Where You’ve Come From Isn’t Where You’re Going
Where You’ve Come From Isn’t Where You’re Going
The Christmas story of Mary offers one of history's most remarkable examples of divine transformation. A teenage girl from Nazareth, an insignificant village in Galilee, became the mother of Jesus Christ and one of the most significant figures in human history. Mary's journey teaches us that our origins, family background, and current circumstances don't limit God's purpose for our lives. He looks beyond our past and sees our potential, just as He saw Mary's.When the angel Gabriel announced God's incredible plan, Mary could have refused. Instead, she responded with two crucial attitudes that unlock God's greater plans in our lives. First, she demonstrated humble availability by declaring herself the Lord's servant. This wasn't about her abilities or qualifications but her willingness to be used by God. Second, she showed hopeful assurance by expressing faith that everything God promised would come true. These two attitudes must work together in our lives.God accomplishes the impossible through the power of the Holy Spirit, who comes to dwell within us, and through His unfailing word. The virgin birth defied natural explanation, yet it happened because God promised it would. Similarly, our breakthroughs may not make sense in the natural realm, but we can stand firm knowing that God's word never fails. This Christmas, we're challenged to embrace Mary's heart attitude, offering our availability to God while maintaining confident faith in His promises for our lives.
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What Are You Hungry For? Understanding Our Spiritual Where You've Come From Isn't Where You're Going: Lessons from Mary's Christmas Story
Christmas Day reminds us of one of history's most remarkable transformations. A teenage girl from an unknown village became the mother of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Mary's story teaches us a profound truth: where you've come from isn't where you're going when God has plans for your life.
God's Plans Are Greater Than Your Own
Do you really believe that God has greater plans for you than you do for yourself? This question challenges us to examine our faith and expectations. Mary's encounter with the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:26-38 demonstrates this beautifully.
Mary was just an ordinary teenage girl from Nazareth, a small, insignificant village in Galilee. She wasn't famous, wealthy, or particularly notable. Yet God chose her for the most extraordinary purpose imaginable - to become the mother of His Son.
Your Background Doesn't Limit God's Purpose
God doesn't care where you were born, what your family background looks like, or what your current circumstances are. He looks beyond your past and sees your potential. Mary went from being an unknown village girl to becoming one of the most significant figures in human history.
The same God who transformed Mary's destiny wants to transform yours. His plans for your life are beyond your comprehension, deeper than you realize, and greater than anything you could dream up yourself.
Two Keys to Embracing God's Greater Plans
When the angel Gabriel announced God's incredible plan to Mary, she could have refused. Instead, she responded with two crucial attitudes that we can learn from today.
1. Humble Availability: "I Am the Lord's Servant"
Mary's first response was humble availability. She said, "I am the Lord's servant" (Luke 1:38). This wasn't about her abilities or qualifications - it was about her willingness to be used by God.
God doesn't look for your ability first; He's looking for your availability. Many people have gifts and talents, but before God wants to use what you can bring to Him, He's looking for a heart that says, "Here I am, Lord. Use me."
This kind of availability requires humility. It means setting aside your own plans and comfort zones. Mary's yes to God wasn't easy - it risked her reputation, her engagement, and her future. But she chose to trust God's plan over her own understanding.
2. Hopeful Assurance: "May Everything You Have Said Come True"
Mary's second response showed hopeful assurance. She declared, "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). This wasn't wishful thinking - it was rock-solid faith in God's promises.
You need both humble availability and hopeful assurance working together in your life. You must believe with all your heart that the promises God has given you will come to pass, that He does have great plans, and that He will bring them about.
How Does God Accomplish the Impossible?
When Mary asked how God's plan could possibly work, the angel gave her a profound answer: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Luke 1:35).
The Power of the Holy Spirit
God doesn't expect you to accomplish His plans in your own strength. He transforms your life by dwelling within you through His Holy Spirit. This is the message of Christmas - God doesn't just look down from heaven, He comes to live with you, among you, and in you.
When you invite Jesus to be Lord and Savior of your life and hunger after the Holy Spirit, He fills and empowers you. This should give you confident assurance that God will bring His promises to pass in your life.
God's Word Never Fails
The angel reminded Mary of this crucial truth: "For the word of God will never fail" (Luke 1:37). People will fail you - family, friends, even spiritual leaders are human and imperfect. But God's word is absolutely reliable.
When God speaks something, it must come to pass because that's what makes Him God. The universe is subject to His word. Even when circumstances look impossible, God's promises remain sure.
