Advent: Responding to God — When Life Doesn’t Go As Planned

Opening Idea

Have you ever had plans go wrong? Tell me about it!

How do you typically feel when plans go off course? (chill, panicked, frustrated, etc.)

What do you normally do when your plans get off course? (cry, panic, roll with it, etc.)

My mom does not do well when her plans get all off course. She panics, cries, stresses, and takes it out on everyone else (she’s a bit dramatic—lighthearted, not attacking).

I myself am pretty adaptable, but there are still things that send me spinning—particularly when it’s not one thing going wrong but everything spinning out of control at the same time!

I went through a season in my life a couple of years back that felt like this on a big scale—that everything that mattered to me, that I valued, that was a pillar in my life, just broke apart and came crumbling down. And I did not respond to God very well.

You see, I was really upset with God for not intervening in my life and making some of the bad things stop. So I stopped talking with Him for a while.

But I have also been through a season more recently in my life where it felt like all the plans I had for my life and my future were taken away from me. And as heartbroken as some of those things left me, I believed all the way down to my core that God was just trying to redirect some things in my life. And I have seen even already at least one thing that He worked out for my good, even though He used a very hurtful, long, situation to get me there.

Transition

So, I want to read a very familiar story today. And as we read it, I want you to notice just how many things went wrong! And ultimately I want us to discover how God used all of these messed up plans and inconveniences to work out exactly what He had planned.

Teaching

We begin with Luke 2:1-5

1 “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.”

Okay pause! Now, I just had a baby last year. And I had to spend some of the last weeks of my pregnancy sleeping in the recliner in Caleb’s hospital room in the ICU. I had to eat cafeteria food and walk 12 minutes between where I parked my car and where his room was. That was not ideal. It was uncomfy and inconvenient.

So I am here to tell you that if at 8 months pregnant my husband came to me and said, “Hey Hon, I’m gonna need you to forget about all the plans you had to have this sweet baby here at home. I need you to pack a bag with everything you think you might need. And then I need you to sit on a donkey while we go up the road 70 miles. I. would have been. VERY. upset with him. VERY.

This brings us to Issue Number 1: Bad Timing

Mary is super pregnant when this census goes out. And this isn’t a suggestion from the governor. It is a mandate—you have to go, and you have to go now!

And Mary is super pregnant! In this time where she’s already uncomfortable because her baby is squishing her lungs and stomping on her bladder, she has to leave her doctor, her bed and home, her plans and hopes for his birth and go to another town altogether where she will be dependent on someone else taking care of her.

Well, it gets worse. Let’s read Luke 2:6-7

6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Pausing again because in English, we would have told this story in a different order. We would say, “Now, Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, but most people got there first! No one could accomodate them, and the inn had no more available rooms. Someone allowed them to stay in the stables, though, so they did that. While they were there, Mary went into labor! The baby was coming! Then she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the feeding trough because that’s the closest thing to a crib that was available.”

But the author here is like. So they made it and Mary had the baby! A boy! And she wrapped him up… oh and he slept in a manger cuz they had to stay in a barn while they were there.

This is Issue Number 2: Bad Lodging

So there was one time that my family went to St. Louis, and we show up at our hotel and it is PACKED in there! We go to check in and the guy at the desk is like, “Sorry but we’re sold out for tonight.” And mom goes, “But we have a reservation.” So he pulls up our reservation number… and it’s for the next year! My mom, a super planner, had been looking at hotel pricing and availability for the next year’s trip and accidentally booked our hotel for this year without changing the date. We had nowhere to sleep!

My sister and I thought that was hilarious, of course, but I want you to imagine this: Your dad makes you pack a backpack and walk to Montrose. We can drive there in an hour, but if you walked? My phone estimates that it would take 30 hours! That’s one full day plus some!

So you probably stop a bit and rest and it takes you several days to get there. And when you arrive, there’s no hotel reservation or friend’s house to stay in. You have to sleep in a bard with mooing cows and pooping horses and sleep on hay that itches and pokes you and makes you sneeze. Your dad is probably less of your friend at the moment.

Joseph and super pregnant Mary had an experience not much different from that.

And then BAM we have Issue Number 3: The BABY comes!

I had my baby in a hospital. With doctors and nurses. With snacks and clean water. With a bed to sleep in afterwards and several pillows and blankets and heat.

Mary was in a barn! Not only was this so far from her original plan, but there were health risks and safety risks and no access to nice, comfortable things.

So after all these plans go way off the rails, I would have been grumpy! And if I was Mary, I would’ve been talking to God, trying to convince Him how unfair it was to put me through all this. Like, hello?! I’m carrying YOUR baby, God. The least you could do is make this a bit smoother.

Let me pause for a second to ask you this:

Why do you think sometimes God lets His plan be uncomfortable or inconvenient?

What would you have been thinking in this situation?

I would have felt so frustrated by how out of control I was.

But were things out of God’s control?

Of course not. You see, this census and travel would have been very hard and inconvenient for Mary, but Jesus being born in Bethlehem was actually the fulfillment of a prophecy! Micah 5:2

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

What Mary and Joseph might have seen as hard and inconvenient God saw as the fulfillment of a prophecy He had made hundreds of years before. God is faithful to work things out as He has promised. Sometimes that will feel uncomfortable and messy and inconvenient for us.

What about being in a barn? In a manger? That seems like such a lame entrance into the world for the Son of God! But you know how many other babies were lying in a manger that night in Bethlehem? ZERO. That’s how the shepherds knew exactly who they were looking for!

Let’s read their part of this story.

Luke 2:8-20

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherd returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Traveling. Staying in a stable. Having the baby far from home IN A BARN. Having shepherds be the first visitors. This all seemed unordinary, but it’s exactly what God had planned.

Now, obviously this is the Christmas story, but I wanted us to read it with this other perspective today because there is relevance here for our lives:

Probably this year, something—or multiple things—did not go according to plan.

You moved. You lost a friendship that was meaningful to you. You had a family member pass away.

If what we see in the very birth of Jesus is true, then we can be encouraged to know that even when things feel frustrating or out of control, God is working behind the scenes.

I want you to write this on your piece of paper: What is one part of your life right now that feels messy or out of your control?

How have you been responding to that situation? How has it made you feel to have things go wrong?

What would it look like to respond to GOD, not your situation?

Mary responded to God and served Him faithfully and humbly. God used her. She didn’t get overwhelmed at the plans spiraling out of control and start blaming God for all the ways He WASN’T intervening. He did exactly what He had planned. He will in your life, too.