Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
All right, let's get into the word.
Verse 26 of Luke, chapter one. Verse 26, Luke chapter one.
We have been on a short series. We're talking about the three
wise women of Christmas. You know, most people talk about
the wise men and there's really no reason to believe there's
only three wise men. We just that's tradition.
We say that, but we, we've been looking at the wise women And
then last week we began to look at the power couples because
those women had some men connected to them behind every
great woman's a great man. Oh, that's not, that's not how
it goes anyway. But anyways, there's, there's
power couples. So we looked at the first week,
we looked at Zachariah and Elizabeth, how God was doing
something in that couple. And these are the players in the
Christmas story. Then we looked at Anna and
Simeon. And Anna and Simeon, you might,
if you know your word, you would say, wait a minute, you know,
they weren't, they're not a couple.
Well, they're tied together in their destiny and scripture and
they were a prophetic couple that validated what Mary was
caring, what Mary and Joseph had given birth to.
And then so this morning we want to look at Mary and Joseph and
specifically Mary. There's, there's God there.
There's things about Mary that is a template for how God
operates. And so that's what we want to
look at. So Father, Lord, we ask that you
would speak to us this morning, Lord, that you'd stir our
hearts. Lord, I ask for your anointing
to be upon me. And Lord, that your word would
be like an arrow that strikes the target.
And Lord, I ask that you'd provoke each one of us so that
we would be all you've called us to be in Jesus name.
Amen. All right, verse 26, this is
what it says. In the sixth month, the Angel
Gabriel sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a
virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the House of
David. And the virgin's name was Mary.
And so when it says in the six month, it's tying this story to
Zachariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth six months earlier had
been visited by the same Angel and had been informed that she
was indeed going to be pregnant supernaturally.
Not the same scenario, but a supernatural pregnancy.
And so six months into her nine months of pregnancy, this same
Angel goes and visits her young cousin, a young virgin by the
name of Mary. And if you read this passage,
it's almost as if the angels coming through the layers of the
cosmos, it says it was sent from God.
Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.
So there's a region Galilee, the city of Nazareth, and then to
the House of a man named Joseph, of the House of David.
And so there was this God was operating based on promises that
were generations ago. And so you had David, a man
after God's own heart. God had made some promises to
David centuries earlier and now God was going to make good on
that. Here's the here's the lesson for
you and I you can have you can have a relationship with God now
that God will visit your great, great, great, great grandkids on
not ought to motivate us live for the long term.
Amen. All right, so and it says in the
virgin's name was Mary. Now listen to what it says.
And he came to her, saying, Greetings, O favored one, the
Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at
the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might
be. And the Angel said to her, Do
not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and
you shall call his name Jesus, and he will be called great.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father
David. And he will reign over the House
of Jacob Forever and ever. And his Kingdom, of his Kingdom
there should be no. And verse 34 and Mary said to
the Angel, how will this be since I am a virgin?
And so there's a whole lot more to this story that most of us, I
believe, are aware of. We don't have time to get into
it, but I want to focus on on what's said here to Mary.
I want to focus on just a few phrases here.
Look at verse 28. And he came to her.
This Angel Gabriel comes to Mary, this young virgin girl,
she's in an obscure town called Nazareth.
Nazareth was not on the map for great notoriety.
Matter of fact, it said of Nazareth.
Can anything good come from there?
It this was an obscure place, an obscure girl, but God had his
eye on her. And so the Angel shows up and he
says to her, greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with
you. Verse 29, it says, but she was
greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what kind
of what sort of greeting this might be.
So the word of the Lord came to her and the word of the Lord
troubled her. And I'm here to tell you that's
that that is not an uncommon thing, that often the word of
the Lord will come to you and it will trouble you.
That word trouble is Diateraso. It means the avenue through
which agitation arrives. You ever been agitated by the
word of the Lord? She was told, it was announced
to her. I mean, this is a this is a
heavy thing. There's tradition tells us she
was in the backyard washing dishes.
Scholars believe she was about 14 years old, which was about
the common age for a girl to be engaged in that that era.
