MARY: FROM FEAR TO FAITH TO FULFILLMENT PASTOR CHARLES PRICE. saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

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1 MARY: FROM FEAR TO FAITH TO FULFILLMENT PASTOR CHARLES PRICE My wife and I have our Bibles with us today. We trust you have yours as well to follow the Scripture reading from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 1. Our Scripture reading from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 1 commencing with verse 26: And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in they womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah; and entered into the house of Zechariah, and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass, that, when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of they womb. And whence is this to be, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed; for there shall be a performance of those things, which were told her of the Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. The Word of God. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

2 Right from the Garden of Eden, way back in the beginning book of Genesis, there has been the expectancy of the coming of a Messiah. In the Garden of Eden, when God spoke to the devil, He said in Genesis 3 and verse 15: I ll put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. You re going to strike the heal of the seed of the woman, said God to the devil. That is, you re going to injury him, but he is going to crush your head. That is going to be fatal and destructive. And ever since then the expectancy was God is going to intervene in world affairs. When Eve gave birth to her firstborn son, she said of him, I have gotten a man from the Lord, and the force of the Hebrew understand is I ve got the man. This is the promise that God has made. But little did she know that she held in her arms, not the Messiah, but a boy who would grow up to become the first murderer in the history of the world. His name was Cain; he would kill his own brother, Abel. Thereafter, the expectation was God is going to send His Messiah. When Abraham was set apart and told his nation was going to be the means of blessing the world, the expectancy was this is now when the Messiah is going to come; but He didn t. And right through the history of Israel, from Abraham on, every time a Jewish woman became pregnant, she probably wondered, Is this it? Is this going to be the Messiah? And it never was. And during those long years, the expectations of a Messiah had been molded in the thinking of the Jewish people, by the circumstances in which they lived, and their expectations became very distant from the reality it was going to be. You see, Israel had been oppressed for nearly 800 years before Christ was born. They had been under the control of super powers within the Middle Eastern world: the Assyrians, back in the 8 th century; then the Babylonians had replaced them as the dominant world power in that part of the world, and then the Persians had replaced them, then the Greeks under Alexander the Great that was during the inter-testamental period and then 64 years before Christ was born, the Romans had become the super power. And so the expectancy amongst the Jewish people was that God is going to send His Messiah, and He s going to be a military leader. He s going to throw off the domination of these super powers and re-establish our independence and give us back our dignity. And that was the expectancy that was commonplace amongst the Jewish people. Now of course, it s very typically human because we do the same thing. When we feel that we have some great need, we mould God to the shape of that need and then expect that God is going to meet that particular need, and sometimes in your experience and mine, He doesn t because we ve simply invented our own Jesus. It isn t what His strategy and purpose is to meet that particular need in our lives maybe. And so we re told in John Chapter 1, verse 11, that when Jesus was born, He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him. And the reason they did not receive Him was because He did not meet their predetermined expectancy of what the Messiah would be like. He wasn t born in a palace of royal parents and going to become a military leader. And they rejected the true Messiah because He did not conform to their own expectancy. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

3 But one day, in the town of Nazareth, up in the Northern part in the land of Israel, an angel appeared unexpectedly to a young girl called Mary. We don t know how old Mary was. We know she was betrothed to a man called Joseph. There were three stages in a marriage amongst Jewish people. There was the engagement first of all, which was when the couple were usually assigned to each other by their parents. Maybe if the parents had some good friends and this set of parents just had a baby boy, they d say, You re expecting a child. If it s a girl, wouldn t it be fun if your little girl married our little boy when they grow up? And so they planned this kind of thing. And as time went on there would become a legal recognition of that. It was called a betrothal period. It would last for twelve months. When they would go through a legal ceremony where they would become committed to each other, but they would not live together as man and wife. There would be no sexual relationship between them until a year later they would have the wedding properly, which would involve several days of celebrations. And then they would be fully married. Well, the youngest that you could be betrothed was twelve, and most by the age of sixteen would have been in that position, so Mary could have been as young as twelve. She may have been in her mid-teens, up to sixteen. We don t know her age; we can only speculate about that from the normal customs of the day. But she was betrothed, not yet married as we understand it. The betrothal could only be broken by divorce, which is why Joseph later contemplated divorce even though they were not actually married, because the betrothal was a legally binding commitment. And during that betrothal period suddenly one day an angel appeared to Mary. Let me read you in verse 28 what we had read earlier. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you. And Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. And I imagine you would be and I would have been as well. The angel said, But don t be afraid, Mary you have found favour with God. Very interesting that when the angel appeared to Mary, that one of the first things he needed to say to her was, Do not be afraid. Now there may have been various reasons why she might have been afraid. She might have been afraid just because of this angelic appearance. But I suggest to you that isn t the reason why Luke decides to record that. He records her fear because the message the angel brought to her was something that was going to be completely unreasonable from every human perspective. You re going to give birth to a son. But I m not married. I m a virgin. How can I give birth to a son? Her natural response was fear. And do you know something? It s not uncommon for people to be afraid when God begins to speak to them. I m going to show you in a Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

