Robert Morris - The Miracle
Well, Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for coming to our Christmas candlelight services, and I pray you guys have a great weekend, a great Christmas, great time with your family, and I pray you eat too much! We'll pray for forgiveness afterwards! I'm just jokin'. Let everything be done in moderation, but you know, God called fast, but He also called feast. And so for me, Christmas is a time of feasting, the fast can come in January. I want to share with you just a couple of things from the Christmas story. I want to talk to you about conceiving a miracle, carrying a miracle, and completing a miracle. So, those are gonna be my three points, and we're gonna look at the life of Mary. I want you to think about this young teenage girl, that an angel shows up in her room and says, you are blessed, you are highly favored, and you're gonna have a child.
Now, this is a teenager that was engaged to be married, but she had never known a man intimately. So she was a virgin, the Bible tells us, and here an angel shows up and says, you're going to have a child. So, the first thing I want to talk to you about is that God wanted to conceive a miracle in her. Now, we know that the Christmas story is true, that it actually happened that Jesus was born of a virgin, but I want you to think about the concept of this in all of our lives. Does God want to birth Jesus in your life? In other words, does God want Jesus to come into our lives to grow within us, and then for us to deliver Him to the world? I think so. So, what's the first thing we have to do to let God conceive a miracle in us? It's exactly what Mary did. She said, "Be it unto me, according to Your word". That's what we have to do. Now, here's another thing she did, and I just want you to know this is a human response. She said, "How can this be, since I've never known a man"?
Well, it's okay for us to have those human thoughts, human emotions. It's okay for us to wonder when we get bad news or we go through a difficulty, how can this be? God, how can this be? And the answer was from the angel, "Nothing is impossible with God". And she said, "Then let it be to me, according to Your word". That's what I want us to do. With whatever miracle you're believing God for, either at this Christmas season or next year, I want you to do the very same thing that Mary did. I want you to say, when God shows up and puts a word in your heart, I want you to say, let it be, according to Your word. And you know, with Mary, an angel came. Now, some of us might think, well, Pastor Robert, if an angel came and told me, I'd have a lot more faith to believe it. Well, the word "angel" comes from the Greek word "angelos", and it simply means a messenger. Think about all of the times that you have been in church, or been at lunch with a friend, and you felt like God was speaking to you through that person. In other words, that person might be a messenger of the Lord.
So, that's the first step in us letting God do a miracle in our lives, is letting God conceive a miracle in our lives, the same way He did with Mary. It says, "The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and you're going to conceive and bear a son, and He'll be the Savior of the world". So, we're talkin' about conception, so I know this is a little different, but I just want to do something maybe a little humorous here with you. I'm telling you that God wants you to conceive a miracle in your life. So, I want you to turn to one person, someone seated beside you there, and I want you to tell them, God wants to get you pregnant. Go ahead, tell 'em, God wants to get you pregnant! Now, we may have to stop and pray right now because a husband right over there just passed out, so, but let's go on. So, number one, God wants to conceive a miracle in you. There's the conceiving of the miracle, but secondly, there's the carrying of the miracle.
You know, we talk a lot about the virgin birth. We talk about the Immaculate Conception and then Jesus' birth. We seem to forget about the in between. From the time the angel spoke and the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and she conceived, to when she birthed Jesus in that stable, we don't seem to talk about the nine months in between. But, I want to remind you that there's always the carrying of the miracle before there's the completion of the miracle. In other words, there's a conception of the miracle. God puts a word in your heart. Then there's a time when that word comes to pass, but in between is the pregnancy time. It's the carrying of the miracle. It's the believing God time, and it's not always easy. The first thing I want you to notice that Mary did was she went to her cousin, Elizabeth, who was also carrying a miracle. So, think about that. She got around other people who believed in miracles, who believed in God's miraculous power. Elizabeth was carrying John the Baptist. It was also a miraculous conception, because she had been barren.
So, one of the first things you can do if you're gonna carry the miracle that you believe God's put in your heart, is get around other miracle carriers. She got around someone who would believe God with her. She immediately got around Elizabeth, and the Bible says she spent three months with her. But then again, think about that there were some tough times ahead. She goes back and she is now pregnant, and she's engaged to be married, she's not married. And think about her story. Now, we don't like to really think about it, but I want you to think about it for a moment. How many people believed her story? Her story was the Holy Spirit impregnated me. Now, I wonder if anyone said something like, yeah, that happened to my friend Jim's girlfriend, too. You know? I mean, she didn't have it all roses like we think. She had the thorns along with the flowers. People mocked her. People made fun of her. People ridiculed her. People looked down on her. But, she held onto the word of God.
We have to come to that place if we're going to see a miracle delivered in our life, completed. We have to not only say, "Be it unto me according to Your word," let God conceive that miracle in our hearts, but we have to carry that miracle, and we have to carry that miracle with faith. So I want to encourage you, whatever you're believing God for, you need to carry that miracle with faith. Here's the third thing, and that is the completion of the miracle, the completing of the miracle. Now again, look at Mary's story. It doesn't always happen like we think it will. She rides on a donkey several days while she's nine months pregnant, and then when they get there, there's no room, and she goes to a barn. Now, back then it wasn't like a barn like we see. It was probably a cave, like a hole in a wall, and that's where it was. We have these beautiful manger scenes... by the way, the word "manger" means feeding trough. So, she brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, which is a feeding trough. Here's the only reason I'm telling you this. It doesn't always happen like we think it will. Even though God completed the miracle, you need to know it may not always happen like we think.
So, I want to encourage you today, God wants to do a miracle in your life. You have to receive the miracle, let it be conceived in you. You have to carry that miracle then in faith. And then when God completes the miracle, it might not be like you thought it would be. Let me encourage you in one other thing. When I thought about this story, we know Mary was a virgin, and I remember thinking, but I'm not pure. I had a bad childhood. I had difficulties. I fell morally before I got saved. And I was thinking, well, I'm not a virgin. Well, according to the word, God has washed you clean. So, God has made you a pure vessel that He can put a miracle inside of you, and think about what Mary did. She delivered Jesus to the world. I am praying that this will be a year that we deliver Jesus to a lost and hurting world. I love you so much, and I pray again, have a very blessed and merry, Merry Christmas.
I don't know where you are today in your process of God birthing Jesus in you, you carrying Him in your life every day, and you delivering Him to a lost and hurting world, but wherever you are, God loves you, God is leading you, and God will complete in you the miracle which He started. It's absolutely a wonderful promise from God's word that God, who is faithful, will finish, will complete what He began in our lives. And I pray that for you, and I pray also that you have a very, very blessed Christmas and a blessed new year.