Believing for Your Breakthrough
Mary didn't understand how God would accomplish His plan, and we often don't understand how either. The virgin birth defies natural explanation, yet it happened because God said it would.
Your breakthrough may not make sense in the natural realm. People might ridicule your faith or call your beliefs impossible. But you can stand firm knowing that if God said it, He will bring it to pass.
Some of God's promises in your life may take years to fulfill. Don't give up. Keep believing. The word of God doesn't fail, even when circumstances suggest otherwise.
Life Application
This Christmas, choose to embrace Mary's heart attitude. Where you've come from - your past mistakes, your humble beginnings, your current limitations - isn't where you're going. God has greater plans for your life than you can imagine.
Make Mary's declaration your own: "I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true." Approach the coming year with both humble availability and hopeful assurance.
Ask yourself these questions:
Am I willing to say "yes" to God's plans even when they don't match my own?
Do I truly believe God's word over my circumstances?
What promises has God given me that I need to hold onto with renewed faith?
How can I cultivate both humility and confidence in God's plans for my life?
This week, spend time in prayer offering your availability to God and declaring your faith in His promises. Remember, the same God who transformed a village girl into the mother of the Savior wants to do extraordinary things through your ordinary life.
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A discussion guide for the sermon can be found here.
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All right, so I want us to turn.
If you've got your Bibles. Luke chapter one. Luke chapter one. We're going to bring a bit of a Christmas theme because it is Christmas Day. So we will.
I want to ask you this. I know it's Christmas. I know we've got a whole bunch of things and presents and all those things, but we're here in the house of God and we're going to come around his word. And I want to grab your attention with this thought today. I want to ask you, do you really believe that God has greater plans for you than you do?
Do you believe God has greater plans for you than you do yourself? And we're going to have a look at a scripture where God indeed had greater plans for someone. And in Luke 1:26, we encounter this person. It says this in the sixth month of Elizabeth's Pregnancy. God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary.
She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. And Gabriel appeared to her and said, greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you. Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. Don't be afraid, Mary, the angel told her, for you have found favor with God.
You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. And he will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end. And Mary goes on to question God and ask some questions about that.
And then in Luke 1:38, she says something that I think is quite profound and quite astounding for a teenage. What most scholars believe was a teenage girl who was encountering God at this, or an angel from God. And she said this in Luke 1:38. Mary responded, I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true.
And then the angel left her. I want to ask you this today. Well, I want to say this and this statement, and I want you to think about it for your own life. Where you've come from isn't where you're going. Where you've come from is isn't where you're going.
It's astounding to me that we have this encounter and Mary has been talked about in different ways and esteemed in different ways. And some people will agree with. Sometimes we don't agree with those ways, but here's the truth. She was just a teenage girl from a little village, Nazareth, in Galilee. A village in Galilee had no great conquering aspects.
It wasn't well known. It was a bit of a nothing village. Who comes from a bit of a nothing place? You know, most of us, probably. I was born.
My esteemed birth. I was born.
I don't think there were angels that came around at this point in time. Actually. My mum was in labor with me for 48 hours in this particular hospital, Box Hill Hospital. Box Hill Hospital in Melbourne. Who was born in Box Hill?
Debbie, you were born in Box Hill. Who was born in Box Hill Hospital? Come on. Yeah. Give ourselves a shout out.
Famous place. Some of us here were born even a bit closer to home than Box Hill. Pastor Trevor. Somewhere here. Frankston North.
Who was born around Frankston? Frankston North. Few of us. Come on. Come on.
My beautiful wife was not born in the state Of Victoria, I can claim Victorian status. She wasn't born in Victoria. She was born in South Australia in a little town called Port Pirie. Port Pirie, that's where you were born. And just a little township.
And, you know, the truth of the matter is, who was not born in Australia at all? Who was born overseas? Look at that whole bunch of us who was born in a village that no one's ever heard of before, A few of us.
You're in good company. You're in good company. Because the truth of the matter is, here we have one of the most famous figures in history, Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she started off life as a village girl in Nazareth. And we go, if you've been in church life a long time, you've heard of Nazareth because it's Jesus of Nazareth.
But it was a nothing village in Galilee, in a little offshoot of the Roman Empire that had been conquered. And God picks her out. Isn't that amazing that God picks this young teenage girl out and says, you are favored. And you know what I want to say when I look at that? Sometimes we can look at that and go, well, that's because she's famous.
