Blessed Believers

“And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.” (Lu 1:45 AV)

These words are Elizabeth’s words to Mary when Mary came to help Elizabeth in the last few months of pregnancy.  Elizabeth’s salutation is amazing.  By the Spirit, she not only acknowledged Mary’s pregnancy.  She also acknowledged the nature and method of that pregnancy.  She correctly stated Mary was pregnant by the Spirit of God and that the fruit of her womb was the promised Messiah.  It is the statement above that in part, made it all possible.  The willingness of Mary to exercise faith, yielding to the will of God, was the cause of her pregnancy.  The reason she was blessed was because she believed.  Some might try to make the point there was nothing of significance to believe.  But there was.  She would be known as someone who was pregnant out of wedlock.  A serious condition in those days.  She would have to raise the son of God.  She would have to see her firstborn son persecuted unto death.  She would have to see her firstborn ascend into heaven in the prime of His life.  All these thoughts may have coursed through here brain.  Being pregnant without the seed of a man was something never done before.  How will the pregnancy progress?  How will the process of childbirth be different?  What will he look like?  Too many unknowns.  But she believed.  And that is the source of her blessings.

Among God’s people, I believe faith is not spoken of nearly as much as it should be.  Faith is the cornerstone of our relationship with God.  Faith does not stop with saving faith.  Faith is the building block upon which all of our spiritual life is built.  Faith, like a muscle, must grow and strengthen.  The only way to do that is to put to the test the faith which we have.  Resistance training is the training by which faith matures.  Being asked to do something that is beyond our present ability which requires us to trust the LORD is the basic foundation of our walk with God.  Too often we simplify our walk with God as an exercise of the will rather than of the heart.  In other words, we make walking with God nothing more than learning and memorizing rules and then following those rules.  What we fail to stress is the importance of faith in that desired obedience.  We have to trust first that God is the one who wrote the commands.  We then must trust these commands are in the best interest of our well-being.  Further, we must trust there is purpose to our obedience.  Lastly, we must be convinced the LORD will be pleased by our obedience.  If we do not exercise faith in obedience, then obedience is nothing more than will worship.

When it comes to Mary’s experience, it was not so much a choice of obedience as it was a yielding to the plan of God for her life.  This takes more faith than obedience.  This requires yielding control.  This requires we give up trying to run our own lives and yield to the circumstances which the Spirit brings.  The hardest thing for a person to do is to completely yield to circumstances which we can change.  Illness, trials, etc are things we yield to because we don’t have any other choice.  But to yield to things which we can alter, this takes a great deal of faith.  But to yield to those things which can change results in blessings beyond what the mind can comprehend.  This is why Elizabeth testifies that Mary is blessed above all other women.  Not merely because she was the chosen vessel by which the Spirit brought forth the Messiah.  Rather, because she believed!  It started with faith.