Following God is Turning to Him at Every Crossroad

Matthew 2:19-23

So far we have seen God’s grace through the genealogy of Jesus.

We have seen the example of trust through Joseph.

We have seen the willingness to do whatever it takes to follow God through the magi.

This is a very good picture of the process we go through as Christians.

•          God reveals his grace through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
•           When we hear about this amazing act of love we respond by placing our trust in Him.
•           This response is not merely vocal.  The response is such that it involves our whole lives as we turn to him and follow him.

When we follow God we will find ourselves in unfamiliar territory.  The temptation will be to turn back to what is familiar.

Look at another example Joseph sets for us.

•          Herod sends soldiers to kill all the boys 2 years and younger.
•           Before the soldiers get there God warns Joseph in a dream and commands him to flee to Egypt.
•           We don’t how long they were in Egypt, but after Herod dies God tells Joseph it is time to go back.
•           When he gets into Israel he hears that Herod’s cruel son is on the throne.

Have you ever followed God to the point where you were in unfamiliar territory?  What did you do?  What were you tempted to do?

I imagine Joseph was tempted to go back to Egypt.  It was probably the safest option for him, but God had told him to come back to Israel.  We don’t know if he turned to God for an answer or not but God had a plan and he revealed it to Joseph.  Joseph listened and went to Nazareth.

There is a lesson we can all learn.  Our relationship with Jesus needs to be built on trust/faith.  Because of this we will find ourselves in territory that we are unfamiliar with.  Even though our initial reaction is to think this is bad it is really a good thing.  Why?  It causes us to trust Jesus.  We need to remember that, despite the temptation, we need to constantly be turning to him for further direction.  A simple analogy of this would be a GPS.  Our GPS only tells us the directions one step at a time.  It doesn’t just blurt it all out at once because there is no way we could remember everything.  It is pretty much the same way with God.  When he tells us to do something it is only part of the overall plan.  We need to keep going back to him for further direction.

Fight the temptation to flee back to what is comfortable.  Trust God and turn to him at every crossroad.  We can be sure that he will lead us correctly.