And she's standing there washing dishes, doing normal things, a
normal girl in an obscure place. And all of a sudden the Angel of
the Lord appears and he greets her with this.
Oh, greetings, Oh favored one. The Lord is with you, and she
was troubled. Matter of fact, the text says,
but she was troubled. We're short on time, so I'm
going to read you a couple things, some of my notes so that
I have time to get through everything.
The term but infers a contrast to the preceding statement.
Mary received a word of validation from the angelic
messenger, but rather than encouraging her, it troubled
her. The conjunction but highlights
the incongruity between the angelic greeting and her
perception of herself, between the word of the Lord and her
response. The word we translate great,
greatly troubled is diateraso, means to cause confusion, to
stir trouble, perplexity, and to be the avenue through which that
arrives. This is actually one of the
primary roles of the divine, of divine and prophetic revelation.
When God speaks to you, this is one of the the initial things
that God is after. It is intended to expose those
areas where our unbelief, especially our self perception,
is out of alignment with God's assessment of us.
The Word of the Lord comes to expose where we are out of sync
with God's view of us, with His plans and ideas concerning us.
This causes us to be troubled, and that trouble is an
absolutely essential part of the process if we are to be useful
to God. There was.
This was completely out of left field for Mary, and she had no
grid work, no warning. She didn't see herself the way
the Angel did. And that's precisely why the
Angel opened with the greeting, you know, a greeting, a greeting
in Scripture. You see this in the New
Testament. Paul would have his greetings in
the beginning of his letters and the other writers of the New
Testament as well. But Paul is, is really well
known for this. He'll say greetings and he'll
he'll introduce himself the the apostle Paul sent from God or,
and then he'll say to the Saints which are at Ephesus, to the
Saints which which are at Galatia.
He defines who they are. And if you look at Pauls
writings, the first half of his book is always really heavy
theologically and the last half of his book is really abundantly
practical. Real simple matter of fact,
Ephesians is a great example, 3 chapters really theological, the
second three chapters very practical.
The practical part begins in chapter 4 verse one.
It said, now walk worthy in light of everything I just told
you, walk worthy of the calling you have received.
And then he begins to say things like husbands love your wives,
wives submit to your husbands, children obey your parents.
Real simple stuff to understand. When I first got saved, I spent
the lion's share of my time in the second-half of these books.
And the reason I did that is because that was really easy for
me to understand. I could understand Obey Your
Parents. I'd had a hard time with it, but
that's that's why I needed to read that.
But here's the problem. If we read the marching orders
of the second-half of the book without understanding the
theology of the first half of the book, we're not equipped to
walk it out. What Paul would do, and
Ephesians is a great example of this, because in the 1st chapter
of Ephesians, Paul actually tells us to pray for a spirit of
wisdom and revelation. He prays for us that we would
have a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of
Him so that we would know what we already have.
And in fact, a lot of times as believers we are asking God for
things He's already given us. The problem is not God's
unwillingness to have given it to us.
He already did. He gave us all blessings in
Christ. The problem is our perception
that He's given it to us. And so the first half of the
book begins to unpack the inheritance that he's given to
us so that in the second-half of the book, when he starts saying
husbands love your wives, that you understand he's already
giving you the grace to do so. Now, I know in this room, it
doesn't take a lot of grace to to love the women in this room
because our wives are easy to love.
Amen. Gentlemen, I'm giving you.
Yeah. That was an opportunity for you
to wave a hanky and say, oh, Amen.
Pastor, I would have given you. Cut it.
I was setting you up for brownie points.
OK, but the fact is God has already equipped us in the first
half of the book. That's part of the greeting.
What he's saying is, And so the same thing is happening here.
The Angel shows up, and what does he say to Mary?
Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.
Here's the problem. The reason there's a butt in
there is that she needed her butt.
Kick the butt didn't what showed that she didn't understand that
God what that she was favored and that God was with her.
You know, it's let me say something that's going to
initially sound like heresy. I kind of like to do that kind
of shake you a little bit. The love of God for you does
very little for you until you agree with it.
