Don't Be Afraid, God is acting

When was the last time God spoke to you and told you to do something? I remember, years ago, I was at a youth camp serving for the week as a speaker. And, as often happens at camp, there were a few injuries. One leader named Kevin, had badly sprained his ankle in a game - like had to use crutches for a week because it was so bad.

Camp always causes me to pray a bit more than usual and I have to admit that there is something special about camp. A friend once said that “God feels thicker at camp” and I totally get what he means. So, the chapel time was an extended this night and I had finished speaking and was just pacing and praying at the back while the worship team played music and I felt God speak into my mind to go and pray for this kid and then that kid and it was great.

Then I felt the Spirit tell me to go pray for healing for Kevin’s ankle. So, I did. Kevin was sitting down with his foot raised and I went over, told him the Lord told me to pray for healing and asked if I could. He “jumped” at the chance.

So I gently touched his swollen ankle and I prayed my heart out for God’s healing. I prayed in deep faith, with conviction and with passion. And I opened my eyes and Kevin’s ankles, were… the exact same.

No healing, no miracle, nothing. I confess that I was pretty disappointed. Questions swirled in my mind. Did I hear God wrong? Did I not pray right? Did only brand-name Pentecostals get to see miracles? Why did I feel such a strong call from God to go and pray for Kevin if God wasn’t going to heal him?

Now, there is more to the story, but you are going to have to wait until the end of the sermon to find out what it is.

Have you ever felt like God was absent or silent? Maybe you went through a trial and God didn’t answer your prayers for help. Maybe you went through a trauma and you wonder where God was when you were being hurt. Maybe you are just going through life and you can’t see God doing anything.

When we experience a time or a season like this, and I think we all do in some capacity, it’s easy to begin to doubt some things. Some may doubt God’s goodness and his love. Others may doubt his presence in their lives. Some may even doubt God’s existence.

If that describes some of your thoughts lately, I have some good news for you. The good news is that no matter what you have experienced, what you are going through now or will go through in the future, God is active in your life, maybe in ways you haven’t seen yet.

I wonder how much the people of Israel wrestled with disappointment from God in the time of Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ parents. From their perspective, they were God’s people but yet they were under Roman occupation, experiencing a military oppression, overtaxation, a corrupted religious system.

On top of all that, there had not been a recognized prophet in Israel for around 400 years. If that was now, it would mean that there had been no word from God since 1620.

It would be easy for them to feel abandoned by God or that God stopped working. But feelings are not truth and the truth is, God was waiting for the right time to show up in a big way.

This is the third week of advent and in today’s teaching, we are going to look at the story of Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel and hear the wonderful announcement that God’s about to do something extraordinary.

Let’ read from the Bible together because I believe that God’s word speaks to those who have ears to listen for what God wants to say. We are going to read Luke 1:26-38

Luke 1:26–38 NIV

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

“I am the Lord’s servant...May your word to me be fulfilled.” I love these words from Mary because they show not only her willingness to serve God, but her bravery as she willingly chooses to endure the physical pain of childbirth and the emotional pain of social alienation from her community and family in order to obey God. Amazing.

The theme for our teaching series this Advent is “Don’t be afraid” because that’s something the angels say in each of the four encounters that are a part of the Christmas narrative in the Bible. In this narrative that we just read, we see we don’t have to be afraid because God isn’t silent, he’s active, he’s on the move and is about to do something extraordinary through the ordinary.

Since the beginning of time, people have associated worship and the presence of God with a place. Whether it was altars, tents or temples, people have always set apart a place to associate with their god. And today is no different.

In sports we talk about “home-field” or “home-court” advantage. Lots of people believe that there is something special about playing in their arena or field as opposed to other arenas. Even with Christianity, our church buildings are places that we associate with worship. I even mentioned earlier about how at camp, God can feel thicker. Most of us associate worship and/or the presence of God with a place.

And while there is nothing inherently wrong with church buildings and with holy places, we have to be careful that we don’t forget that God also does extraordinary things in ordinary places.

