It's a choice

The Discipling Group at C-stone follows the format of 24 lessons where each lesson has 2 components: a Bible story and a "discipleship essential". The Bible story is told through "storying" where each member of the group takes turn learning the story well enough to retell the story from memory without missing any important elements. This is a great tool in not only understanding the Bible better but to easily share it with someone else. We all tell stories and enjoy listening to people tell theirs so it is a very natural way to learn and communicate. The second component of each lesson are some basic essentials for all followers of Jesus to know.

As mentioned in my previous post, the main goal of joining DG is to learn to be a better follower of Christ and in turn be able to apply those lessons to following the hubs better. The first DG was just an intro where my leader showed us how storying is done through the story of Jesus' birth, or actually, it was the story of the angel visiting Mary and telling her she was with child (Luke 1:26-38).

Now I have read this passage countless times and was wondering if there was really anything new I could learn about following God and in turn, the hubs. Mary was faithful and trusted God that she was going to be with child and the child will be the Messiah. God told me to trust him and that marrying the hubs was his will for me. Ok, did that. Nothing new...

But I thought about it some more and really put myself in the sandals of Mary and came to this thought: While Mary probably didn't have a choice that God chose her to be the mother of Jesus, she did have a choice in believing God, in following through with His commands and a choice in her attitude and response. She replied “I am the Lord’s servant,”,“May your word to me be fulfilled.” and then she goes into a song of praise!

Following God is a choice and our attitude and response should be that of willingness, trust and praise. Following the hubs is also a choice and my attitude needs to be of willingness, of trust and joy for how he loves and cares for me :)