God was with her and she didn't know it.
God can be with you, but it will not change you until you know
it. We need a revelation of what
He's already given us. So what happened is the Angel of
the Lord arrived to define who she was and what happened is all
this unbelief kicked up? And she was like, wait, wait a
minute, I don't see myself as favored.
And what do you mean God is with me?
She needed to be introduced to the reality she was already
walking in the favor of God on. You will not affect you until
you come into agreement with it. And So what happens is when the
Lord begins to deal with you. Let me put it this way, anytime
God wants to launch something fresh, and in this situation it
was really fresh. The Messiah, the Savior of the
world, was about ready to be embedded in the womb of a virgin
girl and give birth to Christianity.
All of history would hinge on what was going to happen inside
of her. But before God could do that,
before God could Jesus, the living Word.
John chapter 1 says the word dwelt with God.
He was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
It's saying Jesus is the word of God.
What does that mean? A word is a sound wrapped around
a thought in God's Word. God had a thought.
God had ideas about us. So what did he do?
He wrapped it in a person so he could speak through his life.
He Hebrews chapter one, it says that in times past God spoke
through prophets and, and, and you know, through his his
people. But now he speaks by his son.
It didn't say he spoke through his son.
Hebrews chapter one. It says he spoke by his son.
Everything Jesus did was God speaking.
He was a message from God. That's why we need to study his
life, the way he interacted with people that his, his heart, his,
his, his actions, not just what he said, but what he did is a
word from the Lord to you and I. But here's the thing, before God
could bring the word of God, the thought of God, what God meant
towards humanity, before he could bring the Word of God and
bring it through Mary, he had to plant it in her head before he
planted it in her womb. You can't carry what you don't
agree with. And so the Lord came to her and
told her she's highly favored. I'm already with you.
And she was like, what gives her?
She was questioning the word of the Lord.
And in fact, this is a common pattern in the Word of God.
And if you look back at your life, it's a common pattern in
your life as well. We see Sarah when she was Sarah.
I, she was. She overhears the Lord and two
angels speaking to Abraham, her husband, about the baby they're
going to have. And you know what her her
expression of great faith was? She laughed.
That's hilarious. She's slapping her knee over
behind the tent, laughing, and the Lord calls her on, Hey, you
didn't believe me. Oh, yeah, I did.
No, I heard you laughing. It's not an expression of faith.
Gideon argued with the Angel. When the Angel, the Lord showed
up for him. And here we have Mary.
She's like, well, this, you know, she's questioning because
the, the, the initial wave when God begins to call you into
something fresh, when God wants to bring you into new territory,
yes, you need a fresh revelation of him, But perhaps even more,
you need a fresh revelation of yourself from his perspective,
because to the extent that you agree with him is to the extent
that you can walk in his purposes, your identity, your
perception of yourself is the lid on your usefulness.
Here's a girl. She was, God was with her.
She was highly favored. The, the, the, the Greek word
that we translate favor is a derivative of the Greek word for
grace, The grace, the favor. This God was attracted to this
young woman. He put something on her.
He was with her and she was walking in grace.
And he didn't say the Lord will be with you.
He said the Lord is with you. But she didn't know it.
So what had to happen is the Angel had to come in to announce
to her what she already was walking in but was unaware of.
And there was it troubled her, it irritated, it agitated her.
And sometimes the Lord has to send a word to you to agitate
you. Sometimes that's my job, to be
up here and just agitate. If in fact, if you're never
agitated, if you read the Word and you never look at that and
say you don't laugh or you don't argue or you're not wondering
like Mary, if that never happens, I propose to you,
you're not really reading the word, You're just going through
the motions. You're not engaging it in your
mind because there are some crazy stuff written in that book
about you, and you are not yet believing all of it and neither
am I. So the rest of our life, we read
the word, we're inacting, interacting with the word.
