Followed By Mercy

Joseph’s Shock And The Awe Of God With Us

W. Austin Gardner

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We slow down to let Christmas regain its weight, moving from head knowledge to lived awe as we revisit Joseph’s shock, courage, and obedience. The focus shifts from gifts and noise to God with us, and how that truth resets priorities, habits, and hope.

• reframing Christmas beyond routine and hype
• Joseph’s shock, reflection, and obedience under pressure
• the claim that God interrupts history and guides today
• practicing awe through prayer, silence, generosity, and restraint
• choosing presence over performance and consumption
• asking better questions about what matters most

Let’s talk about Jesus.


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Austin Gardner:

I wanted to think a more about Christmas. I was just thinking about how people have reacted to the Christmas message. You know, I think in today's terms it's become almost ho hum. It's like Jesus is an add-on. I mean, it's more about gifts and family and food and fun. And we always say keep crossing Christmas, but I'm not sure that we really work at it that hard. I'm not sure that we sense the impact that Christmas has. I think theologically we do. I think in our heads we do. I think in practical everyday terms, maybe we don't. So I I was I've thought about different people in the Bible and how they reacted. It ought to be like the most shocking thing that ever happened that God would become a man and live among us. It ought to blow our minds that history stopped, that time stopped, that angels came, that all of a sudden announcements were made, that God was at work and God was moving. I'm only 71 years old, but pretty old. But in all that time, I've never seen time really stop. I've never seen God just intervene in a way that stopped world time. Oh, I have experienced times when he did something in my life, but I'm talking about stopping it, but it did. And ought to stop us today. As we meditate on Christmas coming, you know, it's just a couple of days now that we celebrate Christmas. I thought about Joseph, and the Bible kind of gives a story about him and tells about how he reacted. He was shocked. He was shocked. It blew his mind. In Matthew chapter 1 and verse 18, Joseph was a good man, a just man, and he didn't want to embarrass his wife that he to be, his engaged wife that he loved her very much. He didn't want to publicly humiliate her and embarrass her. And so when he got an announcement from an angel, he thought on it. I have often wondered, what in the world is that like? I mean, maybe he was saying it, did that really happen? Did God really speak to me? Is this what really is going on? But he thought on these things. And the angel, because he's found out his wife's pregnant, that what's conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And then God tells him, and he shall save his people from his sins. And he finds out that it will be, the baby will be named Emmanuel, God with us. And uh I just I look at that, I look at that, and and and I think in terms of how he got up and did what the angel told him to do. Probably even further and wilder than that, he was a brand new, getting married young man, a virgin young man, and he did not have any sexual relations with his wife until after Jesus was born. He obeyed God. He put himself out there. I cannot imagine. I guess God put him out there. I can't imagine all of his friends mocking him. I can't imagine him being in the privacy and the intimacy of his home and not intimate with his wife. I can't imagine him knowing, honey, something really crazy has happened. God spoke to you and God spoke to me. I say all that really to kind of draw your attention to this. It ought to shock us that God is so at work in our lives and our world. It ought to blow our minds. I know you believe it's true. I know that in your head you believe it's true. But as we celebrate Christmas, would you just stop and think about how the God of heaven waited about 4,000 years and then he just woke everybody up and said, It's happening. I promise it in Genesis 3.15. I showed it when I went down to seek out Adam and Eve. I love you, you belong to me, and I've come to save you. I want Christmas to mean to me more than it does. I want to spend time knowing my Father. What a God who loves me. I mean, how else could I how else could Joseph deal with such crushing news? My wife is pregnant. It's a miracle. It's no man, it's God. How could he deal with that? How did a simple Jewish man handle that? And yet we're called on to believe truths that are almost as awesome that God would love us like we are where we are and save us, that God would have us tell others that God loves them, that God, we would say that God is really actively involved in our world, and that God is listening to and hearing your prayers. So as Christmas comes, I just want to say to you, let's take some time to meditate on how great God is and what God's doing. And let it shock us that this world is not everything. It's not our home, it's not everything. Fact is, we're just on our way home, back to our Father, back to the way he originally intended it. Now, there's plenty of others, you know, ways of looking at it. I'll share a couple of those maybe tomorrow and the next day, but we're we're right on top of Christmas. How are you going to react to Christmas? Are you going to be super excited about the gifts or the giving of gifts or the debt that's coming or the decorations of the house? Where are you putting your emphasis? What's big to you? I want it to be Jesus, and I know you do too. And so I challenge you, I challenge you. Let's talk about Jesus.