Have you ever been asked to do something and asked HOW? Has the Lord ever asked you to do something and you asked HOW?
Pay particular attention to verses 34 and 35: 34 Then Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?" 35 And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.
Six months after Gabriel delivered God’s message to Zechariah (1:11-20), God sent the angel with another message, this time to a virgin named Mary. The angel Gabriel had also appeared to the prophet Daniel more than five hundred years earlier (Daniel 8:15-17; 9:21). Each time Gabriel appeared, he brought important messages from God. This time was no exception.
The angel told her she was “highly favored” that is, the object of special favor from God. Gabriel gave her the good news: she would become the mother of the promised Messiah whom she would name Jesus (Jehovah is salvation).
When it comes to Mary, people tend to go to one of two extremes. They either magnify her so much that Jesus takes second place (v. 32), or they ignore her and fail to give her the esteem she deserves. Elisabeth, filled with the Spirit, called her “the mother of my Lord” (v. 43); and that is reason enough to honor her.
What do we know about Mary? She was a Jewess of the tribe of Judah, a descendent of David, and a virgin (Isaiah 7:14). She was engaged to a carpenter in Nazareth named Joseph (Matthew 13:55), and apparently both of them were poor (Luke 2:24; Leviticus 12:8). In Judaism, “virgins” were young maidens, usually fourteen or younger.
Christmas art depicts Jesus’ family as images (icons) stamped in gold foil, with a calm Mary receiving the tidings of the Annunciation as a kind of benediction. But that is not at all how Luke tells the story. Mary was “greatly troubled” and “afraid” at the angel’s appearance, and when the angel pronounced the sublime words about the Son of the Most High whose kingdom will never end, Mary had something far more mundane on her mind: “But I’m a virgin!”
Notice verse 29: 29 Confused and disturbed, (NLT); She was thoroughly shaken, (MSG). She was scared.
No wonder she asked how. How many times have you as an individual or you as a church asked the Lord how?
You see the Lord has given us a mandate in these last days to carry this gospel to our generation. He has given you the awesome responsibility of reaching Johnsonville and the surrounding area. He has given you the responsibility to reach your children, and your grandchildren and your mothers and fathers as well as all of your family. He has given you the responsibility to build His Kingdom right here. With such a great responsibility it is easy to ask HOW.
As an individual the Lord has given you great responsibilities and you may be asking HOW?
35 And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you
If we are going to accomplish what He wants us to do we must have the power of the Holy Spirit.
6 So he answered and said to me: "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ’Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts. Zech 4:6 (NKJV)
Acts 1:4-8 – “ 4 And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me; 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." 6 Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, "Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 And He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
“You shall receive power…” (dunamis) Dunamis (Power) – ability, power, physical or moral as residing in a person or thing. (b) Power in action, as e.g., when put forth in performing miracles. Jesus had given them a commission but He also left them with the power or ability to carry out this commission.
Thank God for education, we need it; Thank God for church workers, we need them (you); Thank God for organization, we need it, but more that all this we need the mighty power of God. These things are necessary and we need them, but the power of the Holy Spirit is absolutely indispensable. Without this we would die as a church.
E. M. Bounds writes: “The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use. He does not flow through methods, but through men.”
When young Dwight L. Moody was visiting England he heard Henry Varley say, “The world has yet to see what God can do through a man who is fully consecrated to the Holy Spirit.” Moody thought, “He said a man. He didn’t say a great man, nor an educated man, nor a rich man, nor a wise man, but simply a man. I am a man, and it lies within a man himself whether he will or will not make that entire and full consecration. I will try my utmost to be that man.”
All of us as pastors and churches have been good at using the machinery. Sometimes it works and sometime it doesn’t. There is nothing wrong with the machinery but for the machinery and methods of the church to really be effective we need to use them in the power of the Holy Spirit.
How are we going to do what the Lord has called us to do; not through machinery or methods but through the power of the Holy Spirit?
A. C. Dixon used to say, “when we rely on organization, we get what organization can do. When we rely upon education, we get what education can do. When we rely on eloquence, we get what eloquence can do. But when we rely on the Holy Spirit, we get what God can do.”
I don’t want you to get the picture that God or I am against order or organization. There is order and organization in the Bible. But this present generation of believers is so deluged with seminars and training session and preparations that they never get to practice what they learn. If there is one thing satan will do if he can it is to get us to rely more on methods instead of on the Spirit of God.
The church that is man-managed instead of Spirit controlled is doomed to failure. A ministry that is college-trained but not Spirit filled works no miracles. The church that multiplies committees and neglects prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit may be fussy, noisy and enterprising, but it labors in vain and spends its strength for naught. It is possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamics. There is a superabundance of machinery; what is wanting, what is needed, is power. To run an organization needs no God. Man can supply the energy, and enthusiasm for things human. The real work of a church depends upon the power of the Holy Spirit for the church is not merely a human organization, it is a divine organization conceived in the heart of God and born on the day of Pentecost.
The work of the church is supernatural; it cannot be done in the strength of the natural. You and I can’t destroy the walls of satan in the natural.
