Mary's Call Series

Advent - Fear Not

December 1, 2024

Most people don’t like to admit the things we’re afraid of. What are your fears? It seems like fear is much more prominent today than it was back when I was a kid. Sometimes I think we can blame the media and social media and the fast pace of news spreading.

When I was a kid, life was much simpler. We had our fears, but it didn’t seem like there were that many. I know I was afraid of thunder. Those loud claps of thunder would get to me and I’d yell out for my mom. Not screaming, but I would hope she would hear my first whispers.

I didn’t like being home alone and in bed. I always heard the house creaking. I’d assume someone was there, but nobody ever was.

I also didn’t like and still don’t like scary movies. Scary movies in my day was Frankenstein or Dracula. Nothing to crazy. But I remember watching one of those Friday the 13th of Halloween movies and I couldn’t sleep. In fact, I was out of town and I couldn’t sleep near the edge of the bed. I was an adult on a business trip, but I still could not let my arm hang off the bed.

It’s amazing what fear can do to us.

For some of you it might have been the need to make sure your closet doors were closed or you had certain lights on.

Now that I’m a grown up, actually moving closer to the end of life, than the beginning, you realize there’s more things going on in the world and there’s things to be afraid of. You know what I'm talking about?

We worry more about the impact of politics. What will happen next year when Donald Trump becomes president again? Will it get better? Will things get worse?

What about health care? What about your kids or grandkids? Are they making the right decisions?

There’s jobs and family and wars. Now there’s the fear that AI is going to take over the world, and how do you even know what’s real and what’s not?

I wanna talk to you today about fear, and some would say this about fear, they would say that fear is the opposite of faith. That sounds pretty good, right? Fear is the opposite of faith.

But I would suggest to you that fear is actually faith. It's putting faith in the worst possible outcome. And I wanna remind you today, if you are worried, if you have uneasiness, like most people that I know --- fear is not from God. In fact, 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us this,

"God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but God has given us a spirit of power, and of love, and of self-discipline."

God has not given us a spirit of fear. So as we approach this Christmas season, I want to show you three different portions of the Christmas story, one each week. And we're gonna look at 3 different times in the Christmas story that an angel of the Lord appears and tells us, "Do not be afraid."

If you find yourself with some weighty concerns on your heart today, I believe God's Word is going to speak to you.

In Luke Chapter 1, we're going to look at Mary. If we look at the story from her perspective, she did not plan to be the mother of Jesus.

She's just a teenage girl who’s probably dating what she considers to be a very cute guy named, Joseph.

She is engaged to be married to Joseph, and she's probably thinking Joseph’s a carpenter, and he's gonna start his carpentry business and God is going to bless it.

And we we're going to get married, and she already has a date booked at the Bethlehem Wedding Chapel, and they're setting some money aside for their honeymoon on the beach. And they're gonna rent a very cute, little one bedroom apartment. And she's already got the colors picked out for the apartment. Then, they're gonna have about two years of getting to know each other and loving each other. And then they're gonna try to have a baby, and boom, they're gonna have a baby. And she's already got a name for the boy baby and a girl baby.

Mary had a plan, but God interrupted her plan. Has God ever interrupted your plan, raise your hand? Online, you can type, God has interrupted my plan. Why does God do that? Why would He interrupt your plan? We have to remember that even though we think we're pretty smart, He's actually smarter and His ways are higher than our ways.

And that's why it's important to remind ourselves that God's purpose is often very different from our plans. God's purpose for our lives is often very different than what we think is best. And we see this in Luke 1:26, when scripture says this, - - - -