Jeff Schreve - What Exactly Did Mary Know?
Summary:
Drawing from Luke 1 and the popular song «Mary, Did You Know?», this Christmas message explores exactly what Mary understood from the angel Gabriel’s announcement about the child she would bear. The preacher highlights three key truths Mary knew: she received unfathomable grace from God, the baby Jesus was uniquely the holy Son of God, the promised Messiah, and the Savior of the world, and that faith in God’s word was essential for it all to come to pass. In the end, just as Mary’s belief allowed the Holy Spirit to work miraculously in her, today anyone can experience life-changing joy and the indwelling presence of Christ through simple faith in God’s promises.
Opening Illustration: The Teacher’s Gifts
If you have your Bible, please turn to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1. We want to start our Christmas season with a message entitled, «What Exactly Did Mary Know?» I heard about a third-grade class; it was the last day of school before they broke for the Christmas break, and the students had brought a gift for their third-grade teacher. The teacher was making a big to-do about the gifts that the kids had brought her, and she knew about these kids and she knew about their parents.
So the first little girl, Megan, whose dad was a florist, brought a box that was gift-wrapped but was a long, rectangular box. The teacher looked at it, shook it a little bit, and smelled it, and she said, «I bet I know what that is! I bet it’s flowers!» Little Megan said, «Yeah, teacher, I got you flowers.» She said, «Oh, thank you so much! That’s so kind!» Then she got another little box; it was kind of flat and rectangular, and it was from Billy, whose dad worked at a candy store. She looked at this box, shook it, and heard things rattling in there. She said, «I bet I know what this is! Billy, I bet you got me candy!» He said, «Yeah, teacher, I got you candy!» She said, «Oh, thank you so much!»
Then little Johnny came; he had a big box, and she knew that his dad worked at the liquor store, and his box was leaking. So she said, «Oh, I think I know what this is,» and she reached down, dabbed her finger, put it to her tongue, and said, «Is it champagne?» He said, «No.» She tried again and said, «Is it wine?» He said, «No.» She said, «Well, I give up. What is it?» He said, «It’s a puppy!» She didn’t know.
The Song «Mary, Did You Know?»
You know, at Christmas time we sing lots of great songs, and we sang some great songs of Christmas just today. But there’s a song, and you’ll no doubt probably hear it. Debbie and I were at a music program at Myrtle Springs Friday night, and they sang this song, «Mary, Did You Know?» That was a song written in the early 90s by Mark Lowry, and that song has taken off over the years. So many people sing that song; it’s been recorded by lots of big-name recording artists. «Mary, Did You Know?» It’s a great song, and it’s rich in theology, but it asks that recurring question: «Mary, did you know that your baby boy would someday walk on water? Did you know this? Did you know that? Did you know that he was Lord of all creation?»
So it kind of begs the question: Well, what exactly did Mary know? I mean, she didn’t know that the Lord was going to walk on water, but we’re going to see today that she probably wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Jesus walked on water. There are specific things that she couldn’t have known, but general things, big things, she knew because the angel Gabriel told her these things were coming to pass. He told her about this child that she was going to have. She knew that this baby wasn’t like any other baby. No doubt the visit in Luke chapter 1 of the angel Gabriel to Mary changed her life forever. She had such tremendous joy as a result of the angel coming and giving her a message from God, and she had such assurance and excitement. Everything was different now.
Did you know that what happened to Mary nearly 2,000 years ago, in terms of joy, excitement, and life change, can happen to you today? The Scripture says, «Now, may the God of hope» (Romans 15:13). «May now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.» Mary is one who believed the message that was given to her, and because she believed, she abounded in joy and peace by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Reading Luke 1:26–38
Let’s look to see exactly what Mary knew. Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 26. «Now in the sixth month,» the sixth month of Aunt Elizabeth’s pregnancy, because Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was in her sixth month when the angel Gabriel came to Mary, it says, «Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, 'Hail, favored one! Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you.' But she was greatly troubled at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this might be. And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.'