That's because she was the mother of Jesus. No, she wasn't then. She was just an unknown village girl. And what that tells me is that God doesn't care where you come from. He doesn't care where you were born.
He doesn't care whether it was in Australia, overseas, whether it was well known, unknown, whether you were rich, poor, poor, black, white. Otherwise he doesn't care. God looks at you and says, I favor you. I see where you come from. And he wants to tell you.
And he told Mary, at this point, where you've come from isn't where you're going. And he gives her a promise, and he says, you are going to become the mother of God. That's astounding. You're going. I mean, have you ever thought about.
Sometimes we think about this. Cause we're having a bit of a baby boom at the moment, motherhood. And it's an amazing miracle, isn't it, that a human being can form another human being in them and then give birth. We just go, yeah, that's called, you know, parenting, Adrian. It's called childbirth.
Yeah. But I go, it's actually quite a miracle that we would form another human being. We then say, well, Mary was going to go through that, but it wasn't just another human being. This was the God man or the God baby. This was God himself and man in one, this is a miracle that she went from a village girl to becoming the mother of God, of Jesus Christ.
God had a plan for her, and it was far beyond what she could even dream or imagine. In fact, it worried her. It concerned her because she said, this is incredible. Do you know that the plans God has for our life are far beyond what you can think in yourself and in your own ways? And they're profound.
They're deeper than you realize. God didn't say, I'm going to make you rich and famous. He said, I'm going to make you the mother of my son. No one else had even comprehended that. Do you know that the plans God has for you are beyond the comprehension of the human mind?
They're beyond. God's plans for you are greater. What he wants to do through your life are greater. Can you see it? Can you see it?
Do you realize that where you've come from, wherever that is in your birth, in your background, in your past, is not where you're going if you let God grab ahold of your life? That's the message I get about Mary. That's the message I get about what Jesus Christ wants to do through you. So I want to bring to you two things that Mary did that Mary said to say, yes, God, I want that plan. She could have said, no, I don't want a bar of it.
I don't want to be a part of this plan. I don't want this. She could have done that and stayed in her oblivion, stayed just by herself, and you'd never hear of her again. But she said two things, and we find them in this scripture. This young woman who said something Incredible in verse 38, Mary responded, I'm the Lord's servant.
May everything you've said about me come true. So there's two things here, and there's two things that I want to challenge you about. How are you going to respond to God's call on your life? How are you going to respond to God saying, hey, this is where you are right now. I don't know where you are right now.
Maybe you're going, hey, I'm happy enough, but God has greater plans. Maybe you've been disappointed with 2025 and said, hey, what I dreamed for didn't quite get to where I wanted it to be. God says, I've got greater plans for you. He says it to each and every one of us. But we got to do two things.
Mary did these two things. And I want to challenge if you will go into 26. With these two attitudes, these two responses, then you will see God take you from where you are to somewhere completely different and better and more profound and more in the will of God than you've ever been. Here's the two things she said. The first thing she said is, I am the Lord's servant.
The first thing we see Mary bring to God is she brought a humble availability. A humble availability. God said, I've got a plan for you. She said, this is beyond my thinking. This is beyond my comprehension.
This was not in her plans. She said, I'm a virgin. Well, you're gonna get pregnant. It's like, well, that's. I wasn't planning that.
That's gonna mess up my life. It basically almost did. She was engaged to be married. That engagement almost ended. She was going to be.
This was a risky business. You know, God sometimes takes you into a place where this is risky. It doesn't always make you look awesome. Sometimes we step out in faith and we get ridiculed. Sometimes we step into the plan of God, and the world doesn't like that.
And it's hard sometimes. Being in the will of God and his plan for your life isn't the plan that you would have come up with for your comfort. Mary said, I am the Lord's servant, and be it unto me, let it happen. All right? I'm the Lord's servant.
She came and she said, okay. She would have been going, man, what are my parents gonna say? What is my village gonna say? What's Joseph gonna say? How's this gonna work?
How am I gonna be the mother of God? All those questions came up, but the first thing she said is, I'm available. I'm your servant. I will do as you wish. Lord, you can do through my life what you want to do.
I want to ask you, what's your response to God when you get challenged, when you know the kind of life that he wants? When God puts a dream on your heart, when you read His Word and you see this is the kind of life, there's something. The Holy Spirit grabs a hold of you and prompts you inside, which I believe he does with so many people. Do you know we're seeing so many people come into the life of our church because they feel prompted by God. They're having an encounter with God even before they come to church.
