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Here’s a link to an online audio reading of Luke 1 and another to Matthew 1 if you prefer to listen to the scriptures we’re praying about today.
Welcome! If you’d like to read instead or read along, here’s the transcript:
Hello and welcome to week two of Advent and our second mini deep dive this month. This week we're going to be focusing on Mary and Joseph and their part in the Nativity story and what we can learn from them about our walk with God today as we live our daily lives, not just waiting for Christmas, but saying, “Thank you God for all that you have gifted us now.in our lives”.
So we're looking forward to celebrating Christmas but we are also saying “Yeah, we're living in the fullness today. We're living in the fullness during advent of our relationship with Jesus”.
So our scriptures for today are Luke 1 and Matthew 1. I'm going to pop some links so you can listen to the audio of that if you'd like to or you can just go and read them through yourself and spend time in those scriptures.
We're going to be talking about Mary today and her relationship with the Holy Spirit, which I love just thinking about that. And so we're going to do that, to share some thoughts on that. We'll be praying. And then tomorrow we will be focusing more on the Magnificat. So that's the prayer or the song that Mary said or sang, depending on how you're interpreting it and what version of the Bible you have, but the Magnificat is that part of the Bible that says my soul exalts the Lord or my soul magnifies the Lord and it's very beautiful. And we're gonna look at the whole theme of magnifying God - what does that mean to exalt and magnify the Lord. So that will be Devotional one.
Devotional two, we're going to look at Joseph's story and what we can learn about the way he responded to God. The way he stepped out of the norms of his culture to obey what God said to him. Quite a courageous man, and remember that it wasn't just Mary who was chosen, but Joseph was chosen as well. God knew that Mary was betrothed to Joseph.
So Joseph was chosen as well and I think, often in history, people look at Joseph as someone on the sidelines. But actually Joseph is very key to the upbringing of Jesus and his safety and security and so we're gonna look at him a little bit more.
And then we are also, on our third one, going to look back at Mary as a role model and do a little bit of myth busting about assumptions that people make about her but to look a bit more into her life and what we can learn from her as a role model, not just in the nativity story but for our lives, through looking at her a little bit further in scripture as well throughout Jesus's life.
So let's get on with today! Lots that we've got to look forward to this week. But today I want to look in Luke at the part of the story when the angel comes and speaks to Mary. So the angel Gabriel comes to tell Mary that she is going to become pregnant and carry the Son of God. That's amazing isn't it in itself? But particularly from verse 34:
But Mary said to the angel how will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered and said to her “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you for that reason also the Holy Child will be called the Son of God”.(NASB)
These two things in the same verse fascinate me and we're just going to think on those and pray through those today.
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you.”
Now, Mary clearly had an encounter with the Holy Spirit because Jesus was conceived within her by the Holy Spirit. But that phrase, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” - and when we go on to look at the Magnificat further on in Luke one, where Mary sings out that exaltation to God, you really get the impression that the Holy Spirit didn't just come upon her to cause her to conceive, but that the Holy Spirit really was working in and through her as well. It's a kind of bubbling over, isn't it? The Magnificat, the whole part of the scripture there where she is exalting and rejoicing in God and in the fact that she has been chosen and what this means for the generations and for the Israelites.
And it's really a blending together of lots of scriptures. If you go back through the Old Testament that much of what she says in the Magnificat refers back to different passages of scripture as well.
And often we forget, when we remember Mary and think about her as being a very young teenager, probably, being betrothed and getting married and suddenly discovering that she's pregnant, we forget that despite her young age, she would have grown up in a community that would have passed down an understanding of the scriptures where those prophecies about the Messiah would have been spoken about and understood. And so here she is, it’s all suddenly clicking and making sense to her.
