she embraces Elizabeth the baby in Elizabeth’s stomach leaps so much that Elizabeth can’t help but rejoice.  The child was filled with the Hold Spirit by just the contact of Mary’s and Elizabeth’s embrace.  From that, Elizabeth reacts and says,

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  (Luke 1: 42-43)

How did she know?  Whichever way, this was enough to have Mary finally show some relief that this was all going to work out.  She was hearing it from a familiar person, not a vision, a family member, not an angel.  That moment sparked in Mary a cry to rejoice.

Luke 1: 46-55 records Mary’s words of excitement which starts off with,

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.”

What Do You Do When God’s Will is Inconvenient

1. Mary was amazing not just because she was a virgin carrying the Son of God, but also because she made sure to surround herself with people who kept her focused on how awesome God was. Sometimes when we share with the wrong person what God spoke to us about, things take on a different feel in our hearts and minds.  A person who is selfish will stir up selfish desires.  A bitter person will bring out the bitter taste in our own thinking.  We must be careful on where we retreat to for comfort.
2. Mary commanded her soul to glorify God. The words she spoke weren’t just words based on of emotions but ones made by choice.  Sometimes we will have to choose to glorify God instead of waiting for our emotion to feel like doing so.   Look at what David says in Psalms 103: 1-2

Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
 Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits

The beginning of the verse was like, “what are you waiting for soul…PRAISE THE LORD!  And what are you looking at inner soul?  YOU PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!! Oh and while you’re doing that DON’T FORGET ALL HIS BENEFITS.”  If you are waiting for your emotions to come over you in order to worship, it won’t happen all the time like that and even if it does, it won’t be as powerful as if you choose to do so yourself.

3. Mary admits something that we forget at times. We are Gods servants not the other way around.  Sometimes we are unable to recognize His gifts for what they really are because we think that God is serving us and He needs to do things our way; verses us serving Him,  We need to learn how to trust Him.  When we think we are running the show we assume our definition of a blessing is the same as God’s.  There are times when people can’t appreciate the things God gives because of the complication it brings.

If Mary was raised like other Jewish children, she was taught that someday the Messiah was going to come and bring salvation to her people.  The Jews begged for this King to come forth to save them from the oppression of the Roman Emperor.  It’s one thing if God brings His will forth on His own and it’s another thing for Him to say, “It is through you that I will bring forth my will.”  We are so willing to ask God to raise someone up to sacrifice for the good of God’s plan but what happens when He chooses you to do it?

We look at Mary and her life and sometimes we minimize the fear, anxiety, and challenge she went though.  We make her the center of religious beliefs.  We make statues of her and paintings of her holding a newborn baby but where are the pictures of her as a confused teenage girl?  Where are the pictures of her praying on her knees in tears 4-5 months pregnant before she’s about to tell Joseph of her visitation?  This season of her life is romanticized and there needs to be some kind of reality and sympathy added to her story.

Weekly Challenge:

It’s time to turn the light on us.  We are at the end of our year and you and I have to stop and see what God has given us that we don’t appreciate but complain about.  It takes to bring God’s promise to pass.  I will tell you that this year has been super hard for me, not as some may call hard but there were times I just broke down and cried.  Over the years I have prayed for many things.  I prayed for God to come change certain people’s lives, to bring help to many who were struggling with things and in turn He looked at me to serve them to bring about His promise.

When God turned his index finger to me and said, “I choose you to bring forth My plan” I needed to find my Elizabeth to help me find comfort in knowing that He was going to provide me with the strength I needed and confirm His purposes in me.  I have two Elizabeth’s and I thank God that these two women keep me focused on the truth and not the complication.  Their confirming words have made me command my soul to glorify God no matter what I felt.

It’s time to journal.  Who are your Elizabeth’s?  Why are they your Elizabeth?  What has God called a gift upon your life but instead has seemed more like an inconvenience?

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