1 Corinthians 4:20 says, “For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” This one verse speaks volumes to us as Christians today. We find ourselves talking to each other about how much we wish we could do something good for the Kingdom; how we want desperately to be soul winners for Christ and to become Christ-like ourselves. We talk about wanting to be able to pray for the sick and see them healed or pray for a need and see it answered. We long for that power to be seen in and through us but we make excuses as to why it isn’t. We talk a lot about power and even make excuses as to why it isn’t being demonstrated.
Listen, the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk or excuses; it’s a matter of POWER.
Illustration: Some time ago something terrible happened to a man named Sid Taylor and his wife Christy. It seems that one afternoon, Sid was underneath Christy’s car working on the steering linkage, when the jack that was holding the front end up suddenly gave way & the cassis of the car came crashing down on Sid’s chest. Not being able to breathe, he couldn’t call for help so he frantically kicked his tool box over with his feet. Christy heard all the noise & ran from the kitchen to the garage and found her husband trapped underneath the car. Terrified, she ran back into the kitchen and called 911 for help. Sadly, before the fire and rescue squad arrived, Sid had already died of asphyxiation.
Six months later, a very similar tragedy occurred. A man was putting an exhaust system on his truck in the garage when, again the jack slipped and the truck came down on him. He was able to get out one short yell for help; his wife heard his yell and came running to see what was wrong. When she came into the garage, she saw that the truck had fallen on her husband and he was only minutes away from death—she didn’t run for the phone to call 911…..nor did she go across the street to get the neighbors to help her. None of these common sense thoughts crossed her mind, she simply grabbed hold of the truck’s bumper, and this 46-year-old woman lifted the front of that truck up high enough for her husband to roll out from underneath it!
Thanks to his wife, the man survived this incident with only two broken ribs and a whole new respect for the woman he’d been married to for 25 years.
Needless to say, it required an awesome amount of power to save this man’s life—where did this power come from? It came from God, of course. But, many unspiritual people would say, that’s not a miracle—God didn’t do that—haven’t you ever heard of adrenaline? People can go so far as to explain that it is a hormone secreted by the adrenal gland located just above each kidney. This particular hormone is secreted all the time but an extra amount is injected into the system in times of distress. And large quantities of this chemical could sometimes provide a person with almost super-human strength. After they have done their best to explain this in medical and scientific terminology, it still all adds up to one thing, God did it!
The reason for both stories is this: the power to save was present in both instances, but it was only summoned or unleashed in the second. The first lady looked at the car on her husband and used her head “knowing” that she couldn’t pick the car up and tried to get help somewhere else. The second lady saw her husband dying underneath his truck and knew only one thing; that truck was going to move. And with that attitude and faith, the truck did indeed move and her husband was saved.
In the same way that many of us have this extra boost of potential strength within our grasp through adrenaline, we also have another form of power available to us as Christians; power that is far beyond our capability even to comprehend. But, just like the first lady that failed to save her husband because she didn’t realize that this power was available, many Christians allow themselves to become victims of circumstance instead of claiming this power of God and becoming victorious through Christ.
Samson
Samson was the last of the judges to engage personally in battle, he led no armies. His struggle with the Philistines was a mere feud. Yet he was a valiant fighter.
Pictures of him as a giant with bulging muscles are sadly misleading. The Bible clearly states that he was a man of ordinary physiques: “If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man” (Judges 16:17b). It was the power of God that made him who he was, not his physical build. The Philistines were at a loss as to explain the secret of his strength which would not have been the case if he were a model of physical strength. It was the anointing power of the Holy Spirit that made a difference in his life. What he accomplished was through the power of the Spirit and not through his own power.
• One day a young lion came at him roaring, “and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid.” (Goat)
• Later Samson needed thirty men’s clothing because of a bet he had made, “and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he…slew thirty men.”
• On one occasion he used only the jawbone of an ass to slay the Philistines.
Samson was able to gain victory over the Philistines because of the Spirit of the Lord that came upon him mightily.
The Great Commission
46 Then He said to them, "Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 (This is the commission but how are we going to do this?) And you are witnesses of these things. 49 Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." Luke 24:46-49 (NKJV)
The early church wasn’t much but it was charged with the power of the Holy Spirit. In the early church their word was with power.
• Conviction accompanied their speech.
• Signs and wonders confirmed their testimony.
• Rulers trembled in their presence.
• The dead heard their voice.
• Disease fled at their touch.
• Devils were subject to their word.
• The indwelling of the Holy Spirit endued men with divine authority and power.
• The normal life of the church was filled, inspired and empowered in the fullness of the Spirit of the living God.
There is no excuse for us to be defeated.
There is no excuse for failure.
There is no justification for our ineffectiveness, for we have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power who is the gift and inheritance of every believer who would receive Him in all His fullness.
When we stand before the Lord and He ask us why we failed there will be no excuse. He will tell us that He has given us all we needed in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
To do battle with satan will take more than ordinary people with ordinary power.
• Satan can’t be defeated with reason.
• Satan can’t be defeated in a debate.
• He can’t be run off by a shouting contest between us and him.
• He can’t be bought off with money.
• He want be defeated with army tanks or guns or any other modern weapons. Carnal weapons want defeat him.
The only way he can be defeated is through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.
God is just waiting to fill ordinary people with extraordinary power.