People give us a word and the purpose of it is to agitate us,
to provoke us to begin to wonder about what why the Lord would
say this about us. Because the the initial purpose
of the word of the Lord, whether from the Bible or a prophetic
word or however the Lord speaks you, the initial purpose is to
kick those internal disqualifications that you
believe about yourself to the surface so you can confront them
and remove them so you can walk in God's purposes.
And when we don't when we do not believe the word of the Lord,
when we excuse ourself when we think I'm the exception to the
rule we we put a lid in gut. We are not useful to the Lord
every new season and you see this Angel shows up in Mary's
life often in the word of God. Angels would show up when it's a
new season in someone's life, they're going to be launched
into something new. And so the messenger, that's
what the word Angel means, a messenger from God would bring a
new message and, and when his arrival showed, hey, there's
something new God's bringing you into you see it.
Remember Joshua, who is being mentored by Moses.
He would go up on the mountain with Moses.
He would go in the tent of meeting and the the Moses would
go into the tent of meeting to worship and to pray and a fiery
pillar would come before the door.
That's trip. I'll tell you that gives you
some credibility as a pastor. If you see every time I walk in
my office and I say I'm going to go pray and I'll send a pillar
of fire in front of my window, you might put a little more
weight on what I say to you. And that's what would go on with
Moses. And Joshua would go with him.
He's being mentored. And there's this beautiful
passage that says Moses would leave the tent of meeting, but
Joshua refused to leave because he picked up a virus.
He was, he was addicted to the presence of God.
There's no high like the most high.
And he, he got addicted to the presence of God.
And he wanted to stay in the presence of God.
He'd live there. And that's why Joshua had favor
on him. So that when Moses passed, it
was time for someone to lead. It was Joshua.
But you know what happened when they moved into the promised
land? I'm here to tell you this
morning. Listen, when God brings you into
new territory, what he does is he gives you a revelation of him
and a revelation of you because your future will require a new
you that the the past didn't require.
What the past season required of you is not going to be enough
for the the future season. You're going to need a greater
revelation of who He is, and you're going to need a greater
revelation of who you are. That's how God brings us on.
He takes us from glory to glory. He doesn't drop all of it on us
at once, either our theology, our view of him, or our
identity, our view of herself. Because if he did, we'd just
kind of, we'd kind of just evaporate into a puddle and we'd
be all over. So he gives it to us
incrementally and he grows us into these things.
So Joshua is getting ready to go into the promised land.
What happens all of a sudden he's he's right by Jericho and
on the plane all of a sudden the Angel of the Lord stands before
Joshua. It's not an an Angel, it's the
Angel. And we know it's a theophany, a
even a Christophany, a pre Incarnate expression of Jesus
himself because Joshua falls down and worships him and the
Angel doesn't correct him like there is in some other passages
and Joshua says. Are you for us or for the enemy?
And the Lord said, I'm for God. It's a good answer.
It's a good question. If you're looking at an answer,
you want to know which side you're on.
I want to choose the side you're on, buddy.
But see, he needed a fresh revelation of God that he hadn't
had before, before he goes in and takes the promised land.
So when God calls you to do something new, it's always going
to feel like it's so far beyond what you can do on your own.
He'll give you a fresh revelation of yourself.
You'll step into that thing and it feels like, whoa, this is too
much. This is too big.
And in fact, if you think that you can handle the call of God
on your own, what what did Mary say?
She said, how can this be? The answer from heaven is always
the same. The Spirit of the Most High
shall over shadow you. The power of God shall come upon
you. That's always God's answer.
And in fact, if what you feel called to you can accomplish
without the overshadowing power of God, there's one of two
things going on it either you're deceived, you have not heard
from God, that's not your calling, or you have way
underestimated what it's going to take to pull it off.
Because God will always call you to something beyond your ability
to pull off always so that he gets the glory.
And then what does he do? He, he, he gives us a fresh
revelation of him, a fresh revelation of us.
We have to own what he says about us.
I'm highly favored. God is with me.
And then he steps you into the promised land.
There's acres and acres of promised land and you're right
on the threshold. And you've got to grow into that
and begin to take dominion of your promised land.
