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Mary:     Mother  of  God  
 
She  saw  His  birth  as  her  son  and  she  saw  Him  die  as  her  Savior.    
 
Angels  don't  usually  make  appointments  before  showing  up.  She  must  have  felt  like  
she  was  being  congratulated  for  winning  the  grand  prize  in  a  contest  she  had  never  
entered.  It  had  to  be  puzzling,  awesome  and  frightening  all  at  once.  Then  she  heard  
what  any  woman  in  Israel  would  have  longed  to  hear.   She  was  going  to  be  the  mother  of  the  Messiah.    "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".  Luke  1:35  NLT    The  words  of  Simeon  must  have  come  to  her  mind  many  times  in  the  years  that   followed.  He  said,  "a  sword  will  pierce  your  very  soul."  Luke  2:35    A  big  part  of  her  painful  privilege  of  motherhood  would  be  to  see  her  son  rejected   and  crucified  by  the  people  he  came  to  save    I  believe  that  even  if  she  had  known  everything  it  meant  that  she  would  have  still  said  yes  to  being  used  by  God.    We  have  made  a  big  deal  out  of  giving  at  Christmas  although  Christ  was  and  is  the  ultimate  gift.   You  and  I  have  the  unique  opportunity  to  give  our  lives  back  to  the   One  that  redeemed  us  by  coming  to  this  earth.    We  give  our  lives  back  by  making  ourselves  available  through  faith  and  obedience  to   carry  out  God’s  mission  on  earth.  Are  you  available?  Will  you  allow  your  life  to  be  a  gift  to  God  this  coming  year?    The  reality  of  our  lives  is  simply  this;  life  if  full  of  many  emotions  and  experiences.  All  of  us  our  touched  at  one  time  or  the  other  with  the  ups  and  downs  of  life.  We   may  laugh  one  day  and  cry  the  next,  but  the  redemption  of  all  of  these  experiences  is  to  allow  Jesus  Christ  to  walk  with  us  daily  and  to  experience  them  through  His  perspective  and  leadership.      When  we  submit  our  lives,  our  loves,  and  the  leadership  of  our  life  to  Him  He  finds  a   way  to  use  it  all  for  His  glory  and  honor.  People  around  us  are  changed.  We  are  changed.  Our  destiny  is  changed.      John Maxwell states, “It’s amazing what can happen to and through an ordinary man when God pours a little hardship and the power of the Holy Spirit into the mix…One ordinary man, a little persecution, and a touch from the Spirit of God led to massive conversions in the city of Samaria. As Jesus had predicted, the gospel message made its way from Jerusalem into the outlying world (Acts 1:8). Philip illustrates what one leader, with the empowerment of the Spirit of God and with authority of Jesus Christ, can do to change the world” (Maxwell Leadership Bible page 1331). That’s a little side study you can conduct on your own but God uses ordinary men and women every day.  Some  of  you  will  say  or  think  that  you  have  nothing  to  give.  Let’s  consider  the  following  statements.    
1.  God’s  best  servants  are  often  ordinary  people  who  make  themselves  
available  to  Him  
 
Then  they  scoffed,  “He’s  just  a  carpenter,  the  son  of  Mary  and  the  brother  of  James,  
Joseph,  Judas,  and  Simon.  And  his  sisters  live  right  here  among  us.”  They  were  deeply  
offended  and  refused  to  believe  in  him.    Mark  6:2-­‐4  
 
Every  one  of  us  in  this  room  are  just  ordinary  people  until  we  make  ourselves  
available  to  God.    
 
Henry Blackaby once wrote,
“When God was ready to judge the world with a flood, He came to Noah. When He
desired to build a nation for Himself, He turned to Abraham. When He heard His children
groaning under Egyptian bondage, He appeared in a burning bush to Moses. They were
three of the most ordinary of men. But God had work to do, and He knew just who to do
it with. God has always given His people assignments that are too big for them to handle
alone, so that a watching world can see—not what we can do—but what God can do.”
This truth is so simple that we often overlook it. Mary was not special in any of the ways
we now make her special. Birthing the Son of God has a way of making you an
overnight celebrity but really she was just a young lady willing to be used by God.
Celebrity, wealth and notoriety are not the goal. The goal is to take our ordinary everyday
life and give it to God daily and then get ready to watch Him work.
Believe it or not God uses ordinary people to do His extraordinary work.

