Chosen, Advent Week 3: Shepherds

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If you missed Week 1, Read Here

If you missed Week 2, Read Here

Scripture:

Isaiah 53:2-5

“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.   Like one from whom people hid their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

Encouragement:

I wonder if anyone today feels overlooked or rejected.  Maybe you were ridiculed and rejected as a child and those wounds affect you everyday.  Perhaps you chose a career path that your parent’s didn’t approve of and  doesn’t make a lot of money, but you chose it because it was your passion.  You may be working a job that is below your pay grade or education.  You may be putting in time at an internship or any job you can find to pay the bills.  Maybe like me, you’re a Mom who spends almost 24/7 wiping butts, refereeing arguments, cleaning up messes you didn’t make and finishing the laundry only to find 3 new piles waiting for you. 

Wherever you’re at today, I am sure most of us can relate to working a job, or being in a season of life where you felt overlooked, underpaid and even insignificant in the eyes of your peers, family or the world.  I hope that today, you are encouraged by this.  God chose to magnificently announce His arrival to a group of shepherds working the night shift.  To be a shepherd in that time would be the equivalent of washing potties in our day, it was a menial job that no one wanted and society didn’t value.

 Yet God chose to value those that no one else did by sending angels to announce the arrival of His Son.  God often shows up in the most unlikely and un-glamourous places.  In my own life I have seen Him work and move most powerfully when I was in seasons where I felt the most desperate: desperate for financial breakthrough, for spiritual breakthrough and relational breakthrough.  In these seasons, one thing has been a common denominator, I was humble in my heart, desperate for Jesus and crying out for Him alone to bring breakthrough. 

 I pray today you are comforted by knowing that the Son of God, Jesus was described as having “no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him.”  We don’t have to look a certain way or have it all together to attract the presence and power of God.  Our scripture passage in Isaiah even says that Jesus, “was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”  If we’re in a painful place today, experiencing suffering or even just wondering if God can show up in our situation, remember He is a God that looks for humility and hunger.  He will meet you in the most unexpected and unlikely places if you will humbly ask Him too.

Questions:

Where in my life do I feel the most desperate for breakthrough or change?

Is there any places/role/season in my life that I am viewing as insignificant or too mundane and menial for God to show up?

Ask God:  Lord in the place I feel desperate for breakthrough and change, how do you want to encourage my heart today?

Ask God:  Lord, in the places in my life that seem insignificant or mundane, what are you wanting to do in those places, times, and/or season?

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