Leap Year

TITLE: LEAP YEAR

SCRIPTURE: ST. LUKE 1:41

This is a text that is ordinarily preached during the Advent Season or Christmas Holy Day period. However; the text is powerful and makes for dynamic preaching anytime during the year. I must admit when the Holy Spirit began to deal with me in reference to this topic, I thought it was an early gift that I could work on all year and deliver sometime in December.

There is a message here for us this morning. This year marks what has been termed LEAP YEAR. Last month – just a few days ago - February 29 was a date that usually occurs every FOUR YEARS - and is actually called LEAP DAY. This day is added to the calendar in leap years as a CORRECTIVE MEASURE - because the earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365 days.

Every Four years the Calendar must take a LEAP in an effort to correct itself based upon the Sun’s rotation. During Leap year this suggest that something must be ADDED, something out of the NORM has to take place. When we consider the word Leap, it expresses JOY – TO JUMP OVER SOMETHING. I remember as a boy playing with my cousins and friends a game called – LEAP FROG. Whoever was in the back had to leap over the child or children in front of them. If you were in front you were good, but if you were in the back, the only way to make it to the front was to leap over them. This morning I want to let you know that this is LEAP YEAR. God is doing something right now in our midst, and when He is done working it out for you, your life will never be the same. This will truly be a Leap Year for you.

In our text this morning we find that the ANGEL GABRIEL had already appeared to Mary, one of the amazing things he told her was that "Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month." When Mary heard this, she hurried to Elizabeth for some woman-to-woman support. She was excited for her elder cousin who had up until this point not been able to bear children for her husband. She knew that Elizabeth had prayed for many years, actually many DECADES, and it had appeared that God had not honored her request until now.

• Elizabeth was aged but that made no difference to God

• She was barren but that didn't matter to the Lord

• Her husband didn't believe the promise even when it was personally delivered by the archangel Gabriel, but that didn't stop the one for whom nothing is impossible

• God took Elizabeth's barrenness and turned it into a blessing!

• He saw her emptiness, heard her prayers, and filled that emptiness with the gift of new life

We are stunted Spiritually because we really don’t believe God can -- we have prayed for WEEKS – MONTHS – Perhaps YEARS – given up on God. It’s not too late. Even the Israelites travelled in wilderness 40 years before entering Promised Land. Perhaps Elizabeth and Zechariah had given up. I don’t know, but this I do know, when it appeared Impossible, it was Just Right for God. Don’t give up this morning – God has a blessing with your name on it.

In this text of Scripture we have an amazing event taking place. This meeting of these two expectant women is more than:

• A meeting to speak to each other about babies kicking and moving about

• It’s more than a meeting to discuss the issues of pregnancy

• It’s more than a meeting to discuss how to deal with morning sickness

• It’s more than a meeting to compare projected delivery dates

It is an amazing prophetic, Holy Spirit empowered declaration that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Not only do we see Mary and Elizabeth coming together for fellowship and comfort but we see our Lord and John the Baptist meeting for the first time even before they’re born. In this meeting, or as it’s been called by the church through the centuries, THE VISITATION - we see the meeting of the Old Testament or Old Covenant with the New Covenant. This meeting by these two women is a PROVIDENTIAL coming together. Their meeting is a God ordained meeting. The angel practically extends the invitation for Mary to go see Elizabeth. Many things happen in these few verses.

• God is still placing people in our lives today

• Let God strategically place people in your life

• Ever met someone but it would be years later you became friends – God’s timing