This morning, we continue our series, “The Miracles of Jesus.”
Before we get into the miracle, let’s look at the foundational scripture I will share be sharing with you all year.
(Psalm 126:4 TPT)
Now, Lord, do it again! Restore us to our former glory! May streams of your refreshing flow over us until our dry hearts are drenched again.
This is a season of refreshing and restoring for us. I pray you get refreshed and restored as we study each miracle.
I will do something different today. In the video version of yesterday’s message, I talked about being pregnant with a promise and having your “baby leap” in your womb. The two babies involved, John the Baptist and his cousin, Jesus, came from miracles. Since I will cover a lot of ground today, I won’t give direct scripture references.
Setting the stage.
While Mary was pregnant with Jesus, he was a baby she did not ask for. Her baby came to her as somewhat of a surprise from God. On the other hand, her cousin Elizabeth was in a different situation. Elizabeth and her husband have been praying for decades to get pregnant. After she passed the childbearing stage, God sent an angel to tell her husband that they would have a baby. Elizabeth was pregnant with a child she had wanted all her life. She was carrying around this precious little promise in her womb when her little cousin came to visit. When her cousin Mary walked through the door of her home (Mary being the only other human on the planet with a similar experience to hers), her baby leaped in her belly.
When you know you’re pregnant with a promise from God, and you are carrying around something that you have wanted for years or even decades, it is critical to be around people who understand what you’re going through. When you get around people who have a like experience with God, I can make your baby leap!
While I am teaching on the miracles of Jesus, and we have been going through supernatural act after supernatural act, I know there have been many moments in this series where your baby leaped. You are carrying something around that the Lord put down in your heart, and while you were incubating the promise, and you know the promise is real, others can’t see it, and they can’t feel what you feel. This is somewhat of a vulnerable state to be in. You know what God said. You know what you believe you are pregnant with. You know what you are carrying around. But you are not sure who you can share it with, but it is not something that most people will understand.
Elizabeth was pregnant supernaturally after decades of trying to have a baby. Her little cousin was pregnant without asking for it or ever having sex. Both were pregnant with God’s promise. When the two came into proximity to one another, something exploded in Elizabeth’s belly. That’s what happens when you are believing God for something that you can’t talk to many people about, and you experience something that causes your faith to increase. It’s like you have an explosion in your heart. Do you know what that is? Your baby is leaping!
I’m sure they have been moments, as we have been going through this series, where something exploded on the inside of you. That is your baby leaping with excitement because you know it’s only a matter of time before you have, in your hands, which you already have, in your heart.
So what does this mean for you today? A few things.
1. God made plans for you that you are unaware of.
Mary did not know it, but she was destined to be the Mother of our Lord from the foundations of the world. She had been prepared for her destiny all her life, and she did not even know it.
What is true for Mary is true for you. God made plans for you before the world began. You were born predisposed to certain things that align with your divine purpose (things you are naturally good at), and those things won’t truly make sense until God reveals His purpose to you. Once He does, you will look back over your life and realize that God had been preparing you all along, and you did not even know it.
Once God reveals His purpose to you, and you believe/receive it, your life takes on new meaning. It is then that you realize you are on this planet because God placed you here for such a time as this.
2. Faith receives what grace has provided.
God made it clear to Mary that she had been CHOSEN to become the Mother of our Lord. She did nothing to earn or deserve this assignment. The same can be said of Elizabeth. The angel did not tell her husband that they had earned anything. God had been silent for 400 years, and He broke His silence by telling Zachariah that he and Elizabeth were going to have a baby, and his name was John. This is how John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, came to the planet.
In both cases, the babies were an act of God’s grace. Elizabeth and Mary did not earn their assignments, and you did not earn yours. God gives us all He gives us by grace. Grace is free, unearned, and undeserved. Our job is to believe and receive it by faith.
— Faith believes what God is saying, even in the absence of any sense-realm evidence.
— What God was saying did not make sense at all. Mary did not have anything in the earthly realm that could validate what God was saying. But she had the audacity to believe God anyway.
— Faith believes that a God you cannot see will show up in your life in ways you can see!
— Faith sees the invisible and believes in the impossible.
— Faith agrees with heaven, even when it is clear that the earth has not caught up with heaven yet.
— Mary believed what the angel was announcing, even though she had no way of validating it, and as a result, she got pregnant!
— You will get pregnant with your purpose the day you believe what God believes about you.
