In my last post I wrote about how God chose a woman to do the hardest job, to be the mother of the Son of God. When God chose to be born human, a woman was an essential part of the plan. In fact, God has always worked with women to accomplish his purposes. Besides multiple women who miraculously gave birth, God called women to important roles of judge, prophet, queen, evangelist, apostle, and more. Just as before, God calls women now. Today, many women struggle to say yes to God because they don’t know they are allowed to. Still others hesitate because IT’S HARD TO SAY YES TO GOD. We are rarely given an advance account of exactly what lies ahead.

Like us, Mary didn’t know what she was saying yes to either! As Christmas approaches, let’s learn from Mary how to step up and say yes when God calls. We also need to know how to keep saying yes, even when we face unknowns and challenges.

God Calls Ordinary Women

Throughout the Bible, women and men interacted with God and were given opportunities to be part of the action. Often these choices required great sacrifices. Mary is not the first woman of the Bible to say yes to God. Other women like Sarah, Hagar, Miriam, Esther and Deborah teach us that when God calls, women can act with courage. But what about Mary? As a (probably) naive young woman, she seems a very unlikely heroine.

As a young Jewish woman from Galilee, Mary grew up in Nazareth, a town of only a few hundred people. With the rhythms of life centred around the growing season. The most exciting thing in the annual calendar was turning grapes and olives into wine and oil! Far from the bustle of Jerusalem and the other larger towns and cities, Mary must have lived a simple life. Certainly, nothing could have prepared her to think she would be called upon to be mother to the Messiah.

We Don’t Get a Playbook

When Mary said yes to God, she didn’t know what that would mean. She didn’t know that Jesus’s life would be under threat from King Herod. She didn’t know they would have to escape to Egypt and live there as refugees for years. When Jesus was grown, he didn’t become the kind of respected teacher or king she likely expected. Rather, Jesus always seemed to be in trouble. Mary and her family tried to intervene to at times (Mark 3:20-34), but Jesus continued with his own plan. Mary didn’t seem to understand what was going on, she just had to hold on through the terrifying drama surrounding Jesus throughout much of his ministry.

Of course the most important thing Mary couldn’t know was that her son would one day die on a cross. After being abandoned by most who had followed him, Jesus suffered brutal torture and death on the cross. As she stood at the foot of his cross, how was Mary able to reconcile what the angel Gabriel had told her about Jesus being a king? Perhaps it was at this moment that she remembered the prophecy of Simon the priest. When Jesus was a tiny baby, Simon had told her that “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 1:32-33).

Mary couldn’t have known when she was a young woman what would happen when she said yes to God’s call. We don’t get a playbook telling us how our calling will turn out either. But like Mary, we are told in advance that there will be difficulties to face. Jesus asks us to surrender our lives to God. It’s how he lived his life on earth.

God Calls Us to Face Into Storms

There was one storm Mary knew she was facing, right at the beginning of her calling. Before God’s call, Mary was already engaged to be married with a simple life all mapped out in advance. When an angel appeared with a very different message about her future, Mary understood the problem immediately. She asked, “How can I have a child since I haven’t been with a man?” In Mary’s answer we see that something particular was being asked of her. She knew that this prophesied pregnancy was not the usual kind!

The angel explained that the child would be born miraculously, by an intervention of the Holy Spirit. This explanation seemed to satisfy the young woman. She immediately agreed to what was asked. It seems that God chose a young woman who was either a person of vision, or just a young girl with a simple trust in God. Which do you think she was?

A Courageous Choice

Whether Mary was a visionary or not, one thing seems clear. Mary would have known immediately that saying yes to a pregnancy before marriage was a great risk. In first century Judea, premarital pregnancy was punishable by stoning. In saying yes, Mary was entering a world of trouble. How would she explain this to her parents? Would they believe her?

Mary’s conviction would have been difficult to explain to others. Convictions often are! But Mary had one thing to rely on. She knew she had not been with a man, but when her periods stopped, the miracle was confirmed. Even if no one else believed her, Mary knew she had a miraculous baby growing inside her. Regardless of whether we are believed or not, a true conviction keeps us committed. It still takes courage to act on our convictions. But once we know we are called by God, we join all the other women who acted on their convictions. We follow through.

God Sends Us Help Along the Way

We don’t know when Mary’s family became aware of her pregnancy, and we don’t know how they reacted. Did her family believe her story about an angel with a divine message? We can’t be sure. What we do know is that shortly after the angel’s message, Mary left her home and went “with haste” to the hill country. There she found encouragement in the company of a close relative, Elizabeth, who was also carrying a miraculous baby.

God provided Mary with the support of a woman who had good reason to believe in miracles. Although Elizabeth was well past menopause, she had miraculously conceived a baby. So when Gabriel told Mary about Elizabeth, God was providing Mary with someone she could turn to. Elizabeth was exactly the right person to confirm that God fulfils his promises (Luke 1:36-7). Mary’s hurry to get to Elizabeth tells me that she felt a great need to be understood and affirmed.

Shared Conviction and Connection

For the critical first three months of Mary’s pregnancy, these two women shared a special bond. They both had deep conviction, and shared a strong connection. Something had happened to them that they knew had to be from God. These kinds of connections between women who are called by God are just as vital today as they were then.

Elisabeth and Mary shared stories, prayers, prophecies, and songs. Besides the spiritual side, both women were giving birth for the first time, and discovering all the emotional and physical changes that entails. I’m sure there was joy and apprehension mixed together. One way women with callings get through the tough parts is by drawing on the support of other godly women. It has helped me so often when a friend in ministry reached out with encouragement at just the right moment. Moments of support really matter. But the best kind of support is from a community of women who have each other’s backs through thick and thin. Prayer support, insight from God and shared wisdom build us up. It’s the way Jesus told all his disciples to be, having love for one another (John 17).

Saying Yes to God

To sum up, Mary stepped into a high calling when she chose to bear, birth and mother the Son of God. Jesus invites us to a life of faith and courage too. Just as Mary surrendered herself to God, we offer ourselves without knowing exactly how it will turn out. I can say from experience, there will be difficulties as well as joys. The good news is we are saying yes to “a God who keeps his promises.” It’s a life of divine purpose, and we are called to support one another through the challenges. It all begins when we respond as Mary did, “Let it be with me as you have said.”

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It’s vital for us a women with a calling to draw support from those around us, as well as gaining confidence from women with knowledge and insight. Lynn Cohick is an inspiring theologian who has written extensively about women in the early Christian world, as well multiple works on books of the New Testament. You can learn more on Lynn’s website, or on her podcast, The Alabaster Jar. This Christmas, check out her timely advent podcast episode about Elizabeth here.