BLESSED IS SHE THAT BELIEVED
“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy 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 for ever; 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 Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:30-35)
What an incredible event it was when God sent the angel
of the Lord to a lowly handmaid by the name of Mary to announce that she had
been chosen to birth the Son of God! Of
all the women in Israel, it was she whom the Lord chose. And why was she chosen for such a glorious
honor? It was as the angel Gabriel said,
“For thou hast found favour with God.”
God’s favor is truly an astounding thing. It is not obtained by our performance, or our
acts of charity; but it is based first and foremost on our faith alone. After all, God called each one of us when we
were sinners, and chose us to be His servants and bear His light to the
world. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
It is our faith that justifies us before God. In fact, there is nothing that touches the
heart of God more than our faith; but without it, it is impossible to please
Him at all (Hebrews 11:6). Faith unlocks
the power of grace in our lives so that God is then able to work in us the
ability to do His will. “For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10).
It is Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel’s words that
reveals her true heart and spirit: “And
Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy
word” (Luke 1:38). This is the
type of response that God is looking for in each of us. This is the reaction that pleases God and
causes Him to smile on us with favor.
This is the thing that has the power to change us and to revolutionize
our spiritual walk and our relationship with God. The Father is simply looking for someone who
believes with a perfect heart. “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro
throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose
heart is perfect toward Him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). Our faith is the victory that overcomes all
things that this world can throw at us.
Faith comes only by hearing, and hearing comes by the
Word of God (Romans 10:17). There are
those who say that God supposedly told them things which have no scriptural
basis whatever. Such things are not of
God; and no matter how long or how hard they believe in those things, they are
not going to come to pass. Our faith
must stand on what God has said, not on what we would like for Him to say. I must say that there are times when the Lord
will give us what we desire even when it is not best for us, but the end result
is that we grow fat carnally but suffer leanness spiritually (Psalm
106:13-15). The saying is true that we
should be careful what we wish for because we might just get it! We must take care that our wishes and desires
are centered on what God desires for us.
Later on, after Mary had become pregnant, she visited
her cousin Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s mother) who was filled with the Holy
Ghost and testified of Mary’s faith when she saw her saying, “And blessed is she that believed: for there
shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord” (Luke
1:45). Mary was blessed because she
believed; and because she believed, God was able to perform all that He told
her. God’s promises are only good if we
believe them. There are many wonderful
things that have been freely given to us from the Father’s hand, and they are
promised to whosoever will hear and receive them. Many, however, continue to lead defeated,
unhappy lives because they won’t believe that those things are theirs for the
taking. The message just sounds too
incredible to believe that it is for today, and for them. “Who am I?” they think, “I’m just a handmaid
or just a servant of the Lord – a nobody.”
It is just such individuals whom God chooses to bless and use,
though! “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised,
hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that
are: that no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Corinthians
1:27-29). When we just believe what the
Lord tells us in His Word, then He is free to begin to perform His will in us
in sometimes miraculous ways. What He
asks of us may go against the social or religious norms, but God has a purpose
for everything that He directs us to do.
There is a similarity that I see between this story of
Mary’s journey and our spiritual journey in the Lord. St. Paul alluded to it when he told the
Galatian church, “My little children, of
whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians
4:19). The sense is that just as the
Christ child was formed in Mary’s womb by the Holy Ghost overshadowing her, and
He began to grow and mature within her until she eventually gave birth,
likewise, Christ has been formed in us by the work of the Holy Spirit. The life of Jesus has been manifested in our
mortal flesh and is growing and maturing in us as we yield ourselves to Him. As John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease”
(John 3:30). It is not that we are
becoming many Christs, but that Christ is filling and replacing us with His new
nature as we die to our old, carnal nature.
This is a process that will take most of our lives. John tells us, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what
we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for
we shall see Him as He is. And every man
that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 John
3:2, 3). Now we are the sons
(small “s”) of God, John says, but it is not clear yet what we will be because
we are not matured yet. What is clear, however, is that as Jesus
appears to us, His likeness is going to grow in us. We are going to see Him, not as the world has
made Him, but as He really is. Having
this hope in us gives us the faith and desire to purify ourselves like He is
pure. The ultimate goal is that we, “May grow up into him in all things, which
is the head, even Christ,” and, “We
all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”
(Ephesians 4:13 and 15).
“And
blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things
which were told her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45).
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