You grow into your future. You begin to steward that.
Every fresh assignment feels overwhelming.
And what it does is it'll force you to seek God all over again.
And about the time you think, hey, I can do this, I got the
rhythm. I know how to do this.
You know, what God does? Sends another messenger to you.
Oh, by the way, I've got another assignment.
He's always going to stretch you beyond your depths.
You know, Mary, something was placed in her that stretched
her. There is such a thing as
spiritual stretch marks. God wants to stretch us into our
future. He challenges us.
And what it's always going to take is God's going to confront
the misconceptions you have about yourself.
Some of you are living with diseased thoughts about
yourself. You believe God can do anything.
You just don't believe He can do it through you because you've
been told things. You've picked up lies along the
way. It might been that you had
abusive parents. It might have been that you had
great parents that weren't perfect like the rest of the
parents alive. It might have been something you
were traumatized. I don't, you know.
The thing is, the enemy is studying your life to sabotage
you and get you to buy into lies about yourself so that you will
hammer yourself in and you won't grow into what God has called
you to. And so the way of heaven is God
will come and confront you and and show you something about
yourself that tweaks you. It will trouble you.
It will agitate you. Often we think of, you know, the
word of Lord coming and comforting us.
And it is a comfort in a sense, but there's also a requirement
to that word that is very uncomfortable.
It's like me, Lord, you know, did you get the wrong person?
Was, you know, did you mean to talk to someone else and you got
the wrong chair? God is stretching us.
There is so much more in us that God is after, you know,
Ephesians chapter one, we keep going back to Ephesians this
morning. Ephesians chapter 1 talks about
Jesus having an inheritance in US.
It's not just that we have an inheritance in Christ.
Jesus has an inheritance in you, and He is zealously, jealously
pursuing that thing. He is after it, and He will send
agitating words to trouble you, to shake you out of your
lethargy and stretch you into a new place where you begin to
believe God for bigger things. And it's uncomfortable.
The word of the Lord often is, but God is stretching us because
what God was doing with Mary and this is a template for how he
works. This isn't an this is not an
anomaly. It's not a one off.
It's a template of how God operates.
He comes to us, he tells us how he views us.
It troubles us. We begin to ask questions and
then he shows us how he's going to do it.
And what's amazing about Mary is that Mary so quickly got with
the program. I believe that's one of the
reasons that God put his favor and his presence on her because
there was a responsiveness in Mary's heart to God.
It really is amazing how quickly she just said, how are you going
to do this? He explained it.
The presence of the Lord will over shadow you and what would
be in you will be from God and your child.
You're going to give birth to a son who's going to be known as
the Son of the Most High. And she said, OK, let it be unto
me as thou hast said, she owned that thing right away and at
great personal expense. You know, we have no record of
her mom and dad understanding what was going on.
Tradition tells us there's there's strong reason to believe
in in ancient documents that Mary's mother and father, they
were living in. I forget the name of the city,
but it's it was it. And that's where Joseph would
have most likely worked because of his skills.
It was where the Sanhedrin had their headquarters and that's
where all the most valuable scrolls would have been kept.
And tradition tells us Mary's dad was one of the guys that
were caring for the scrolls, very godly man.
He would have been entrusted. He had access to the word.
They were raising their daughter in the things of God.
But yet one day an Angel comes and says to her, you're going to
be found to be pregnant with the son of the Most High.
And she says, how's this going to be?
I've always been. So I think I mentioned this last
week, but it just so intrigues me.
What was it about Mary that she she didn't assume how it was
going to be accomplished like most of us do?
I'd have heard that if I was Mary, I'd have thought, whoa,
Joe and I are going to have a baby.
Let's get this wedding on, you know, But something.
And there's there's nothing in what the Angel said that would
lead her to believe initially that this wasn't just going to
be a special child that Joe and her would have.
She's already engaged. But Mary says, how can this be?
I am yet a virgin Now, let me just say there there are people
out there, there's scholars, liberal scholars that don't
believe in the miraculous and they try to water this down.
