You are highly favored but you got to pay!

For each of the girls around the world waiting for her marriage, her dream would be to have a good marriage, have a loving husband and have kids and for the ambitious would be to have good career with all the others. Mary like any ordinary woman would have thought she too would be having a great marriage with Joseph the carpenter. That’s when the angel Gabriel comes when she was having a quiet time (I’m just imagining it) and greets her with words “Mary you have found favour with God and God is planning to bring forth the savior of the world through you."

I have read and heard this story many times and never felt anything great about it until this Sunday at the church when Holy Spirit prompted me to speak from the life of Mary to the church during worship. I had already prepared a sermon and was ready to preach it. Here is something that I learnt through this story of favour. 

The first question that came to my mind was “what kind of favour is this?” yes there was a great blessing in this favour the savior was going to be conceived through Mary.  It was going to change her destiny and destiny of many. But have we ever thought about the shame that this favour was going to bring into her life and her family? How many young women want to get pregnant before marriage? None! Put this in the eastern context and see, where this is something unthinkable! This favour was going to put her, her entire family, Joseph and Joseph’s entire family into shame. See sometimes in our life God can ask us to do the impossible, ideas which are larger than us. Are we ready to give up our name? Are we ready to pay the cost for the huge vision that God gives us? God will bring us to favour but that favour will cost. It’s up to us pay the cost.

God disrupts the plan that we have.  As for Mary and Joseph they would have dreamt of a happy marriage, raising godly children, creating a home of their own and that’s when God sends His messenger to disrupt the plan that they had. Mary responded to the plan of God by saying that she is a bond slave to His will. By declaring that she is a bond-slave of God she was saying that the rights of her decisions were transferred to God. Are we ready to submit to the plans of God?

Position yourself for the miraculous. Mary positioned herself for the miraculous by obeying what God had plan for her life. She was bringing forth the savior of the World without any Human intervention. Till that time no child was born into the world without two adults coming together on bed. The world never imagined if something like that would happen. Mary prepared herself by her obedience to bring forth something that the world has never heard about, has thought impossible or never imagined. Even in our lives we have to position ourselves for the miraculous by our obedience to God. God is ready to do great thing through us that the world has never seen, experienced or thought of. The question is are we ready to position ourselves?

Don’t focus on our inadequacy. Mary being a virgin thought “how can I bear a child without a man?” Sometimes with what we have experienced and learnt we tend to think if something has to happen this is the way it should happen. But God is God of breaking impossibilities; he will make possibilities out of impossibilities (Luke 1:37). We don’t have to worry how it is going to happen, God will make it happen. If He has dreamt of something, he knows how to execute it. So stop looking at what is impossible to us and start focusing on what is possible by God.

Hope on the promises of God. When God asked Mary to stand with Him, He described to her what was in His mind. She was going to give birth to someone great, he will be the Son of God and will have an everlasting kingdom. (Luke vs. 31-33) God will share with us the outcome of our obedience; it is His promise to us. We have to cling onto it. We have to grow in intimacy with God to know what is in His heart. He is ready to share what He has in His mind about  the plan that He is going to execute through you. Mary partnered with God to bring in the Savior of the World, and she clung onto what she heard from the angel.

In our lives God wants to do something great. It depends on our response whether what He has planned in His mind is going to be revealed through us. We have to surrender, submit to and obey Him keeping aside the plans that we have made for ourselves. (His plan might be a onetime thing that will change the history of the world, a movement that starts through you or it can be anything in His heart of God.) Christ is not going to come to this world as a child again. He is going to come next as the King. Mary became a vessel to bring the 'Glory of God' to this World. Even now God is looking out for people through whom the 'Glory of God - Christ'  can be revealed in this world, are you that person? 

Chapter in context: Luke 1: 26-38

PS: I’m in no way endorsing the divinity of Mary. She was just a vessel that God favoured.

Who are you?

They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven '?" John 6:42

A question that always rings in our mind is this “Who am i? It’s a question that society asks us or it can even come from the people around us. The close ones, the far ones, everyone asks this question “who are you or who am i?” or might be, they themselves would have asked this question. And, this was the same question that Pharisees asked Jesus when they confronted him on His identity, “who are you?”  I loved the response of Jesus to their question, instead of arguing with them and proving that he is not the son of Carpenter. He chose to reveal who He really was. In verse 48 he says “I am the bread of life.” Many a times we face similar situation in our life. Don’t we? Where people question our identity? Unless we know, who we really are and what our purposes are, we will fail to live a satisfying and enriched life.

Jesus knew where he came from and whom he represented. He knew that he was sent to earth with authority from God the father (Matt 28:18) and he represented Him. He had a heavenly identity. He also had his purpose in clarity. Jesus clearly states that through believing in Him there is eternal life. So how does it become His purpose? Jesus was saying that His coming to world was to become a bridge, a pathway or on escape route for people to come out of darkness and also to bring restoration to the broken relationship with God and man. Another thing that really struck me was the comparison that he makes as him as the bread of life and manna. If you study the bible both came from heaven. Manna was sent by God and Jesus was also sent by Him but both had different purposes. Manna was sent to revive the physical man but Jesus came to the world to revive the spiritual man. a person who ate manna died after years because of old age or someother reason. But, a person who tasted Jesus, in the figurative sense, never dies. Jesus came to this world so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life. Eternity is to know God, live with God and to enjoy His presence.

From these verses (John 6: 41-51) we can understand two things - identity & purpose! Jesus identified Himself as the Son of God and as the way to eternal life. His purpose was clearly defined - to give eternal life to mankind. Now, coming to us we need to understand our identity and the purpose that we have. If we chuck out these it will destroy our very being. The identity that God gives us is that we are His children. We are heirs to the kingdom of God. (Rom 8:17) We belong to God which means that we have heavenly identity. In john 17:16 Jesus says that we are not of this world. So when we believe in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior and walk in obedience to Him our identity changes from that of the world to that of Heaven. World is no longer the home for us but heaven is. The purpose that we have is to grow in intimacy with God and follow what Christ did. He healed, brought comfort to the depressed, strengthened the weak ones & destroyed the Kingdom of darkness. Remember you have heavenly identity and heavenly calling! And, sometimes, some people like the Pharisees might not understand it or they might not get it because of their wiring! For an earthly or world focused man it will be hard to understand the heaven focused or heavenly man. So be faithful to the calling that you have!

Sin!

Yesterday i had finished reading the whole bible. After reading the following fascinated me- evil and Sin is hard to purge! In Genesis, The flood was meant to wipe out all the sinful people yet sin remained. Then God chose Israel to become God's Righteous hand, take out nations that went against the commandments of God. Still, the nation that God called chose to walk in sin. Sin loomed at large. Through all this God was showing the mankind the need for saviour and the frailty human efforts. Jesus was sent to the world to die for man's sin. The One who can purge sin and evil. He came so that man will have the freedom to not to sin. ‪#‎livesinfree‬ ‪#‎goodfriday‬