{"id":63590,"date":"2023-07-31T00:01:37","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T05:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=63590"},"modified":"2023-07-31T00:53:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T05:53:48","slug":"give-me-a-faith-like-his","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=63590","title":{"rendered":"Give Me a Faith Like His!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You can only imagine what Joseph\u2019s family thought. You can only imagine what the townsfolk thought. You can only imagine what the religious leaders thought. You can only imagine the laughter and the mocking, the rumors and the gossip, the scolding and the censure. And maybe we <em>should<\/em> imagine it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes he really expect us to believe that he wasn\u2019t the one who got Mary pregnant?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve heard lots of excuses in my time, but never \u2018I was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.\u2019\u201d \u201cI heard that it wasn\u2019t her first time, either.\u201d \u201cI heard she got attacked when she was out drawing water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact is, those people would be no more likely to believe her explanation than we would be if someone fed it to us today. And those people would have been no less eager to propose some more likely explanations. Those people weren\u2019t so different from us, though they may have lived at a very different time and in a very different context.<\/p>\n<p>We can hardly blame Joseph for wanting to walk away\u2014to walk away from the mocking, from the gossip, from the shame. We can hardly blame him for resolving to divorce her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can only imagine what Joseph\u2019s family thought. You can only imagine what the townsfolk thought. You can only imagine what the religious leaders thought. You can only imagine the laughter and the mocking, the rumors and the gossip, the scolding and the censure. And maybe we should imagine it. \u201cDoes he really expect us to believe that he wasn\u2019t the one who got Mary pregnant?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve heard lots of excuses in my time, but never \u2018I was overshadowed by \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":63593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303,95],"class_list":["post-63590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","tag-faith","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/greg-rosenke-4TpmzpI8Du0-unsplash-1-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63595,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63590\/revisions\/63595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}