As you are faced with the call of God upon your life to follow Him, submissively, obediently, what will you do? Your actions will indicate what you have fundamentally decided.

Every person must make the choice. It will be revisited in every act of the common day, but it is the foundational choice. All the decisions and issues that face us reveal the decision we have made and will determine the daily and eternal course of our lives (and even affect the lives of others).

Who is the final authority for my life? Me or my Creator?

Exhibit A

The beginning pages of the New Testament unfold the story of God’s messenger appearing to a young virgin named Mary, telling her that she has been chosen to carry and give birth to the prophesied Messiah.

She was afraid, but after assurances by the angel, her choice became simple: would she let God be in charge?

Thankfully, young Mary believed and completely surrendered her body for God’s use. She felt honored and favored to do so. She did not resist God’s activity but joined it. She gladly saw herself as a “bond-slave of the Lord” so she humbly and immediately said, “Be it done to me according to Your will.”

Think of what she experienced in the next nine months and beyond. The intimacy that only a mother and child know. The glory of the birth of the Savior. The days and years that followed raising this One who was “tempted in all points, yet without sin.” The precious knowledge that she alone first carried of who this was and what He had come to do…and her watching the unfolding activity of God through her son.

Because she had settled the issue, Mary not a mere spectator but a vital, glad participant in the greatest story in human history.

Exhibit B

In the next order of things, we read this verse…

“And Joseph” (Matthew 1:19)

Someone else was to be involved and was necessary to God’s work in this unfolding plan that had been foretold since the beginning of time.

Joseph was a good, “righteous man” but he had a problem. His fiancé was pregnant, and not by him. This was utterly unacceptable and disgraceful to both of them.

So, Joseph did what any respectable, honorable man would do. In his human logic he decided two things: 1) I will break off this engagement, and, 2) I will send her away from public eyes to have this baby, so she won’t suffer disgrace for what has happened.

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