And Mary said to the angel, 'How can 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, and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who is called barren is now in her sixth month; for nothing will be impossible with God.' And Mary said, 'Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.' And the angel departed from her.»
Now here’s the question: Do you know what Mary knew? Because Mary knew a lot, and I want to share with you three key truths, three foundational truths, important truths that Mary heard, received, and knew.
Point 1: Mary Knew God’s Unfathomable Grace
The first truth: Mary knew that God was giving her unfathomable grace. Unfathomable grace was coming to Mary and came to Mary that day in Nazareth. Nazareth of Galilee, Nazareth, which is a grease spot on the road; it’s such a small, insignificant place that they would often call it Nazareth of Galilee so people would even know where it was because it was so small. Here you have this little, probably 15- or 16-year-old girl. She’s young, engaged to be married to Joseph, who was a carpenter there; poor people, and she’s living in Nazareth, just minding her own business. All of a sudden, the angel Gabriel comes to visit. You know, there are two angels named in the Bible: there is Michael, who is a mighty warring angel, and Gabriel, who is more of a messenger angel. Gabriel came from God as a messenger to Mary and hit her with, «Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.»
«Hail» means be glad, rejoice, be full of cheer. «The Lord is with you. You are the favored one. You’re one that has been given grace.» That’s what «favored one» means, to give grace, to endow a special favor, to be greatly graced by God—that is Mary. Wow! And no doubt she’s thinking about all this, and the angel said, «Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor, grace, with God.» Now no doubt she had found favor with God; no doubt she had found grace with God, and it’s unfathomable grace. There’s no way that she ever thought in a million years that the Lord would come to her and say that you are going to be the mother of the Messiah. No way!
In the human mind, God wouldn’t come to Nazareth, because can any good thing come out of Nazareth? That’s what they said about Jesus. I mean, there’s no way that the message would come to Nazareth; it would come to Jerusalem. I mean, that’s the heart; that’s where the temple is, and it would come to somebody who has more means, more experiences, and more education and things like that—not to a 15-year-old girl sweeping the house in Nazareth. But the message came to her, and it was a message of unfathomable grace! You have been graced by God.
Now, the same is true for us today. The grace of God has come today under you who are under the sound of my voice. You are being presented with the grace of God. The Scripture says in Titus chapter 2, verse 11, «For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.» Just as Gabriel brought the message of grace to Mary, God has allowed me to bring the message of God’s grace to you and to me. Gabriel didn’t need God’s grace, but I need God’s grace, and Mary needed God’s grace, and you need God’s grace.
I love how the Scripture says that when she heard those words, «Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.» They get it confused. They say, «Well, you know, Mary is somebody really special; Mary is herself full of grace.» No! Mary had been given grace by God. The only one full of grace is God, and it says of the Lord Jesus Christ, «The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.» That’s the Lord Jesus Christ. God is the God who is full of grace and truth; every other human being is one who needs to receive grace.
Mary was pondering this in her heart; she was perplexed by that statement. As you can imagine, if an angel comes to greet you, it would be a scary deal. That’s why he says, «Don’t be afraid.» It’s not like this happened every day. In fact, it’s only happened a few times, and it hadn’t happened in a long, long time. You know, we talked about the intertestamental period between the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, and the book of Matthew. There are silent years—400-plus silent years in there—and nothing’s going on from God, and then all of a sudden we start in and we find out that the angel comes and talks to John the Baptist’s dad and says, «Hey, you’re going to have a son!» And then, six months later, the angel Gabriel comes and talks to Mary. Wow! It just blew her away.
She was pondering. That means to reckon thoroughly, to deliberate, to consider, «I am graced, highly favored by God. I found favor in the eyes of God.» The same thing is said of Noah in Genesis chapter 6: «But Noah found grace; he found favor in the eyes of the Lord.» Now you are here today and you are presented with the grace of God that has appeared to all men. When you think about God’s unfathomable grace, it is a lot to ponder. Oftentimes we don’t really think through, but it is so much when you set your mind on it to think about the grace of God.