And the reason they're coming is because they're going. I need to respond to that. That's being the Lord's servant, saying, I am the Lord's servant. A Humble availability. I want to say this.
God doesn't look for your ability first. He's looking for your availability.
Many of us have abilities. We've got gifts. That's all great. But before God wants to use your ability, before he wants to use all the things you can bring to him, he's looking for availability. Humble.
God, use me. God use me. Okay, if I look at my own life, I remember one time I was in a prayer meeting and I was 17 years old, and I was. It was a half night of prayer on a Friday night, and we're praying up and down, and they were, you know, God, move and God, do this, and God use us. And I was.
I was. I went off by myself because I was talking to the Lord and I felt on my heart, I was like, God, but what if it, you know, what if it all goes to my head? What if God, you start using me? And I get arrogant and I get pride, and I do all that. And I became very concerned about all that.
And I was speaking and my pastor came up to me and he said, adrian, you look very perturbed. I was like, as my daughter tells me, she goes, that's what you look like all the time, dad.
But I look extra perturbed this time.
And I said, I'm worried that I'd been reading about David had a heart after God. And I said, what if my heart gets hardened and I get prideful and I do something great for God, but I lose it? And he said, well, that. The fact you're worried about that, it's never gonna happen, so don't worry and just get on with it. But I did concern myself.
And I remember in that prayer time, I went to God and I said, God, I don't wanna become. I don't want you to use my gifts and my abilities, but it's done for me, and it's done for my comfort and for my pride. And I remember in that moment, that prayer night, I didn't spend praying. I probably spent a bit of time praying for different things. But actually, most of that night I spent saying, God, here I am.
I humble myself before you, God, I'm available. Whatever you want to do through my life, Lord, keep me with a right heart before you. And do you know what I learned from that moment? I don't believe that that was me just worrying. I believe that was the Holy Spirit saying early on in my life, saying, adrian, I don't want your ability.
I need your availability. Adrian, I don't want all the things you can Do I want your heart? I want you to be like Mary that says, I am the Lord's servant. Here am I, And I want to tell you the best thing you can do. Some of us go, we don't believe that we got all this ea.
We've got all the. Some of us think we've got great abilities and someone needs to notice it, and one day it'll open up. Some of us don't think we have much ability at all. But God doesn't care what you think about yourself and all that. He wants you to just say, God, here I am.
Before you worry about your abilities and how you're going to do it and all that. God, here I am. I'm the Lord's servant. And I ask you, will you go into 26? Will you humble yourself and say, God, I'm going to believe that you want to speak to me.
I'm going to believe that you do want to use me, that you do want to do something great through my life, that you want to take me from here to somewhere completely different and greater and better and more in your will. Here I am. Humble available ability before him. That's the first thing Mary did.
The second thing. She then said this. I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true. This is an incredible sentence.
I am the Lord's servant. Humble availability. May everything you've said about me come true. She then had a hopeful assurance. And I've realized this about the Christian life.
You gotta have these two things going hand in hand. You gotta have a humble availability. And then you've got to have a hopeful assurance, a confident hope, a belief that God is going to do that which he has said to you. You got to believe with all your heart that the promises God's given you, that he does have great plans and he will bring it to pass. You gotta have that in your heart.
I'll go. When I was 17 and I'm praying, saying, God, here I am. I'm the Lord's servant. I had that going on, but I also had something else. I had a belief.
I'd been praying. I felt that God had spoken to me. You're gonna be a pastor. You're gonna serve me. You're gonna reach people.
And I had a belief in my heart that God did want to use me, that where I'd come from isn't where I was going, that I was going somewhere different. And I believed it. And I had those things, a humble availability and a hopeful assurance that believed that God had great plans and that if I let him, he would do mighty things in my life and through my life. And I want to ask you, do you believe that God wants to do mighty things through your life? Do you have a hopeful, rock solid, faith filled assurance?
Mary asks God, how can you have that assurance? How can you have that faith? Because they're the two things you need. Humility, availability, and a belief that God's going to use you. Mary asked God, and we go back to the scripture, Luke 1:34.
Mary asked the angel, but how can this happen? I'm a virgin. And the angel replied, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born and will be holy and he will be called the Son of God. How will this happen, God?
The Holy Spirit will come upon you. I want to tell you this, brothers and sisters. We are a Pentecostal Church and we believe in our Pentecostal Church as most Christians do. And we just emphasize it sometimes a bit more. We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit of God.
Here's the thing. How is God going to take you from where you are to where you're going? He is going to transform you and, and God himself will dwell within you. Do you believe that? Do you believe this is the thing?
