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.
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