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Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Luke 1:45
Picture the scene: an assault on your senses has taken place. Against your better judgement and all rationale there’s no other option but to believe you DID see an angel and the Angel DID tell you that your life was of intrinsic value to God.
Not only does He have plans for your life, but the plans are beyond human comprehension. It makes no sense and yet something deep inside resists the urge to reject it: you can’t NOT believe it.
You’ve been called to do something for God and despite all logical thought whispering ‘impossible’, something is compelling you to respond in faith.
It’s tested, though, your faith I mean. Because the promise of God needing you and choosing you doesn’t happen immediately. Time has to pass. Social conventions will be challenged. It will seem like the odds are stacked against you. But others will see God and His hand of purpose at work in your life.
One day the wait will be over… And the faith journey will actually only just begin.
You thought fulfilment was a destination; a landmark you journey towards.
Ha! The thing God has for you will take more faith and belief in the face of adversity than you even thought humans could endure.
Fulfilment isn’t a final destination it’s a process of believing God’s at work in the journey.
I don’t know about you, but this could be me. Well, minus the Angel. I’ve seen a lot of things throughout my lifetime but not an angel.
Of course, I’ve just used this passage referring to Mary, mum to Jesus, so we can relate to a woman wrestling with the ebb and flow of being ‘called’ by God, and the search for the elusive sense of being or feeling fulfilled.
I love this passage. I love that God chose a woman to usher in the incarnated God-man. Biologically it was an easy call, but this is God we are talking about. I don’t think for one moment that he NEEDED to bring Jesus into the world via the body of a woman. So I love that he chose to have women as integral part of Jesus’ work on earth.
I love that Elizabeth recognised that Mary was blessed. Not for being called. But for believing that she was.
This is so interesting for us.
The blessing is not in the final fulfilment of what God has promised us, it’s in the heart commitment that steadfastly believes He will use us and that He wants to use us.
As this story unfolded in real time, Mary was face to face with Elizabeth. She was further along with her pregnancy. I remember being pregnant, with a couple of miscarriages behind me, and seeing friends, family members and what seemed like every female on the planet blooming in their pregnancies. My non existent bump in the face of their massive tummies made me question whether I was even pregnant at all. I mean, I KNEW, I was. But circumstances meant I doubted.
Elizabeth, in this instance, could just sense that Mary was in no such frame of mind. She could sense a God confidence permeating from her. Here was a woman who trusted that what God told her would happen, would in fact come to pass.
“Blessed is she who believes the Lord will fulfill his promise to her.”
So my question to you today, is ‘are you still believing?’
Has the passing of time caused you to doubt?
Have your circumstances meant reason has eclipsed faith?
Faced with the physical lack of purpose – Have you stopped trusting His choice to use you?
Can I be honest? I can answer yes to all of the above.
I’ve known God had something for my life since I was 12. Coming from a non-church going household when a lady pointed me out of the crowd at a youth club event to tell me ‘God wants to use you’ – my spirit leapt inside of me and those words have never left me since.
I’ve had seasons of daring to believe God kept to his word. Seasons of seeing fruit of ministry: lives saved, families flourishing, miracles happening.
But I’ve also had seasons of drought. Deathly drought. So dry that I’ve convinced myself God has changed his mind.
Can I be super honest? I’ve even wondered once or twice if mistakes I’ve made along the way have cost me the dreams I once dared to dream.
Just recently I was asked to speak somewhere and for the first time in my life I wondered about saying no. When you allow ‘lack of fulfilment’ to be your dominant thought you make decisions from a place of safety or fear, and not faith.
The thing about Mary’s story – and this is key for us – it wasn’t a one time thing. Think about it. God didn’t just use her once and for one purpose. Sure she was the vessel to bring forth God the Son, but that wasn’t it. Her sense of fulfilment wasn’t washed away when her waters broke.
No, even if she assumed that was it, there was more to come.
There was the nurturing of a child who would influence the world.
There was the prompting that only a mother can do, at the wedding at Caana, when she saw need and was the only one who knew a miracle personified was in their midst.
She was there after Jesus’ death, grieving but reassuring his followers that with God it’s never quite as it seems! I like to think she was comparing angel stories with an elite few.
We are still talking about her now so whatever she thought her calling was, it was beyond what she could even ask or imagine.
Note to self… That’s what God is like. Exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all we can ask or imagine.
Mary and her faith that God keeps His word is something we can all be reassured by.
Fulfilment wasn’t just Jesus being born. It was that she was his mother. That lasted throughout a lifetime.
Fulfilment for us isn’t one specific thing, it’s a lifetime of trusting God and his commitment to using us to outwork his purposes on earth.
If we are to narrow it down to one thing: be it a worship leader, a mummy, a wife, a CEO in business, a not for profit pioneer, a politician, a preacher… When that ONE thing doesn’t happen, or when that one thing is but an elusive dream, we can begin to doubt God’s word to us. We can begin to think that the ‘good plans he has for us’ to give us ‘a future and a hope’ are somehow down a fork in the road and we must have taken a wrong turn.
If we hone in on one thing we can miss what God is doing in us and through us NOW on the periphery.
When you put spiritual binoculars on only focusing on what’s ahead you miss the opportunity to see what’s around you now.
Have I got this sussed? Absolutely not. The bible says ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’ so it’s my priority to guard my heart and make sure the wellspring of life that flows from it, is healthy. That means I need to not see my purpose and calling as deferred but as something being out worked in a different way for now.
Can I just say this though; if you can leave your ‘calling’ to one side; if it fades and you never think on it again; then it probably wasn’t a calling so much as a passing thought.
Psalm 37:4 says ‘take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.’
I believe this is two fold.
One – by pursuing God first, He will deposit the dream and the hopes into your heart. I.e the stuff you long for could well have been put there by God. It’s a noble thing to want leadership, and to be used by God after all.
Secondly – by delighting in Him, for His sake and not to get those desires, He will make manifest the desires hidden in your heart.
That means even without a glimmer of hope that such dreams are coming to pass, when the bump isn’t showing, when others seem to be living their dreams and I’m not, I can still be confident, still be ‘blessed’ because I believe God will keep to his word.
Faith, according to the Bible,
is the
confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. (Heb 11:1).
Who’ll join me then in keeping the faith?
Who’ll join the ranks of Mary and Elizabeth and be blessed because we believe the Lord will fulfil His promise to us?