The story we read today starts at verse 26 of chapter 1 in Luke’s gospel. Before that, from verses 5-25, we see the story of another angelic encounter. Gabriel speaks to a priest named Zechariah who is on duty in the temple burning incense at an altar in a special room called “the Holy Place.”

Let’s not miss this amazing contrast. With Zechariah, the angel speaks to him while he serves God in the holiest place a priest could ever go in the temple. The temple was the holiest place in the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the city of God and the holiest city to the Jews - they would all pilgrimage there a few times every year for worship festivals.

So God spoke to a Zechariah, in a holy room, in a holy temple, in the holy city.

Let’s contrast that with Mary’s encounter:

Mary lives in Nazareth - a village of between 200 and 500 people that is so insignificant, it is not mentioned in any document anywhere before the New Testament. It was a backwater farming town where everyone was poor and just struggling to get by. Even one of the guys who would end up being a disciple of Jesus scorned it saying, “Nazareth? Can anything good come from there.”

Nazareth has no Jewish temple, no holy place. Mostly just farms. And in this wildly ordinary place with ordinary people doing ordinary things, God sent an angel to deliver a message and change the world.

You see, God does extraordinary things in ordinary places. Yes, people encounter God while in churches and at camp and in nature, but God doesn’t just meet people there. He meets with us in all our ordinary spaces as well.

Luke’s deliberate contrast between Zechariah’s encounter and Mary’s encounter is designed to show us something that is a paradigm shift for most of us: the bigger miracle happens in the more ordinary space. Jesus is greater than John the baptist. John prepares the way for the King, but Jesus is the kIng of Kings. John preaches salvation but only Jesus can offer salvation.

So many of us have this expectation that God is going to do a miracle at church, at youth group, at camp. And I honestly hope and pray that he does! Every week I am praying that God might use these feeble words to impact your life. But because God does the extraordinary in ordinary spaces, the greater miracles might be happening around us in the ordinary spaces of your life- in our cars as we pray for peace after a brutal day at work. In our homes as we cook dinner and talk about life with your kids. At work where you are used by God to impact someone else’s life or at school where you face temptation to put aside your Christianity in order to fit in, but then God brings someone from youth group by to remind you to stay strong.

God does extraordinary things in ordinary places. He may want to do something in your life when you least expect it if you are open to it or, like Mary, he may use you to do something extraordinary for someone else.

God does extraordinary things in ordinary spaces. He also does extraordinary thing through ordinary people

God does extraordinary things through ordinary people

Again, when I contrast Zechariah’s story with Mary’s, the differences are astounding. Zechariah was a man - so he had male privilege in a patriarchial society like first century Israel. He was also a priest - a professional servant of God himself. And he was married, which makes him more respectable in that society. And he was known for being righteous and blameless. And he was old.

Mary on the other hand was a young teenager, engaged, but not yet married, who was at the beginning of her adult life. She was not known for being particularly righteous or sinful. She had no power in her society, in her community or even her family. She was an ordinary nobody. And God chose her.

I have often wondered why God chose Mary. What was it about this young woman that God said, “Yup, her! She’s the one who will give birth to me and raise me as Jesus.” Why her? Why was she “highly favored?” The answer is grace.

Mary offered God nothing - no pedigree, no resources, nothing. Nothing but a willingness to give her life over to the service of God. In that way, Mary is just like us. We have nothing to bring to God that he needs, and yet he calls us to draw near and experience his transforming love in our lives. Mary experienced God’s grace when the angel showed up, just as we can experience his grace when we are willing to say yes to God.

Mary was an ordinary nobody, just like you and me. But God does extraordinary things through ordinary people. With Mary, he used her to enter humanity in order to save us from the power and the penalty of sin. And with you and I, who know? God may want to use you to eternally impact someone’s life.

When I first became a volunteer youth leader for Junior High students as 19 year old idiot, there was an older guy who was in his late 20’s or early 30’s who also a leader. His name was Chris and Chris was the coolest. He exuded confidence, dressed well, had a job, the whole nine yards. Well, the youth pastor came back from a trip with the Senior highs with a herniated disk in his back and I ended up, somehow, leading the whole jr. high youth group, even though I had just become a Christian 6 months earlier.