What is the grace of God? The acrostic says, «The grace of God: God’s riches at Christ’s expense.» Grace is that which cannot be earned and cannot be deserved; it’s what God gives to undeserving sinners—His grace. Now, as I grew up a kid in Catholic school, I was taught a lot about Mary. Then you go into Mexico and into South America; they worship Mary. I mean, it’s all about Mary; it’s very little about Jesus—it’s all about Mary. I was on a mission trip in Mexico, and my good friend, who is our Hispanic pastor, Alberto Lopez, went with me, along with some other people. He was witnessing to this guy and trying to talk to him about Jesus, and the guy said, «I don’t know anything about Jesus.» Alberto said to him, «Do you know about the Virgin?» He said, «Oh yes! I know about the Virgin.»
Alberto said, «Have you ever seen a statue or a picture of the Virgin with the baby in her arms?» He said, «Yes, I have.» He said, «That baby is Jesus.» See, we can easily—and the devil works to try and confuse people—and to take this young 15-, 16-year-old humble girl and somehow we elevate her to where she becomes deity. She’s not; she’s just a humble servant. She’s a sinner just like you and me. How do we know that? Because she says when she goes to Elizabeth’s house, in Luke chapter 1, verses 46 through 48, «And Mary said, 'My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.'» Who needs a Savior? A sinner needs a Savior! Jesus didn’t call God His Savior. Why? Because Jesus is the Savior! He doesn’t need a Savior; He’s the sinless Son of God. But Mary needed a Savior, and she said, «For He has had regard for the humble state of His bond slave, for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.»
She was humble, and you know she was one who was given tons of grace. Why? Because she was humble. You know, the Bible says that God is opposed to the proud; He gives grace to the humble. The only way that you can receive the grace of God is on your knees—that is, by bowing before Him. Nobody receives the grace of God in pride because God is opposed to the proud. He gives grace to the humble. What did Mary know right off the bat? She knew that God was giving to her unfathomable grace, and she received it.
The question is, what are you doing with God’s unfathomable grace?
Point 2: The Baby Was Unlike Any Other
The second truth that she knew: Mary knew that the baby to come was unlike any other baby. You know, in Mark Lowry’s song, «Mary, Did You Know? ,» «That your baby boy would someday walk on water? Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?» Did you know that he has come to make you new, and the child that you delivered will soon deliver you? Mary did you know? And she’d say, «Oh, I didn’t know about the walk on water, but I could believe that. Yes, I knew about all that other stuff.»
So, as Mark Lowry sings, she’d say, «Yes, I knew that. Yeah, that hope, yeah, I know that.» Not to dog the song, because I think the song is great, but the song, sometimes, if you’re not careful, would lead you to think, «Man, Mary didn’t know very much.» Mary knew a lot! She knew a lot because Gabriel told her this was what was coming down the pike. Look again in verse 31. He says to her in verse 30, «Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.» And then he says this: «And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will have no end.»
And Mary said to the angel, «How can this be since I’m 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, and for that reason, the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.» So what did Mary know? She knew that this baby was unlike any other baby. First of all, she knew that He is the holy Son of the Most High God. That’s who this baby is! This baby that is going to be placed in her womb—the holy Son of the Most High God! He is holy; He’s the holy offspring. He’s not like what you and I can produce!
See, if Mary had come together with Joseph to produce a baby, he wouldn’t have been a holy son. He wouldn’t have been holy offspring! You and I have three girls, and they’re not holy girls in terms of Debbie and I coming together in matrimony. What do we produce? What do you produce with? All we can produce are sinners. But the power of the Most High can overshadow Mary and can produce a holy offspring. He is the holy Son of the Most High God. Jesus is unique in that He is the Son of God and also the Son of Man because He was born of Mary.
