The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Even Obedient People Get Strange Directions
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Welcome back to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. We're about halfway through our series, our beautiful Christmas, called Unwrapped. And today we're gonna look at part of the Christmas story that it really doesn't make any sense. Unless you've ever followed God and felt like you were walking in circles, and then it might make a little bit of sense. Have you ever followed God and thought, wait, hold on, this can't be right. Uh if you were obedient, you prayed, you discerned, you were available, you said yes, and somehow the next step just felt cons confusing or backwards, or maybe even risky. Yeah, welcome to Christmas because Joseph and Mary did everything right and still got directions that made absolute zero sense. Let's walk through it, okay? First, Mary says yes to the angel, and Joseph sticks by her after a dream confirms the miracle. Then they take a trip to Bethlehem because of the census, and she gives birth in a less than ideal circumstance, all obedient, all faithful. And then what happens next? An angel tells Joseph in a dream, get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt because Herod's trying to kill the child. So in the middle of the night, they leave the country. No planning, no safe route, no AAA trip neck or Google Maps, not even a heads up. They just go now. Later, another dream. Come back to Israel. Wait, actually, avoid Judah, go to Galilee. It's all so strange, right? So last minute, so anxiety-inducing. These are the people that God chose to raise the Messiah. And all those GPS reroutes were constant. What does that tell us? That being in God's will doesn't always mean that the path is always clear. Or that the path is always logical. Or that the path is always comforting. Because sometimes obedience will make you look reckless. Sometimes it'll make you second guess your calling. And sometimes it'll feel like you're just making it up as you go. And sometimes honestly you are. Because God's instructions don't always arrive early, they arrive right on time and just clear enough for the next step. And a lot of times, nothing more. Alright, so let's bring this home. If you're leading a ministry right now, there's a good chance your direction hasn't always felt divine. Maybe God led you to your current church and now you're not sure why. Maybe you said yes to a role that looked really exciting and it turned out to be ten times harder than you expected. Or maybe it was a bait and switch and it's absolutely nothing like what you expected. Maybe you keep getting curveballs, staff turnover, unexpected illnesses, a board decision that shook you and took you by surprise, a volunteer team that you thought was healthy, but just totally collapsed overnight. And you're wondering, did I miss something? Did I miss your God? What am I doing here? Let me encourage you, the strangeness of your current path doesn't mean that you're off it. It might just mean that you're being led step by step, just like Joseph, just like Mary, just like every single person in the Christmas story. Because here's the truth faith doesn't always feel like clarity. Sometimes it just looks like the next step in the dark. Sometimes God gives us strange directions, not because he's testing you, but because he's trusting you. Alright, I've been leaving you every day during this unwrapped series, every episode of the podcast. I've been leaving you with a couple of reflections questions. And here are the reflection questions for today. The first of all, there may have been moments in your leadership where you've thought, this can't be done. This detour was just too far. What do you think in God? The timing is too inconvenient, the assignment is too confusing. But on the other side of obedience, I've seen that fruit that I could never have manufactured. I find clarity that I didn't have at the start and gratitude for the road that I would have never chosen. So long way around to say, here's your reflection question for today. I want you to think about this. Where is God asking you to take a next step that doesn't seem very logical? And then the follow-up question of that was what would change if you trusted his character more than your understanding. That's the question for today. Think about that. And I hope you have a great weekend leading up to the Christmas season next week. And I hope you'll join me again right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast next week. We're going to continue next week, all the way through Christmas, with our Christmas series on that. Hope you'll join me again.