4 moment in the Scriptures frequently when God speaks, people s response is fear because again and again when God speaks to us, He says to us things that are beyond human, reasonable explanation. We ve seen this already in Luke Chapter 1 because there are the story of two pregnancies in Luke Chapter 1. One is the pregnancy of Elizabeth, who happened to be a cousin of Mary. She was married to a man called Zechariah who was the priest in the temple of Jerusalem, and they were getting on in years. And six months before the angel came to Mary, he came to Zechariah, and he gave him a message. In verse 11 of Chapter 1 of Luke 11 to 13 I ll read this: An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. Now, the angel hasn t said anything yet. This is just another flying white man so that is going to probably put fear into him. But the angel said to him, Do no be afraid And then he went on to say that his prayer has been answered, and Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. This is, of course, the man we know best as John the Baptist. But don t be afraid, he said to Zechariah for the same reason: the message that he is bringing to Zechariah is going to be beyond human expectation, beyond human ability. You see if Mary s problem was that she was too young and not yet married I m still a virgin; I m too young. How can I have a child? if that was Mary s dilemma, Elizabeth s dilemma was that she was too old, the complete opposite of Mary. Mary was young and virile. Elizabeth was old and barren, but the same situation. God appeared, sending his angel and saying, You re going to have a child. To you it s too soon, Mary. You re too young. Elizabeth, for you it s too late; you re too old. In both cases, God brings them a message through the angel that is humanly speaking totally unrealistic, totally outside of the realm of possibility for them. And you see, when God speaks to us, God rarely talks to us about the things that are humanly possible. We don t need God for that. When God speaks to us, we find him saying things that are beyond human possibility, beyond what is naturally available to us. I mean, how about you when God speaks to you. What is your response? Do you respond in fear? I hope so, and I ll tell you why. If you feel you can do what God is telling you to do, there is no grounds for fear at all, just, Okay. I ll do it. But if God calls you to something or demands something of you or tells you something either through His Word about His plan for all of us, or maybe some way by the Holy Spirit He specifically speaks to you about something when God speaks it will be about something that s beyond human ability and beyond reasonable human terms. And the result, as it was here, was fear. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

