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Monday, December 10, 2018

Just Believe


The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month.  For no word from God will ever fail.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
—Luke 1:30, 31, 35-38 (NIV)


When Gabriel visited Mary he found a girl whose heart was full of faith and ready to believe God’s promise that she would conceive and give birth to the son of God. Elizabeth’s husband, Zacharias, the Priest, had also been visited by Gabriel and informed that his barren wife would have a baby. Zacharias was a man of the law, and supposedly attuned to God’s voice, but he had trouble believing God’s messenger (Luke 1:13-18). Compare Mary’s faith to that of Zacharias. When Gabriel explained how God would use her, Mary was humbled by God’s miraculous promise. She just believed. Mary, an ordinary village girl, had more faith to believe in the impossible than a priest who claimed to know God intimately. Zacharias’ faith had given way to pride.

Sometimes it is easier for a person fresh to the love of Jesus to exhibit greater faith to believe than a person with years of religious experience who has forgotten the miracle of his own changed heart. Mary’s innocent faith believed in the impossible. It was uncompromised by the religious attitudes of man or the human explanations of Pharisees. Her faith needed no explanation for Gabriel’s miraculous words. Mary did not analyze what she had heard. She did not ask Gabriel to give her time to consider what she had been told. She did not need to ask the opinion of someone else with more spiritual experience—like a Zacharias. 

Is your heart full of Mary’s kind of innocent faith or have years of a Zacharias’ kind of religious tradition dulled its luster? God desires your heart to be as Mary’s—easily moved by words of the Holy Spirit. God needs no explanation. He needs no human reasoning. He just needs you to believe when He speaks. Don’t be blinded like Zacharias. Just believe and cry out as Mary for His purpose to be fulfilled in you. No words from God will ever fail.

© 2018 Lynn Lacher
www.lynnlacher.com/2018/12/just-believe.html
         

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