He Enables Us
June 9, 2001
When the angel, Gabriel, informed Mary that she was to become the mother of God’s special child, she asked a most logical question.
“How can this be?”
What the angel had told her, besides being startling, was physically impossible. Mary knew a virgin couldn’t possibly conceive a child- and that’s what she was. Gabriel replied to her, in so many words, “Don’t worry. God will enable you to do this.” And then he added, possibly with a twinkle in his eye, if such is possible for angels, “He will enable you to do something and be something you could never have thought possible.”
No woman in all of history had faced a situation like Mary’s. But that’s good. You see, we might say something similar about our lives. No one has been in your precise set of circumstances, facing exactly what you face as you live your life. As the old spiritual put it, “Nobody knows the trials I’ve seen…” Yet all of us know what it means to struggle with weaknesses, inadequacies, and unyielding obstacles. We look at certain situations and relationships and despair of ever seeing change.
Life has a way of exposing our weaknesses. We are weak vessels. In fact, we’re told that we’re jars of clay. Yet God leads us to difficult tasks so that we might turn to Him. It is the power of God that enables us.
To Mary’s question, “How can this be?” Gabriel offered a two-part answer. First, he reminded her that this would be the work of the Holy Spirit within her, not something of her own strength or doing. And second, he pointed her to another miracle near at hand- right in Mary’s own family.
1. Depend on the Empowering of the Holy Spirit.
Luke 1.35.
When was the last time you found yourself painted into one of those “impossible corners” in your life? The tasks before you seemed crushing. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. The complexities seemed overwhelming. You can’t seem to make any forward progress, but know you can’t turn back. You don’t know what to do, or where to turn. (Maybe that’s the way we feel as a congregation, wanting to go forward, but unsure of how to do that.)
Scripture is wonderful in showing us that we are not alone in those feelings. Others have “been there” before us, in corners just as tight, and in circumstances every bit as demanding. The pages of the Bible show us how the Lord has been pleased to help and deliver time after time. Listen to what Paul candidly confessed to the Corinthians:
2 Cor. 1. 8-9
Doesn’t that sound too familiar? Haven’t you been there, too? Haven’t you tasted the “great pressure”? Haven’t you felt the inability to endure even one more day? Haven’t you felt despair creeping up- like fog rising from the street to envelope you- to wrap its fingers around your heart? That’s what the great apostle Paul experienced. But listen to what he learned through that process:
v. 9- “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”
I believe the Living Bible captures Paul’s emotions a little better: “We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never live through it. We…saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us.”
When you are crushed and overwhelmed, when the problem seems so much bigger than you are and you feel powerless to make a difference, there is One who will enable you to go on. There is One who will put His shoulder under your load, if you will cast your cares upon Him.
Mary asked, “How will this be?” And Gabriel replied, pointing her outside of herself:
Luke 1. 34-37
It’s just the same for you and me. When we find ourselves overwhelmed by our circumstances, overwhelmed by responsibilities, and overburdened by problems beyond our ability to handle, we must cry out to God and lean on the enabling of the One who dwells within us.
It is one of the reasons Jesus came. He looked around and saw men and women staggering under the load of worries and cares and tasks, and His heart was moved within Him. He said this to all of us:
Matt. 11.28
Paul faced the same situation once again a bit later in the book of 2 Corinthians. He confessed a physical “Thorn in the flesh” that grieved and tormented him. Three times he pleaded with the Lord for release from that affliction, and three times He was given this answer: “My grace is all you need. My power is strongest when you are weak” (12.9).
In other words, “My strength and My power are at work in the midst of your weakness, in the midst of your impossible situations, in the midst of those times when you wonder, What in the world am I going to do?” (I find this tremendously encouraging as we embark on purposeful congregational development!)
You and I limit God’s work in our lives by not allowing Him to enable us! We don’t give Him our burdens because they seem so impossible to us. We say, “What’s the use? I want God to work in me, but my life is a mess and God could never enable me.” Maybe your life IS a mess, but God is tremendous at enabling people to clean up messes!