5 You see, you and I have a choice. We can live in the realm of the normal where everything we attempt is perfectly normal and reasonable and explicable and can be explained in terms of human ability. We can either live on that level, or we begin to live on a level where we begin to commit ourselves to things which humanly are not possible, seemingly. Or to ourselves are not possible. You see, what sets the genuine Christian apart is not that he s in church every week, but there are features of his life and her life which defy any explanation other than the fact that God is at work within them. The peace, the joy, the sense of security that they experience can only have one explanation: God is doing something. You see, if we live in the realm of the natural and never allow God to take us into the realm of the supernatural and by that I mean in ordinary life, willing to trust God for things that are beyond what is natural we ll never know the thrill that we ought to experience in the Christian life as you re going to see Mary was to experience. You see, if there s nothing about our lives that requires a divine explanation, we re little different to our neighbours next door who couldn t care less about God. As far as they re concerned, we simply have different interests to them, different hobbies to them. Your neighbours hobby may be playing golf. As far as he s concerned, your hobby is going to church on Sundays, but that s the only difference. There s no fundamental difference in the way we live out lives as far as the resources and the evidence of God is concerned. And that s why it s quite normal for people to be afraid when God speaks to them. And through the Scriptures, right through the Old and New and it would be tedious this morning to give you a list of all the people who were afraid when God spoke to them, but there are many. Some are very well-known stories. When God spoke to Abraham at the age of seventy-five, he was married to Sarah who was sixty-five years of age; they d been married for years. They had no children. She was barren it says. And in any case, at any stage, seventy-five and sixty-five, they were sort of beyond any natural means of producing children. She d be beyond the menopause anyway at that stage. And God spoke to Abraham: Look at the stars in the sky. You re going to have as many descendants as stars in the sky. Your wife will give birth to a son and from that son will come a nation that will bless the world. And in Genesis 15, verse 1, God said to Abraham, Do not be afraid. God leads us beyond human resources. And God called Jacob. Jacob was a twister and a cheat, but God changed his name to Israel, which means prince with God. And when God met him in a place called Beersheba and said, I m going to bless you. I m going to increase your descendants. In Genesis 22, He said, Do not be afraid. And when Moses, at the age of eighty God does a lot with old people in the Bible, by the way; just to throw in as an aside, and we re all going to get old one day. Don t ever write yourself off and say, God s finished with me now because I m past my peck. When Moses was eighty, God spoke to him in a burning bush and said, I m going to send you back into Egypt to bring the Israelites out of their bondage and slavery and take them through to the land of Canaan and it says, Moses hid his face because he was afraid. In each of these cases and there are many more God says I m going to tell you something that will take you out of your depth Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

6 where you don t have human resources to accomplish it, and your natural response will be fear. Mary, don t be afraid. Has God ever made you afraid? You say, God doesn t do that, but the truth is He does. You know, three hundred and sixty-six times it says in the Bible, Do not be afraid. That is one time for every day of the year, including leap year. That means God can give you a fright every day of your life! Every day of the year, three hundred and sixty-six times. And it s good to be afraid, and I ll tell you why: because anything of which we are not afraid, we ll take on with our own natural resources. I can do this myself. I m not afraid of it. That s why the Book of Proverbs tells us that, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of God is not in itself wisdom. We re told that the demons fear God, and they tremble and they re not wise. But the fear of God is the launch pad for wisdom. Why? Because when we recognize the situation that naturally makes us afraid, we then have to begin to look for the resources that are beyond what is natural, beyond what are human. And so Mary asks the question in verse 34 having gone on to say in verse 31, You ll be with child and give birth to a son, [and] you re to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the House of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will never end. What a marvelous description that the angel gives to Mary of this baby she s going to bear. And she asks the question in verse 34, How will this be? If there s one question that God is used to hearing it s the question, How? He heard it earlier in the same chapter from Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. In verse 18, Zechariah asked the angel, How can I be sure of this? I m an old man and my wife is well along in years. How is this going to happen? And you see, the question how is a question that God hears frequently. It s a question He s not afraid of. Abraham asked that question. You re seventy-five, your wife is sixty-five; you re going to give birth to a son. How can this be? We re too old, too past it. Moses asked the question in Exodus Chapter 3, verse 11, when God said, I m going to send you to Egypt. How? says Moses, How can this be? And God has only one answer to the question how. It doesn t matter what circumstance in which you ask that question to God: How is this going to happen? How are you going to do it? His answer is the same every time. It s His answer to Mary in verse 35: The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Mary, the answer to the question how is very simple: the Holy Spirit is going to come on you. And in verse 37, Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