I saw one the other day this this woman was saying, well, you
know, it does. It's not important to believe in
the virgin birth. You know, it's really about the
way Jesus lived his life. We just like to emulate his good
life. And she said the word virgin in
the Greek just means it can mean someone who just makes their own
decisions and doesn't trust a man to make them for her.
That's what it means. I'm thinking then why did she
say how can this be since I am a virgin?
How can this be since I'm a person who makes my own
decision? Doesn't make sense.
Virgin meant virgin. She knew not a man and she
understood. Lord you're saying something
here. I don't have a grid work for
this has never happened before and the Lord told her this.
The Spirit of the Most High will over shadow you and what is it
conceived in You will be of the Holy Spirit.
And I I can't stress this enough I know I know this is in danger
of sounding a little new age ish when I say the the the seed had
to 1st be planted in her mind before it could be planted in
her womb. But it's true if she did not
agree with the word of the Lord she could disqualify herself.
So God had to 1st change her mind before he could plant that
word in her womb. And the same is true for you and
I. Before you can accomplish the
purposes of God for your life, you first have to buy off on it
mentally, intellectually, by faith.
You say God, I don't understand this, this is so far beyond me,
but so be it unto me. As you have said, I believe you,
and what God is after is for you to come into agreement to align
your belief system. And the whole purpose of that
initial word of God is to push to the surface those diseased
thoughts, those internal disqualifications, those beliefs
that you're the exception to the rule.
Because like I said, most of us, the vast majority of people in
this room believe God can do anything.
They just don't believe He can do it through them.
And that's what God is after. And he has to bring you into
alignment and he has to bring us along slowly because our mind
can't make those jumps. So I want to be like Mary.
I want to agree with the word of the Lord.
She said, so be it unto me. Set a great expense.
Because people would talk about Mary when Jesus in his ministry,
there were times they would say, Oh yeah, that's the guy
conceived out of wedlock. That's the illegitimate son of
Mary. That narrative followed him and
Mary had to embrace this thing that nobody is going to
understand. It's it, you know, there's
there's whispering when a church girl gets pregnant out of
marriage, but it's nothing like the Jewish culture of that day.
And then you add to it that she has this line that, well, it was
the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine?
They're saying either she's crazy or she's immoral and she
embraced that and said, Lord, so be it unto me.
As you have said, I'll pay the price.
We have no indication that her parents understood what was
going on. I'm sure that they were ringing
to have what's happened to our daughter.
They're looking at Joe coming that Joe knew we shouldn't have
trusted him and Joseph was ready to break up with her and he is
confronted by an Angel in the dream and said this is God
merrier. This whole thing called sin
entered the world when Eve was deceived.
First Timothy says very clearly that Adam wasn't deceived.
Eve was. But sin came into the world
through Adam, through the sin of one man.
Scripture says why Eve was deceived, but Adam chose to
disobey God out of his desire for Eve.
He made her an idol and he was willing to side against God with
her. And sin came into the world when
God is going to undo this mess that that original couple made.
You know, they say it's not the apple in the tree, but the pear
on the ground that caused all the problems.
Anyway, it when Adam and Eve made this mess, God's going to
undo it. What does he do?
He he didn't, you know, God could have said, you know, Mary,
one day could have felt some kicking.
You know, I'm gaining a little weight.
I'm trying to keep, you know, kind of keep my weight down.
Oh, something's kicking. The Lord could say, oh, by the
way, Mary got to explain to you what's going on here.
But he didn't do that. He announced it on the front end
and he looked for her surrender. And as soon as she said, so be
it unto me, as you have said. The Angel laugh because his job
was done. God had secured A vessel who
came into agreement with what God said about her, and God was
able to use her in the Kingdom. God always comes and asks you a
decision from your will. He doesn't force you.
He's going to ask you, will you do this?
And the way in which that begins, as he begins to talk to
you in ways, talk to you about you in ways that you have not
yet come into agreement with, that is the beginning when the
messenger shows up and God begins to deal with you and
people sometimes. Liz was in the first service.