Now the Scripture says about Him in Genesis chapter 3, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord prophesied that there was coming one who was going to be the seed of a woman who was going to crush the Serpent’s head. That’s in Genesis chapter 3. That’s thousands of years before this event took place in Luke chapter 1! You know civilization begins sometime around 4000 BC; we don’t know for sure. If you look it up, they’ll say, «Well, you know, the scientists all want to say that there are billions of years old for the earth,» but civilization—they have to come back to the fact that we don’t have records of anything being billions of years old as far as man on the earth. So they say, «Well, when you have civilization, what happened in Mesopotamia and where it all started,» they go back to about 3300 BC—maybe 4000 BC.
So Genesis 3 happened somewhere around 4000 BC, and God said in 4000 BC at the fall of Adam and Eve that there was coming one who was going to be the seed of a woman. Now, you know that a woman doesn’t have a seed; a woman has an egg. So the seed of a woman doesn’t make much sense unless there is a virgin birth, and the power of the Most High overshadows her. In that instance, it would be the seed coming from the woman because no human man was involved, and He was going to be the Son of the Most High God, the Son of God, and God the Son—the Son of Man!
Yet the Son of God, He is the God-Man! There’s never another like Jesus—no one like Jesus. You’ll never be like Jesus. We have some aberrant theology that’s out there in the Mormon Church that says you can become just like Jesus. No, you can’t! Because Jesus is the God-Man. You’re not going to be the God-Man. He’s going to make us like Him in terms of holiness, but we’re not going to be Him. There’s only one like Jesus, and Jesus had to be like us in being the Son of Man but unlike us in order to be the Savior. Because if He’s a sinner just like you and me, He can’t save any of us because He’d have to die for His own sins. He couldn’t die for us; He’s the holy Son of the Most High God.
Secondly, He is the Great and long-awaited Messiah of Israel. Now, every Jewish girl would no doubt have a dream in her heart that maybe one day she could be the mother of the Messiah. For Jewish girls to not have children, that was the worst! That’s why Rachel told Jacob, «Give me children, lest I die.» She said, «Oh my God, I can’t do that! I don’t have power over that!» She wanted to have a child so badly. Hannah couldn’t have any children in the book of 1st Samuel, and she wept bitter tears and cried out to the Lord, «O God, please give me a child! Give me a son!»
So for Mary to hear that she was going to have a son and he was going to be the long-awaited Messiah, you talk about blowing her away! Wow! She was in the lineage of David, so was Joseph. «And my son is going to be David’s greater son! He is going to be the one who reigns forever and ever and ever! Mary, did you know that your son would one day rule the nations?» Yeah, I knew that! The angel told me that! He’s the long-awaited Messiah and we’ve been waiting for thousands of years and now he’s come!
Have you ever thought about this? God—the Scripture says that in the fullness of time Jesus came. Jesus came at the precise time, right when everything was just perfect; that’s when He came. You and I, we struggle with timing with God because we want God to do it quickly. If God says in Genesis 3 that there’s coming a seed of the woman, we were waiting in Genesis 4: «Where is it, Lord? We want it right now.»
And God gives us a promise in His Word, and we say, «Well, Lord, I want that! I want that today!» And our time is not God’s time. The Scripture says, «I would have despaired unless I believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Be strong and let your heart take courage; wait on the Lord; wait on the Lord.» God is not slow, the Scripture says about His promise, as some men count slowness, but is patient toward you. He’s patient toward you.
When you believe God for something, when God gives you a word and you’re trusting Him for a spouse or you’re trusting Him for this job that you just sense and feel and know in your heart that He’s going to give, you’re trusting Him for this dream in your heart, and it doesn’t come and it doesn’t come and it doesn’t come and you’re ready to throw in the towel—don’t quit on that! Continue to trust Him; His timing and your timing are not the same!
And Jesus now is coming—the long-awaited Messiah—and He is the one and only Savior of the world! You say, «Where does it say that in there?» It says that in verse 31: «And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.» The name Jesus means «Jehovah saves.» When Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, Mary’s fiancé, you know, she had to come and tell Joseph, «Hey, Joseph, I got some big news!»