7 For nothing is impossible with God. Mary, this is impossible to you. You ve got to go through a complete change of thinking here, not relate this to yourself because that is impossible, but relate it to God. Nothing s impossible to God, and the Holy Spirit is going to bring about what He has promised. You see, Mary, it s not your job to reproduce, to somehow sit down and if you sort of think hard enough, somehow you re going to reproduce. Of course you re not. Mary, you go home and relax because what I require of you the angel is saying by implication what God requires of us is not your ability but your availability. If all I require is your ability everything would be explained in terms of you. It would be a natural explanation. But if it s your availability of course God works through our ability, but there s something bigger than simply a man, a woman s ability. You recognize God is at work in that situation. This is the same answer that He gave to Zechariah and Elizabeth because in verse 24 and 25, earlier in the chapter, [it says:] After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. The Lord has done this for me, she said. This is God s doing. Now of course, Elizabeth s conception was not miraculous in the sense that Mary s was. Zechariah became the father of the child, John, through natural means, but God intervened to bring an old lady who was already barren, had even been barren even in her period of fertility, to intervene and bring about the miracle of this conception. You see, there are two things running through this story: the revelation of God s plan provokes fear on the part of those to whom He is speaking. When God gives His plan to you, it provokes fear. But the revelation of God s power produces faith. Because then you begin to say, This is going to be God s doing. So down in verse [45], Blessed is she This is where Elizabeth says to Mary, Blessed is she who has believed what the Lord said He will accomplish. That s faith. When God says it, God will accomplish it. Not God says it so I ll try my best to accomplish it. Now that s a mistake many, many, many Christians make and many of God s people right through history have made. It s a mistake Abraham made after awhile because when Abraham got the message, You re going to have a son, he was seventy-five years of age, as I ve said before. His wife was sixty-five years of age. The Bible isn t complimentary of either one of them because it says about Abraham, it says, and him as good as dead. It says that twice. It says about Sarah, she was worn out. Now here s a worn out woman of sixty-five, which you know isn t old any more, but she s worn out anyway, with a good as dead husband, Abraham. God told Abraham his plan. He didn t tell Sarah His plan. Abraham had to come home and tell Sarah that. I ve been talking to God today. And Sarah probably said, And what did He say? Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

8 Well Sarah He s as good as dead, remember. He told me He s going to give us a g-g-g-g-gift. What is He going to give us? It begins with B, Sarah. You ll never guess it. He s going to give us a baby. And it says, She believed him. I think that s remarkable. (If I told my wife I d been having a conversation like that with God, she wouldn t believe me!) She probably started knitting because that s what ladies do when you give them that kind of information. And nothing happened. Three months went by. Six months went by. And nine months went by. Twelve months went by. Eighteen months went by. Two years, three years, five years. How are you feeling, Sarah? You put any weight [on] at all? No. I ve not. You being sick in the morning? You eating funny things like bananas and onions at the same time? And after ten years, Sarah said, Did God tell you we were going to have a baby? Well, yes He did. Are you sure it was God who told you that? Yes, it was God who told me that. Are you sure you hadn t eaten some Danish blue cheese? No. It wasn t the cheese. God told me. Well, where s the baby, Abraham? Well, maybe God didn t realize how worn out you were. She probably said, Maybe He didn t know how dead you were! But whatever the problem, with the promise of God ringing in their ears for ten years, there s no baby so they say let s help God out of this fix. And they resorted to human effort, human ability to have a family. And Abraham slept with the maid, Hagar, an Egyptian girl. She gave birth to a son; they called him Ishmael. Abraham must have been thrilled: At last I ve got this little baby boy. He s now eighty-five years of age. But God never recognized Ishmael because Ishmael was a result of what Abraham did for God, not a result of what God would do for Abraham. You see, years later Isaac was born, and it tells us in Galatians chapter 4 that it says that Abraham had two sons. Let me read it to you. Galatians 4 and verse 22. Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

9 That is Hagar, and the baby was Ishmael. the other by the free woman. That s Sarah, and the baby was Isaac. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way. In other words, there was nothing unusual about the birth of Ishmael. When Ishmael was born, the local gossips got together and said, There s a baby in Abraham s household. They said, Oh yes? Who s the father? Abraham. Oh yeah?. Who s the mother? Hagar. You mean the maid? Yes. You mean Abraham and the maid? Yes. Juicy bit of gossip to pass around, but perfectly natural explanation. It works. An old man and a young woman. It works. He was born in the ordinary way. but his son by the free woman was born as a result of promise. Then when Isaac was born and the local gossips got together and said, Hey! There s another baby in Abraham s household. They said, Oh there is? Who s the mother this time? Sarah. Beg your pardon? Sarah. But she s ninety. I know. No, not the grandmother. Who s the mother? Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