We're praying over Josh and Liz made a comment about Josh.
She said, Josh, I remember when you were just a kid up here.
She said, I remember praying over you and she said this is
the answer to those prayers. We all need Elizabeth's in our
life that are pregnant with something you know there.
It's not a coincidence that when Mary got pregnant, what'd she
do? She she took off running and she
went over to Elizabeth's. Well, she wasn't that big yet,
but she, she, she went to Elizabeth's house because she
needed the support of someone who's carrying that.
There were those around her who didn't understand.
And I, I would propose to you that that's God's intention.
God will at times veil some eyes to what you're doing because the
external opposition to the inward leading creates
resistance and, and, and stamina in you that I'm going to follow
God regardless of whether people understand.
Now you got to be careful with that.
It's got to line up with the word of God.
You've got to find it in the word.
And there God's also going to give you a Liz, an Elizabeth
that's going to believe in you before you believed in yourself.
Mary had to get around someone who's a little farther down the
road in this thing. They've already been carrying
something. And when she walked in the room,
her baby jumped. There's a fellowship among those
spiritually pregnant women that there is a validation of what
they carry. So we need those people in our
life. But often God will blind some
around you to what's going on because He's trying to build
something in you. If you only agree with the word
of the Lord when others around you agree with it, you're not in
agreement with the word of the Lord.
You're in agreement with those around you.
When you can agree with the word of the Lord, regardless of what
other people think, then you know it's becoming internalized.
I've bought into this thing, this thing, I'm owning this
thing. And something within you is
beginning to grow that God's going to use to change the
world. Amen.
Let's go ahead and stand. During greeting time, Kate
McGovern had given me a word that she'd heard during the
first service, and I want to share this because I believe it
goes right along with what we're talking about.
This is what you heard the Lord say.
I am here to take your anguish. I will distinguish the truth and
the lie and take your overwhelming burdens and cares.
Give your burdens to me and let me carry you and receive my
assurance and peace. Then you will be able to go on
to a maturity. See, we many of us are shaped by
our experiences. We've allowed life to supersede
the word of the Lord. We believe the Bible for others.
We're just convinced we're the, the, the exception to the rule
and the Lord wants to go after those things, some of those
diseased thoughts about yourself that cause you to disqualify
yourself when God begins to move upon you.
I know I've talked about this many times and I'll be short
here. I know I had you stand.
First time Dean Briggs was here. He talked about that friend of
his that that had that prophetic dream.
This Angel ushered this man into a huge library.
It was the archive room of heaven.
And the Angel told him there's two volumes for every living
soul. There were millions and millions
of volumes, a pastor's dream. And then the Angel took, took
him over and he said, why 2 volumes?
And he recognized, oh, there's a set of 2A thick one and a thin
one. And the Angel tapped the thick
one and said, this is what God invites us into.
And then he pulled the thin one off and he said, and this is
what most believe for. And the fact is the difference
between the thin volume and the thick volume will determine your
reward when you stand before him.
God has called every one of us into so much more.
And it's not the it's not the thick volume.
It's what are you doing the thin volume that you're writing with
your obedience? Are you entering into God's
purposes? Are you willing to agree with
him? Some of you things have happened
in your life that have caused you to edit your definition of
yourself in a in a negative way. And I'm telling you your past
failure is not indicative of your future usefulness that
that's under the blood. God is reinstituting what he
originally said. The beautiful thing is God
conforms and doesn't just perform His perfect will.
Ephesians chapter 1 again, it says God conforms all things to
the purpose of His will. He takes our mess and folds it
into our purposes. So I want you to just bow your
head for a moment here. Father, I thank you for every
one of these this morning. I feel very strong that there's
some of you who have agreed with the accuser of the brother.
The enemy accuses you and you've come into agreement with it, and
the enemy's going to use that to try to hold you back.
But you've got to make a decision.
I'm going to side with what God says about me.
You might not even be fully sure of what He's saying about you
right now, but you've got to make a decision.
Lord. I'm going to tune into what
you're saying, and I will side against the lie.
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
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