God hasn't called you to just be a good Christian, going through life, doing your best to please him in heaven. God is not just sitting in heaven looking down. Isn't that how we look at him sometimes? Sitting down, looking, going. It's like we treat him a bit like Santa Claus sometimes.
Been looking around if you've been naughty or nice. And if you have, then he gives you gifts and blessing. If you've been a bit naughty, watch out, because the big man in heaven is looking down. And Jesus came and showed us that's not the case at all. Do you know what the message of Christmas is?
Is that I will dwell with you, among you, in you. That's what we should understand. How are you going to do this, God? How are you going to transform the world? How are you going to use me to transform the world?
And God's reply to her is, he said, well, the Holy Spirit shall come upon you. And actually what he was saying is, I'm going to come and live in you. I'm going to come and live in you. How am I going to transform your life? How am I going to transform the world?
I'm going to come and live in you. The power of my Holy Spirit, God himself is going to dwell in you. God himself is going to come and dwell in the. Do you know that wherever you go, if you invite him, if you've asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be Lord and savior of your life, if you hunger after the Holy Spirit, he comes and fills you and empowers you. And it should give you a hopeful, rock solid, faith filled assurance.
God's gonna bring it to pass. God's gonna save my family. God's gonna use me in my workplace. God's gonna use me in my church. God's gonna use me to change lives.
When I speak, something's gonna change. When I give, something's gonna happen. When. When I pray, the heavens shake, demons tremble. Cause I've got the Holy Spirit living on the inside of me.
And I. Come on brothers and sisters, we are a Holy Spirit filled people. You gotta ask him, you gotta believe it. He's in you. He's with you.
I've had to do this my whole life. I don't trust all my own abilities, but I trust the Holy Spirit of God when I step out in faith. I remember sitting in exams and I've done all the study. The exams are over now who's thankful the exams are over? Young people, few of you.
Yeah, there you go. Holiday time. I remember those exams. You know what? I studied hard.
I had ability. But I would pray and I would ask God the night before. And when I sat in that exam, before I opened the paper, I would pray and I'd say, holy Spirit, you help me bring back to my remembrance everything that I've studied. Help me, Holy Spirit. And you know what?
I would go into every exam with a hopeful assurance that God was going to do it. I'd do it. I went into my first job and I said, before I walked into the place, I said, holy Spirit, will you be with me as I go into this job? I don't know everything to do. I don't know.
I'm going to do my best. But will you walk with me and give me favor?
I walked into my church every time I preach, Lord, Will you speak, Holy Spirit, Will you speak? Will you empower me? Come on, brothers and sisters, do you believe that the Holy Spirit is in you and he wants to empower you in your workplace, in your marriage, in your family, for your children.
Let it be said, Mary, the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through you.
And then it says this in Luke 1:36. What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age. People used to Say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. Listen to this. For the word of the law of God will never fail.
For the word of God will never fail. How do you have a hopeful assurance? Because the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you and he empowers you and he gives you strength and vitality when you need it. And the word of God will never fail. If God said it, he will bring it to pass.
Come on. Who's holding onto a word from God? Who needs to hold onto a word from God that He's promised you, that His Word speaks, that you got to go. God, your word will never fail. Someone in this house today needs to grab a hold of that promise.
The word of God will never fail.
People will fail you. People you trust will fail.
Your loved ones, your parents, your husband, your wife, your brother or sister, your friends, your pastor, they will all fail you. Because we are all human beings and we don't have all the powers of God and we don't have it all together all the time. But the word of God will never, ever fail. What God speaks, I don't have time to go into it all today because otherwise I'll go over time like Darrel said.
But the word of God, when God. This is the truth, you know this. When God speaks must come to pass because that's what makes him God. Like the universe is subject to God. When God speaks something, he will bring it to pass even if it looks impossible.
Jesus said, with man it is impossible. With God, all things are possible. If God says, it shall be done, it shall be done. Mary didn't understand how. We still don't understand how.
No one understands how God became man. How a virgin conceived, we don't get. Doesn't make sense in the natural. And some people ridicule Christians because they go, ah, you believe a load of codswallet. No, we believe that the word of God will not fail.
That if God said it, he shall bring it to pass. And do you know what my testimony is? Do you know what your testimony is? Do you know what the proof is? My life.
My life. That he saved me, he redeemed me, he transformed me when I was lost. And when I've been down and depressed, I've encountered Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. I believe that he's real, that he saves, that he delivers. Here's my hopeful assurance.