And I love this part of the whole story because isn't that what the Holy Spirit does in us? That when we give our lives to Jesus and the Holy Spirit is welcomed in our life, part of the role of the Holy Spirit is yes, the gifts of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit, but certainly opening the eyes of our understanding and unveiling the things of God to us so that we have those “aha” moments and we begin to see things increasingly through a less cloudy lens and the lens of who God is and just the magnitude of his love and his plans and his perfect plans.
So this is what's happening to Mary when she's singing out the Magnificat. Everything is coming together and she is beginning to, she's seeing it, she's really seeing it! So the Holy Spirit a really important part of this, not just to impregnate Mary but actually overflowing within her, giving her understanding and giving her a joy and yeah, overflowing.
But the second half of that verse 35 that I read to you, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”. Now that really stays with me as well and it reminds me of Psalm 91 which speaks about dwelling in the shelter and the shadow of the Most High and that his wings cover and protect us.
This idea of overshadowing, in our English language, it has quite a negative meaning when something overshadows you. It doesn't just mean that they're greater and better and bigger. We tend to think of it with a kind of negative connotation saying that something else is bigger and we are made less. But when you look at the idea of God overshadowing within the Bible, and in this part here as well in the Nativity story, when we look at Psalm 91 and this verse where the Holy Spirit “comes upon you” and yeah that being overshadowed, the “power of the Most High will overshadow you”.
The power of the Most High is that mercy, that goodness, his faithfulness that we receive through Jesus's sacrifice for us and his resurrection and through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And within scripture that whole idea of overshadowing is really about sheltering, that the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary and she will be sheltered by the Most High God. She will live under the protection and the shade of the Most High God.
As we pray now, I think that that's a really big thing for us to remember that the Holy Spirit is the gift that God has given to us through Jesus to not just empower us, but to help to unveil the things of God, to stir up that passion for Him, to unveil how great he is so that we are overflowing with that “My soul magnifies and boasts in the Lord my God” and leads us, as well, to live under the shelter of the most high God.
And going back to some of our previous devotionals where we were looking in John where Jesus said “Without me you can do nothing”. We need the Holy Spirit, and so to live under the shelter of the Most High God, the Holy Spirit is really important for us in that. That we're listening, that the Spirit flows through us, that we are filled to overflowing.
And so in this season of waiting during Advent where we are drawing near and saying, “Let's celebrate what we have now through God”. I really believe that intimacy with the Holy Spirit is a key thing for us during this time. It's a key thing all the time, but specifically if we're looking at Mary's experience. Mary's experience was not just that she became pregnant, she had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and the journey with the Holy Spirit through her life as well because she was given revelation. She was given understanding and that joy and that exalting in God overflowed from within her.
So what does that look like for us today as we pray?
Let's welcome the Holy Spirit and remember that we are welcoming not just the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, but to guide us as we shelter in the shade and the shelter of the Most High God.
So let's pray:
Lord God we thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit and for the power, your power, the Most High God sheltering us, protecting us, leading us, guiding us, unveiling more of who you are to us.
We're so grateful for the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and that you chose to send the Holy Spirit to us as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and overflowed within her and revealed and unveiled what was happening to her.
We pray for more of your Holy Spirit in our lives as well that we would be more and more open as we draw near to you, to the power of your Holy Spirit coming upon us and overflowing within us.
Thank you, Lord God, that you are an Almighty God. And we do thank you that you sent Jesus.
We're so, so grateful.
Amen.
So I invite you to take some time to read those passages in Matthew one and Luke one again, and perhaps just to linger in the presence of God and yeah, welcome more of the Holy spirit in your life.
And if you know that you're not really living in the shelter of The Most High God, then talk to him now and make that decision. Talk to him about what's going on in you. Why are you kind of jumping away or moving away and coming back towards him? You know, are you yo-yoing, doing that ping pong relationship back and forth?
Just talk to him about what's going on and if you simply just want more of him, then tell him that and draw closer as you continue to pray now and go about your day.
Thank you so much and I'm looking forward to our next time of praying together.
Bye!
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Advent 2 Mini Deep Dive: Come Holy Spirit