I remember the first time I spoke at youth. I taught on Exodus 14:13-14 for some reason. I have no idea what I said, probably something heretical. Doesn’t matter. I will always remember that day, not because I did a great job, but because afterwards Chris came up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That moment changed my life. It set me on a path towards where I am now. God used Chris, who wasn’t a professional pastor, just an ordinary person, to encourage me in an eternal way.

When we choose to put our faith in Jesus, we are agreeing to letting God have control in our lives - to invite him to use us to bless others. Jesus said,

John 13:34–35 NIV

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And later, after his resurrection Jesus said,

Acts 1:8 NIV

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

God used ordinary people: fishermen and tax collectors, to change the world. He used an young woman to usher in his plan of salvation. How might God use you to change someone’s life?

Now, you might be sitting there thinking to yourself, “Okay pastor. Sure. Maybe God does do extraordinary things with ordinary people in ordinary places. But that doesn’t change that to me, God is silent.” And I get that. I really do. I have felt God’s silence on more occations that I would like to admit, not just that prayer time for healing with Kevin. And I would respond with these two truths:

1) Our problem isn’t that God is silent and not doing anything, it’s that we don’t have our hearts open and our minds attuned to see all the little miracles that God is doing all around us.

2) God does extraordinary things that we can’t see.

God does extraordinary things that we just can’t see

Earlier, I told you about a time when I felt God called me to pray for healing for Kevin. As Paul Harvey used to say, now it’s time for “the REST of the Story.” I was so sure that God was going to heal Kevin. I didn’t really know him that well. He was a nice guy but we didn’t really spend much time together. And then I prayed. And nothing happened.

Well, not nothing. God didn’t heal Kevin like I thought he would. But what he did do is actually create a very tight friendship bond with him. I still think of him today as a friend. I ran into him a few years ago and it had been at least a decade since I had seen him before that and we picked up like we hadn’t missed a day and we talked about the bond that was created when I prayed for his ankle to heal.

God did something unexpected and awesome not because I had the ability to heal ankles (because I didn’t), but because I was willing to be obedient to God and go and pray for him. What I thought was something that was supposed to be for Kevin, turned out to be for me. Turns out that God wasn’t silent or not doing something in that moment. He was just doing something different than I expected.

So the next time you are tempted to think that God is silent, that he’s not acting, remember that God is doing things that you can’t even see.

In the book of Acts in chapter 17, there is a cool story about how Paul talks about Jesus with these philosophers at this place called the Aeropagus, or Mars Hill. In Paul’s speech, he says of God,

Acts 17:26–27 NIV

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

Paul tells them that God has actually appointed where and when people should live. That means that I am not here by accident, but by divine prompting and I am here for a purpose, so that I and the people who I connect with might reach out and deepen a relationship with God.

When I was a young youth leader, I had a mentor named Tim. Tim was a pastor because a man named Mel who was a Bible teacher invested time and prayer into Tim when Tim went to Bible college. You know who applied for Mel’s job and didn’t get it? Tim’s father. So, God had to arrange for Tim’s dad to not get the job so Mel could have it so Mel could mentor Tim, who mentored me and is the peson most responsible for guiding me into being a pastor.

I’ve now pastored for almost twenty years and I mentored a young man named Gerrit who is serving in his first church as a youth pastor right now. So don’t tell me God isn’t active. He’s arranging the cosmos, he’s bringing the right people into the right place at the right time so that you can reach out and find him. God does extraordinary things that we just can’t see.

Closing

I think it’s really cool how God was doing a miracle in Elizabeth and Zechariah with John that would end up being a blessing and a help to Mary. God was working in Mary’s life before the angel showed up, even though she couldn’t see it. In the same way, you don’t have to be afraid when it feels like God is silent or inactive. Just because you feel it, doesn’t make it true. The Christmas story teaches us that not only is God doing extraordinary things that you can’t see ,, He’s also doing extraordinary things in ordinary places and through ordinary people. Maybe we just need to open the eyes or our hearts a little more to see all that God is doing.