I talked to the guys in our man up last week, and I shared about Joseph, and I entitled the message, «Honey, I’m pregnant, but it’s not what you think!» So she had to tell Joseph, «I’m pregnant!» Joseph, crushed, said, «Well, how can that be?» And she said, «Well, you got to hear this story!» The angel Gabriel came, and the power of the Most High came upon me, and he’s thinking, «There’s no way that happened.»
I mean, how could he believe that? He wanted to believe it, but it was too hard to believe. Then the angel came to Joseph in Matthew chapter 1. Joseph was going to divorce her. You had to divorce back then; if you had an engagement, even though you weren’t technically married yet to break up, you had to have a divorce. So he was going to divorce her and put her away secretly. He didn’t want to shame her for being unfaithful to him, and the angel came and said, «Joseph, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. You shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.» You call Him Jehovah saves because Jehovah saves is going to save His people from their sins! He is the one and only Savior of the world!
When Jesus began His ministry, we read in the book of John that He took a trip one day before He started to set up shop in Capernaum, where most of His ministry took place around the Sea of Galilee in the north. As He was going there, He went through Samaria and He talked to the woman at the well. Remember the story of the bad Samaritan? We know about the good Samaritan; she was the bad Samaritan. She had had five husbands, and the one she has now is not her husband!
When He talks to her, then she sees that He is the Messiah. She runs and tells all the guys in the city, «Come see a man who told me all the things I had ever done! This could not be the Christ, could it?» They all came out and they heard from Jesus, and at the end of Mark or John chapter 4, they say this: «You are indeed the Savior of the world!» That’s who Jesus is: the Savior of the world!
She knew, especially after talking to Joseph and receiving the message he got from the angel, she knew that this one was going to save His people from their sins. He is the Savior of the world!
Point 3: Faith Was Critical
And lastly, Mary knew that faith was critical to the whole thing. Faith was critical to the whole thing. Look at it again: Mary asks the question when she hears all this news. She asks a question, but it’s a question—she’s not saying, «I don’t believe this promise.» She says, «I don’t understand how this works,» and she said, «How can this be since I am a virgin? I’ve never known a man. I can’t conceive in my womb because that’s never happened.»
So she asks how—it’s a believing question; it’s different from Zacharias, John the Baptist’s dad. He asks an unbelieving question. He says in Luke chapter one, verse eighteen, «How shall I know this for certain? For I am an old man and my wife has advanced in years.» That was an unbelieving question. It says the angel said, «I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I’ve been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak until the day when these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which shall be fulfilled in their proper time.»
Well, that was Zacharias; that’s not Mary. Mary asked, «How can this be?» And that’s when he says that the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Literally, it will envelop you in brilliancy—the power of the Most High! The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and for that reason, the Holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And he gives her a sign: «And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who is called barren is now in her sixth month; for nothing—not any word—will be impossible with God!»
And Mary said, «Behold, lo, look, see the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.» Mary knew that faith was critical, and she believed God. And so can you! That’s what she did. She just believed God; she believed the word that God was giving her through the angel Gabriel. Verse 37 is such a key verse: «For nothing» it says «will be impossible with God!» But that word «nothing» later means «not any word; none of that will be devoid of power. It will not be impossible with God.» And she believed that—just believed His word!
The Scripture says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. How well do you do believing the Word of God? I got an email this morning from a guy who said he’s very complimentary; he watches us on television. He said, «You know, you’ve helped me a lot, but I don’t understand. You seem to be positive so much of the time, and you come off like you have faith so much of the time. I’m struggling with my faith; I’m struggling with believing, and I just have a hard time believing that the Bible is true.»
If you struggle with believing the Bible is true, I told him, you need to go back to the empty tomb! That is the biggest object lesson in the world! There’s a tomb in Jerusalem, and the stone is rolled away, and it is empty because Jesus conquered death, hell, and the grave. I said, «That’s where I get my strength to believe the rest of the Word!»
Because Jesus—that’s what He said: «Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.» Because He rose from the dead, that gives credence to everything He said! If He had stayed in the tomb, well then you’d say, «Well, He’s a liar!» But because He conquered death just like He said, you can believe everything He says because He is God! Muhammad is dead; Buddha is dead, but Jesus is alive forevermore!
