The Most Important JourneySample

Day 4

by Sarah Wolf

Contributor, Seacoast Mount Pleasant Campus

Confident In God’s Plan

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ~ Matthew 1:20 (NIV)

My eyes popped open in the middle of the night. A loud male voice had startled me out of a dream. “Habakkuk!”

The voice was so compelling. I grabbed my Bible from the nightstand, still foggy from sleep, and turned to Habakkuk, a book I knew little about. I expectantly read the three chapters that make up the entire book and returned to sleep, confused as to why the name of a minor prophet woke me so strongly.

Years later, I’m still not confident of the reason, but while in that season of raising babies, I found comfort in reading about God’s faithfulness in Habakkuk. Even when the days were hard and I wanted to complain, I knew I could trust his plan.

I can only assume possible meanings for my dreams, yet in Matthew 1:20, Joseph has a dream in which it’s very clear what he’s supposed to do. He receives clear instructions to take Mary as his wife and become the adoptive father to Jesus.

Joseph had already decided to leave Mary quietly, after finding out she was with child. It probably felt like a breach of trust with his soon-to-be wife. And what would it do to his reputation? But while Joseph is asleep, an angel of the Lord addresses his fears about who the father of Mary’s baby is. The angel’s words give him peace and change his mind. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

Still, it must have been difficult to trust in God’s plan. The laws of the time, the potential threats to their betrothal, and the possibility of being questioned as Mary’s pregnancy progressed could have caused Joseph to stick to his plan of not marrying Mary. But, being a righteous man who treasured God in his heart, he accepted that the angel’s message was from the Lord.

As Jesus said in John 8:47, “Anyone who belongs to God listens gladly to the words of God.” When he awoke, Joseph trusted God without having to seek wisdom from others, and without knowing what the future would hold as he assumed the role of Jesus’ earthly father. He obeyed anyway and took Mary as his wife, furthering the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy—“a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. God with us.”

Reflect: What is an area of your life that you need to give God control of today?