Jesus Christ, come on. When you're feeling depressed, when the world says it's impossible, God says, look to me and believe. And so that's why we take these two things.
Where you've come from is not where you're going. Brothers and sisters, what the devil had planned for evil, God has planned for good.
So come to him and say, lord, here's my humble availability, and here's my hopeful assurance. May it be unto me everything that you have said, let it be. Is that your prayer?
Young people, everything that the Lord says, may it come true. Older people, everything the Lord has said. Sometimes we get disillusioned with this life. I'm still believing for some things God said to me as a young person. I'm still believing for these things God said to me when I was young.
He said, my dad's going to come back to Christ. He told me when I was young. And I prayed and I spoke in tongues and I believed. And it didn't look like it would happen. But years later, in the latter years of his life, guess what?
The word of God will not fail. Now my dad's in church now. He's going into nursing homes with Helena. And they're ministering to people and loving God. Because the word of God doesn't fail.
I believe God was going to turn our church and expand it and grow it into thousands. And when it was a couple of hundred people, it didn't look like it was possible. But now I look and say, God, the word of God doesn't fail. It's not my ability. It's our availability and our assurance that what he says shall come to pass.
There's still promises I've got that haven't come to pass yet. But I believe with all my heart that they will. Because God doesn't fail. Do you believe that? Are you gonna be like Mary?
This is my prayer. Not literally. All right, settle down. All right?
Have the heart that Mary had. This is her prayer. This is her statement. I want it to be our statement before we leave here today. I am the Lord's servant.
May everything you have said about me come true.
Is that your prayer? Where you've come from isn't where you're going. We're gonna pray today. I'm gonna ask the Holy Spirit to grab a hold of our hearts. I know we've got Christmas lunch.
We're gonna probably. You know what? You'll have a bit of time where you forget about all this. But I pray that you'll remember Mary. You'll remember the word of the Lord.
You'll remember her words and say, lord, let them be my words into the rest of this year and into next year. Come on, why don't we bow our heads and we're going to pray.
Lord, I believe that with all my heart. I truly do. And I know you believe it, and you know it to be, Lord, we're just speaking what you've said, Lord, that every single one of us listening online, watching here in this meeting, you have a plan for us. You have greater things for us. You want to do a greater work deep in our heart of healing, of revelation, of using us for your glory.
Where we've come from isn't where we're going, God. And all you need from us is an availability. God says, here I am, Lord. And an assurance that says, lord, I trust you. You'll bring it to my pass.
So, Lord, I pray for your people that like Mary, we too would come to you, Lord, and we'd say, God, as I think about my own life, as I think about your plans and future, for me, God, I'm going to bring those two attitudes to you. I pray we do it right now, Lord, that we would say, here I am, I'm your servant. Let it be unto me. May everything you've said about me come to pass, Lord. May every dream, may every promise, may every desire of your heart, Lord, for my family, for my future from the healing you want to do within me, to make me more like Christ.
May all those things come to pass, Lord Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the word of God that dwells in us, we pray it in Jesus name. And here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna say a prayer. And maybe you're in this place and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and savior. Christmas Day is a good day to know him.
Let's say this prayer together. Dear Lord Jesus, I want to put my trust in you. I believe you're the Son of God and you died on the cross for my sin. And you rose again from the dead. So forgive me, Jesus, be my Lord and Savior.
I give my life to you. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.
God's good. Hey. God's good. Well, there you go. It's 9:58, Darrell.
Yeah. Thank you very much. He's done it. Come on. Why don't we all stand for our feet?
We're going to sing this song. Christ alone, let's declare his goodness. Let's put our trust in him for this year and beyond. In Jesus name. God bless you.
Church.
To the storm, he is.
Let's sing it again. Christ alone. Christ alone. Cornerstone we may strong Ray. May you go have a blessed day.
Enjoy. Spend time with friends and family. Jesus. Remember Jesus.
Related Bible Verses
Luke 1:26–33 [NLT]
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end.”
Click to read Luke 1:26–33 (NLT) on Bible.com
Luke 1:34–35 [NLT]
Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.”
Click to read Luke 1:34–35 (NLT) on Bible.com
Luke 1:37 [NLT]
For the word of God will never fail.”
Click to read Luke 1:37 (NLT) on Bible.com
Luke 1:38 [NLT]
Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.
Click to read Luke 1:38 (NLT) on Bible.com
Matthew 19:26 [NIV]
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”