Mary didn’t reduce herself to a mass of focused impossibility. Even though she couldn’t begin to understand how God was about to accomplish what He said He would accomplish in her, she simply bowed her head and submitted to God’s plan.
Luke 1.38
In fact, we see this same reaction to God some centuries earlier, in another moment of great distress and perplexity; the prophet Jeremiah bowed his head in a similar way and said this:
Jer. 32.17
So, in all situations, it’s important to realize that we’re part of something greater than ourselves. We’re not made to depend on ourselves, although that’s a message of our society; supposedly we have to depend on ourselves. We are designed to lean on God! Do it, and allow the room for His Spirit to be actively at work in you!
2. Witness His Work in Those Around You
After the angel reminded Mary that the power of the Holy Spirit would do the impossible within her, He encouraged her to pack her PJs and toothbrush and take a little trip.
Luke 1.36
If you feel powerless, if you struggle believing that God could enable you to do something extraordinary- or do an extraordinary work in you- look around and see what He’s doing for others! That’s exactly what Mary did. She immediately took the angel’s hint, which is always a good idea, and “got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea” (Luke 1.39).
Mary ran to Elizabeth. She made haste. Why did she hurry? Because Elizabeth was a living illustration that God, working within a woman’s yielded life, could do the impossible. Zechariah was “well along in years,” and Elizabeth “was barren.” Yet now she was six months along!
Mary craved that living illustration of God’s power and might. And when Elizabeth greeted Mary at the door, with her stomach round with new life, Mary’s heart must have sung with joy. Perhaps at that moment God whispered in her heart, “If I can work in her, My daughter, I can work in you.”
Elizabeth’s greeting certainly removed any lingering doubt: v. 42, 45.
And then Mary burst into song! When she saw how God had worked in her relative’s heart and how Elizabeth had been filled with the Holy Spirit, she, too, was filled with the Holy Spirit… and great joy!
Mary spoke of three specific blessings from the Lord. First, she spoke of the blessing of PEACE- v. 49.
When God says He’ll do something, He will do it. Mary must have had great confusion in her mind since her conversation with Gabriel. There were so many things she couldn’t fit together. What would Joseph think? What would the neighbors say? What would the elders do? What would her family imagine?
Yet now her heart focuses on “the Mighty One”- who He is and what He has done. What the peace of God does is to knit things together. It takes all the broken, puzzling fragments in our mind and brings them together in His peace.
Second, she spoke of the blessing of PROTECTION.
v. 52
Mary sang of past times of deliverance of her fathers in the faith. No power can withstand God’s might. God will remove any obstacle that rises to hinder His work. Nothing will get in the way. What God has set Himself to do, he will do.
Third, she spoke of the blessing of POWER.
v. 54-55
Mary stood on the history and track record of God. It’s true that she had never been in the frightening situation in which she found herself before this time. But she recognized that God was still God, no matter what was happening in her life. This is a God who had done miracles before! He gave Abraham and Sarah a child in their old age. Life came from Sarah’s dead womb, a miracle baby whose name meant “laughter.” Mary encouraged herself by recalling God’s mighty, miraculous works in the past. She reminded herself that she wasn’t God’s first project.
Mary might have said something like this to herself, as she walked the dusty miles to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s home in the hills. “I’m just a young girl, and my mind is filled with questions and confusion. The best thing I can do right now is to rehearse in my mind the mighty things my God has done. Why shouldn’t I believe He can do a mighty work in me?”
We can learn from Mary the value of declaring what God has done in our lives. God will use our words, our firsthand experience of His grace and power, to encourage others who struggle with fear or worry or discouragement.
Here we have another important aspect of what Jesus came for, and another aspect of His wonderful life to celebrate at His table! What needed to be done was done, and God and Jesus provided all that was necessary. This is an important lesson for us right now. As we look to the future and seek to take the steps God wants taken and to make the plans God wants made, we must KNOW that He will enable us to do that. We’re not on our own, but are very much within His will. As God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- enabled Mary in her pregnancy, so He will enable us in our seemingly impossible and overwhelming situations- personally and congregationally. It’s really amazing to think of this and to know this!
