Luke 1:1-38 // The Beginning of the Good News // Part 1 (12:30 pm)

``Prayer has no shelf life. I don't know if you thought about that before, but the the prayers you pray, they don't have an expiration date. Like, God can answer prayers even after you've stopped praying them. You know what I find really cool? God can answer prayers you forgot you ever prayed. The lesson is don't give up on them. Just because you think the window closed on that prayer, just because you think the opportunity has already passed, doesn't mean God can't still answer that prayer. So don't lose hope. Don't give up. [01:40:36] (33 seconds)  #PrayersNeverExpire

If he can make an old barren woman conceive, if he can bring a child from a virgin, if he can split the seas, if he can tear down walls with some music, if he can conquer armies and open blind eyes and raise the dead, there is no thing that is impossible for your God. And I need you to know today that God plus nothing is everything that you need. Come on now. [02:01:38] (26 seconds)  #GodIsEnough

But he says, just like there's four of these things, God has given us four gospels to fully reveal Christ to us. And the point he was making is not that one gospel is better than any other gospel, but that you cannot fully understand Jesus without the complete picture. You actually need all four angles of who Jesus is in order to fully understand him. And so Irenaeus was the first to to coin this phrase. He called it the four faced gospel. [01:20:09] (30 seconds)  #FourFacesOfJesus

So this right here, this is basically the blanket answer to the question, how is God gonna do anything? Holy Spirit. Like, how will God save your loved one? Holy Spirit. How will God change your situation? Holy Spirit. How's God gonna fulfill the promise he made to you? Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit. How's God gonna heal you? Holy Spirit. Like like, you may be questioning how God's gonna do a whole bunch of things, and the answer is the Holy Spirit. That the same power that raises Christ from the dead is now at work in you. How awesome is that? [01:59:15] (39 seconds)  #HolySpiritDoesIt

And we just need to celebrate this word was for a second. Because that word was should build a lot of faith in this room. That's a shout the house down kind of word. She was called barren, but now she's pregnant. And maybe right now, you can celebrate along with Elizabeth some of the was labels in your life that because God moved, it already turned it around. Or maybe you can stand in faith today that even though I am is a more accurate label for your situation, you can know assuredly that I was is just around the corner. [02:00:23] (36 seconds)  #FromWasToIs

And and I think that Mary's response tells us what certainty looks like in action. And I think that this is what Luke is after when he writes this gospel account. Not just for you to have information, not for for you to just have admiration, celebrate how awesome God is, but that you would actually have a surrendered life. [02:02:27] (19 seconds)  #SurrenderInCertainty

And I think it's because it's the same question, but it's asked in a different way. As we go through the text, think you're gonna see it. But here's the key difference. Zechariah asked how in doubt. Mary asked how in faith. Remember the the angel said to him, because you doubted me. Right? The the how wasn't in faith. I think Mary was basically asking how like, man, that sounds awesome. I'm gonna have a kid even though I'm a like, how is that gonna happen? This is cool. This is good news. It's completely different posture. And there's a difference between questioning God's promise and seeking to understand God's process. She didn't doubt the promise. She just wanna know how that was gonna work. And God's not threatened by honest questions. But what Zechariah is teaching us is that you can be experienced and religious and still fail to trust God's word. And you could also be young and confused, and yet still fully surrender and trust God at his word. [01:57:45] (59 seconds)  #AskHowInFaith

And he's telling them, whether you got faith for it or not, God's still gonna do it. But if you had just believed me when I first said it, the next nine months would have gone real different for you. Next nine months, you could have been celebrating, you could have been talking with your wife about the plans you're gonna have for how you're raise this kid, you could be talking about how you're gonna play catch in the backyard, you could be having a great time hanging out with your boys, telling them about how God has blessed you. You're gonna have a kid. You could have been doing all that stuff. Instead, I need you to go sit in the corner and be quiet and think about what you've done for the next nine months. I mean, that's that's what he tells them. Like, go sit down. Don't say nothing. [01:48:11] (36 seconds)  #BelieveWhenHeSpeaks