— Since heaven was announcing it, that means that there was GRACE made available for it. This is a key point. Whenever God reveals something to you about you, He is showing you what He planned for you before the world began. Your job is to receive by faith what God wants to do in your life by grace. When your faith taps into God’s grace, your life becomes about God, about His plans, His will, and His ways. If you ever get to this point, your life will be All About Him, and God will be free to do in/with/through your life what He planned. This is the goal. This is the life of faith. Faith is not about what you want. Faith is about what God already planned for you before the world began.
3. When you are around people of faith, your faith will be strengthened, and your baby will leap!
— When you’re around people of faith, you will have Faith field experiences. When Mary walked through the threshold of Elizabeth’s home, her cousin said, “As soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.”
— When you are around people of faith, you will cause their faith to increase, and they will do the same for you!
— When you are around people of faith, you will hear the right things. You will hear what you need to reinforce what you believe.
— The devil is constantly attempting to sow seeds of fear, doubt, and unbelief into your heart. He will do that through others. When you are around people who are not people of faith and people who are influenced by satan, these are people that satan will use to sow negative seeds into your heart. These are seeds designed to erode and ultimately destroy your faith.
— When you are surrounded by people of God, who are people of faith, who are people being led by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will lead them to say things and do things in your presence that will cause your faith to increase.
— This is one of the reasons why Today’s Word is so powerful. While I am teaching and preaching to you every morning, your faith is being built up, edified, and fortified. There are many times when I am preaching and teaching that I can tell when people’s babies leap. I can see it. I can sense it. I know God is reinforcing what He promised in their lives while I am teaching them the WORD of God! If you listen to me long enough, YOUR BABY IS GOING TO LEAP!
4. When you are around people of faith, you will get words of confirmation.
— As soon as the angel left, Mary knew she was pregnant, but she also knew that almost no one would understand her pregnancy outside of marriage. She was young, not married, and she was pregnant. So she decided to surround herself with the ONE person who could understand what she was going through.
— While you are believing God, and especially when you’re at the stage where you have no sense realm evidence to support what you believe, you will have to fight thoughts of doubt. Mary did not have a baby bump yet. She was not showing. She could feel anything in her tummy yet. So while she believed she was pregnant satan was trying to do everything he could to get her to doubt it. When Mary got around Elizabeth, another person of faith, and another person who had experienced something similar with God, Mary was able to receive a word of confirmation. Elizabeth confirmed, out loud, what God was doing in Mary’s life.
— When you get another human, who knows nothing about what is going on in your life to confirm what God is doing in a way that is clearly the revelation of the Holy Spirit, it does something for your confidence/faith that nothing else can.
— While you are believing God for this big thing, and you have this thing in your heart, and you are meditating on a day and night, it is amazing when God uses someone around you to speak a word of confirmation. You know you did not talk to them about it, and you know they have no other way of knowing about it. When you know God clearly spoke to them, to speak to you, that external confirming word helps to solidify your faith in a way that almost nothing else can.
— Not only did Elizabeth say that Mary was pregnant (while she not showing), Elizabeth said that Mary was pregnant with THE LORD. There is no way Elizabeth could know that if God did not tell her.
— You want to surround yourself with people who are filled with the Holy Spirit and who are sensitive to Him. When you do, these people can provide you with a word of confirmation, which could happen at any time.
— When you surround yourself with the right people, God can use them to either confirm that you are going down the right path or confirm the fact that you are going astray. Either way, that external confirmation, coming from a person of faith, who you know is being led by the Holy Spirit, is a powerful thing.
— Warning: an external word of confirmation should never replace your personal ability to hear from God. But what I can and should do is reinforce what God is saying to you.
I will stop here and pick this up tomorrow.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, this is a season of refreshing and restoring for me!
You are doing great things IN me and THROUGH me.
My heart is open to believe and receive.
While I am waiting on You to do what You said, I know satan will attempt to sow seeds of fear, doubt, and unbelief. I know I am in a faith fight.
So I surround myself with people of like precious faith. I connect with people who are filled with Your Spirit, full of Your Word, and can provide words of confirmation when I need it. I reinforce their faith, and they do the same for me.
Being around the right people, I hear the right things, it reinforces my faith, and it causes the baby (Your promise) that I am carrying around to LEAP from time to time!
I am excited about 2023. GREATER IS COMING FOR ME! I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
This is Today’s Word. Apply it and prosper!