10 No. No. She s the mother. Well, what s the explanation? God did something. And you read Galatians chapter 4, it says it s a picture there. Ishmael s the picture of the flesh that fights against the Spirit, which is a picture of Isaac. In other words, it s what Abraham did for God that produced Ishmael out of a sincere attempt to bring about the will of God but by human scheming. Whereas Isaac is a picture of what God did for Abraham. And you see, if your life and mine can be explained in terms of what I do for God, we ll be religious but nothing more than that. But when we have the real thing, our lives will be explained only in terms of what God does for us. That s why we begin to manifest qualities that humanly speaking we d never manifest: peace, joy, love. All these are the fruit[s] of the Spirit. Longsuffering, patience. Because the Spirit of God will be the source of your strength and your enabling and your ability. You see, the quality of our faith that is, our willingness to trust God I suggest to you will grow out of the genuineness of our fear, our awareness: This is bigger than me. Some of the best things God has ever done in my life, and maybe in some of your lives as well, you look back to events where God led you into events you knew you were right over your heard, and you either quit or you said, God, this is not what I do for you; this is what you are going to do because you have put me here. And you just trust Him. And you look back in retrospect, with absolute amazement, God actually did it. And if it s the revelation of God s plan that produces fear, it s the revelation of God s power that produces faith. And so, in verse 38, Mary says, I am the Lord s servant, Mary answered. May it be to me as you have said. The King James puts it, Be it unto me according to your Word. May it be what you have said. God, you said it; you do it. You promised it; you fulfill it. Because this is not my business; this is your business. My body s available to you, and if you want to place the seed of your son in my womb, that is a marvelous privilege for me, but I can do nothing about this. May it be to me according to your Word. And you see, the response God looks for from you and from me is not, Yes, God. I promise you I ll try a little bit harder than I ve been trying in the past. There is, of course, discipline in the Christian life, but that doesn t make you godly or effective. It s saying in every part of your life, Lord, in my home, in my marriage, in my relationship with my children, my relationship with my neighbours, in the work that I do, Lord, may the Holy Spirit work. And He does because that s the whole point of being a Christian, being reconciled to God that we might know the power of His Spirit working in us and through us. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

11 And other people may say, Oh, well. You re just a nice person. But you know fine well that you re not because the heart of man is corrupt. My heart is corrupt. So is yours. And I know how that day after day, I say, Lord, I know the kind of things that go on in my heart, the kind of thoughts that I have, the kind of temptations that I battle with, the kind of dreams that I like, and they re all rotten. But I thank you so much that you live in my heart and your purpose is not to give expression to the rottenness of the human heart. It s to express your own character. And you never see it; you just see the battle that goes on inside. You just see all the rottenness. You spend your life saying sorry to God. But the marvelous thing is He picks us up in our weakness. That s why strength is never a virtue in the Christian life; it s a handicap. Weakness is a virtue in the Christian life because where I can t, we say, You can. Let it be to me according to your Word. You do it. And the third thing is this: if the revelation of God s plan produces fear or provokes fear, and the revelation of God s power the Holy Spirit will come on you provokes faith, then the realization of God s purpose provides fulfillment because in verse 46, Then Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour Again, the King James says, My soul doth magnify the Lord. I like that word magnify. What happens when you magnify something? When you magnify something, you make it big. We never make the Lord bigger than He already is, of course. We never see Him as big as He really is, but my soul gives a revelation of God that is big. When we were looking in Philippians a few weeks ago, that s the very thing Paul said in Philippians 1, verse 20, As always, he writes, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. My one ambition, he says there, is whether I live or die that my soul becomes a magnifying glass for God. People look at me and say, What a big God. My soul will magnify the Lord, says Mary, that people look at me and say, What a big God. They ll look at me and they ll see not something I have done but something God has done. Now, of course, people didn t recognize it as that. People just assumed the obvious. The obvious was that she had slept with Joseph prematurely, and the baby was illegitimate. And we know they assumed that because thirty years later when Jesus was preaching, in John chapter 8, they sneered at Him and said, We are not illegitimate children. We know who you are; we know your backyard because He said in that chapter, You have your father, the devil, and they said, Excuse me! Who are you talking to? We re not illegitimate children. The implication being you are. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