I like what Tony Evans says: «What is faith?» He said, «Faith is acting like God is telling you the truth.» That’s faith. Faithlessness is when you basically call God a liar. And God says something in His Word, and you say, «I don’t see that happen, and I don’t think that’s true,» well, you’re calling God a liar! You think you’re going to get much out of God in terms of blessings, in terms of closeness, in terms of intimacy if you’re calling Him a liar? I don’t think so!
But when you believe God, and when you say, «Behold, the bondslave of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word,» that’s when things begin to happen. I love the story in Matthew chapter 8 of this centurion, the man who was over a hundred soldiers. He came to Jesus, and he said, «Lord, my servant is very sick; he’s paralyzed, and he’s in much pain.» Jesus said, «I will go and heal him.» The centurion said, «No, Lord; I’m not worthy for you to come under my roof. Only say the word, and my servant will be healed!»
And Jesus marveled at his faith! He said, «I haven’t seen such great faith in all Israel!» This guy—all he needed was a word from God! Hey, you know what God likes? He likes it when we go through the Word, when we spend time in His Word, and when we latch on to promises, and when we bring those promises to Him and say, «God, I’m clinging to this because you promised!»
In a reverent way, you hold His feet to the fire and say, «But God, you promised!» He loves that because He knows that we’re believing Him. Mary believed God. You can do the same!
Conclusion: Christ Living Within
And you know what? It’s so cool. I was thinking about this as I studied it.
When did the power of the Most High overshadow her and come over her and envelop her in brilliancy? When did that happen? It happened in verse 38 when she said, «Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word.» Jesus said that by your faith, be it unto you! By your faith, do you faith? Be it done to you!
So when she believed, that is when it happened. All of a sudden now, I don’t know what she felt; I don’t know if it was any kind of a feeling, but it was a promise that she could cling to. Did you know that that happened to her in a physical sense? It happens to us in a spiritual sense! The Scripture says in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13, «In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.»
You hear the message of truth; you believe you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Holy Spirit comes inside of you the moment you believe, and the moment that Mary believed, the power of the Most High overshadowed her and she conceived in her womb the holy offspring, the Son of God. Now that changes everything!
She had the Son of God living within her, and so can you! You think about that! I mean, everywhere Mary went, she knew, «I’m carrying the Son of the Most High God!» I mean, you wake up in the morning—some of you women who are with child or have had a child—you wake up, and maybe you’re a little nauseous. She would wake up nauseous with morning sickness and say, «What’s the matter, Mary?» «I’m carrying the Son of the Living God! Right now, He’s just giving me a little trouble!»
You know, she’s just constantly aware that she is carrying Jesus inside of her! Did you know that the Bible says in 1st Corinthians chapter 6, «What? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you’re not your own?» We think about Mary! Here she is, six months pregnant; she’s starting to show and the baby’s starting to kick, and she’s very aware of the Lord. You and I can be aware of the Lord like that, too!
He begins to grow in us, and as John the Baptist says, «He must increase, and I must decrease.» As we walk with Him, He becomes more and more of our life on a daily basis, and we trust Him when we look to Him and we cling to Him, and we know that He’s there! You know, that is real Christianity as God comes to live inside of you!
I grew up for the longest time just believing in religion. What is religion? Religion is trying—not trusting! Religion is works; it’s not faith! It’s trying to imitate Jesus instead of letting Him inhabit your life! You’re not saved by imitation; you’re saved by inhabitation! There’s a song by Harry D. Clark, written in 1924, a very simple little song that says this: «Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus! Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus!»
Then the second verse: «Out of my heart, out of my heart, shine out of my heart, Lord Jesus! Shine out today, shine out always, shine out of my heart, Lord Jesus!» What a beautiful, simple picture! We receive Christ as Savior and Lord; He comes in to us! Then, as we yield ourselves to Him on a daily basis, He shines out of us, and the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him goes forth in every place we go!
How does it happen? We hold a bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word. We believe God, and that makes all the difference in the world!