12 You see, Joseph didn t go around the neighbourhood, knocking on the door saying, I just want to explain. My fiancé is pregnant, but it s nothing to with me. It s to do with the Holy Spirit. I don t think the neighbours would buy that; would you? I mean that s a great alibi. I m sure all kinds of people would adopt that one. No. No. Mark chapter 8 as well I think it s Mark 8 they said, We know this man, and we know who His mother is, and we know who His brothers are. We know this man s history. We know He was born before they were married. You see, the world doesn t see the explanation. Don t go home and think, well if I just let God be God, my neighbours will notice it. They won t. They ll explain it some other way. But the point is, God s will will be accomplished. God s purpose will be accomplished. My soul magnifies the Lord, not because the neighbours knocked on Mary s door saying, Mary, we think you re fantastic! They probably knocked on the door and said, Mary, you re a dirty woman. But two thousand years since, we re still saying of Mary, what a marvelous lady! Woman of integrity. A woman who learned to trust God, and you see, the ambition of the genuine Christian life is that the end result is that our soul magnifies the Lord. So as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 16: Do what? Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good words and praise your Father who is in heaven. Or glorify your Father. They ll see your good works, but they won t say, What a good man that is! They ll say, God is behind this. And you see, you and I are living the Christian life when our lives naturally turn people away to God because they see He s the source. Why do we live the way we do? Why do we handle our families the way we do? We do we go about our business the way we do? Why do we live with the integrity in our business life that we do? Because God is our strength and our source. The revelation of God s plan provokes fear. You at that point in your life right now? You say, I understand what God wants, and I m scared. Maybe some of you are scared of becoming a Christian because you know something of what the demands are and why God wants to save you, not just to get you to heaven by the skin of your teeth one day but that here and now your life is going to be totally different. You say, But I can t change myself! Exactly. You can t change yourself. The Bible says, If any man is in Christ, he becomes a new creation. God changes you. But having faced the fear, we say how? And the revelation of God s power produces faith. It s the Holy Spirit! It s not what you do for God; it s what God will do for you through the Holy Spirit. You at that stage in your life? Well, you need to say, Lord, I m willing to trust you. Please come. Take over my life. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price

13 If you ve never become a Christian before, you say, Lord Jesus Christ, please come and enter my life. Forgive me of my self-sufficiency and my sin that has characterized my life up until now. Come and live in me, cleansing me because you ve died to pay for my sin, and to then empower me to be a new person. If you re at that stage in your understanding of the Christian life, then the third stage is the realization of God s purpose provides fulfillment. Be it unto me according to your Word. I want you to accomplish your will. It will provide fulfillment. My soul will magnify the Lord. And this is the story of Christmas. We sentimentalize Christmas a little bit. We disinfect the stable and make it all nice and cute. But before Christmas could ever take place, before the baby could ever have been born, there had to be a transaction that took place between Mary and God where she presented her body, in the words of Paul, a living sacrifice. Be it to me according to your Word. My body s available to you. And you see, before you and I begin to see God working in us and through us with all the consequence of that, there has to be that beginning where you come and say, Lord, I give my life to you and my body to you. Maybe some of us have been Christians for years but we ve ended up and it s so, so easy to do like Abraham did, instead of waiting for God s timing, start producing Ishmaels, instead of waiting for God s timing for Isaac. We re doing it by human effort. Then this morning you need to come and repentance and say, Lord, I want to come to the beginning, back to the basics and let you have your way without any strings attached. You be Lord, God, Master, in my life. Let s pray together. Father, I want to pray for every person here this morning. Thank you so much that you love every one of us. Thank you so much that you re willing to expose to us the bankruptcy of the human heart and human resources so we don t try to live by our own abilities because we ve known from our experience that that fails us, but sometimes we ve though that we re suppose to so we ve tried harder instead of learning to trust you. And I pray, Lord Jesus, by your Holy Spirit, you ll reveal to us how we can learn to rest in your strength and your power and your sufficiency, that you work in us to will and to do of your good purpose and we begin to become an exhibition of Christ in us and through us. Make this a reality for us as you made it a reality for Mary. We ask it in Jesus name. Highlights in the Life of Christ, Mary, Price