13 The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and
John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the
Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. 14 But since they
could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was
nothing the council could say. Acts 4:13-14 NLT
And in The Message Bible we read this in 1 Corinthians 1:
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see
many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from
high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that
the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the
hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”  
2.  God’s  plans  involve  extraordinary  events  in  ordinary  people's  lives  
 
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. 28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” 29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God Luke 1:26-30 NLT "Utterly ordinary, so commonplace: while we profess to know a power the 20th century cannot reckon with. We are all sideliners, coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to set by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. We are spiritual pacifists, conscientious objectors in the battle-to-the-death, with principalities and powers in the heavenly places. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous.” Jim Elliot wrote those words as he was allowing God to lead him to his life calling. His calling didn’t last very long because he wound up dead on river bed killed by the very people he was taking the message of Christ to. But his death and the death of those with him led to their wives going to the very people that killed their husbands and sharing the good news of Christ.  
3.  A  person’s  character  is  revealed  by  his  or  her  response  to  the  unexpected  
31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 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. 33 And he will reign over Israel[e] forever; his Kingdom will never end!” 34 Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” 35 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. . . . 38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her. Luke 1:31-35, 38 NLT Our response is so important when the unexpected comes our way. There are times when the unexpected brings us joy. In Mary’s case it was a mixture of both. The fact that she was pregnant and not married even though it wasn’t her doing had to be hard to explain. The joy of raising a healthy little boy had to make her heart happy. The three years of ministry done by her Son was enough to make her forget the rough beginning of His life. The crowds, the miracles, the followers, the excitement and buzz wherever Jesus went would be enough. And just when it all looked so promising, He was captured, tortured, and executed like a common criminal between two thieves. Remember she had made herself available as a servant and an ordinary person to the will of God. That decision was the right one but it was a road filled with ups and downs. It was a life of both joy and sorrow. The joy of birth and the sorrow of death. It’s life folks. It’s normal life for all of us but the key is to surrender our lives to God an allow Him to use the joy and the sorrow to lead others to Himself. Lisa Beamer’s husband is thought to have led the charge of the cockpit of a plane flown by terrorists that was headed to Washington D.C. The plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania but not before flying over Ohio. All on board were lost and the families were left to pick up their lives alone and move forward. In Let’s Roll: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage, Lisa Beamer reflects on the loss of her dad. She says, “Slowly, I began to understand that the plans God has for us don’t just include “good things”, but the whole array of human events. The “prospering” he talks about in the book of Jeremiah is often the outcome of a bad event. I remember my mom saying that many people look for miracles- things that in their human minds “fix” the situation. Many miracles, however, are not a change to the normal course of human events; they’re found in God’s ability and desire to sustain and nurture people through even the worst situations. Somewhere along the way, I stopped demanding that God fix the problems in my life and started to be thankful for his presence as I endured them.” God is not looking for extraordinary people. God is looking for ordinary people who will trust God in an extraordinary way. Morton Kondracke is known as a no-nonsense, independent-thinking journalist who, in addition to writing, appears on shows like The McLaughlin Group and Fox's The Beltway Boys. His wife his life has been touched by Parkinson's, a disease that affects over a million Americans. In an interview with Dick Staub, Kondracke describes how they first discovered the disease: She had beautiful handwriting, and she was writing a check and couldn't form the letter k right. I didn't appreciate that there was any difference. It looked fine to me. But she insisted that, no, there was something wrong. Later she had a tremor in the little finger of her right hand, and then her foot would sort of wobble on the brakes when she was driving. She had been a counselor at the neurology center in Bethesda, Maryland, helping families with patients with chronic neurological diseases. She was given Symmetrel, which is a Parkinson's medicine by a doctor, and he didn't tell her what it was. But she called me up at work one day, totally distraught and hysterical in a way that I'd never heard Milly before. She said, "You have to come home right away." There she was standing in the bedroom with this bottle in her hand. She said, "This is a Parkinson's medicine. It can't be Parkinson's. I've seen Parkinson's. It's a horrible disease. I won't be able to talk. I won't be able to walk. I won't be able to swallow. I won't be able to eat. You'll have to take me to the bathroom. I'll be totally dependent. You won't love me anymore. You'll leave me." [I had to] convince her that I was not going to bug out. Apparently 50 percent of men whose wives have chronic illnesses split. Women tend to stick and men don't half the time. She couldn't be sure that I wasn't one of the wrong 50 percent in the beginning, but after a certain point she realized that I was there for the duration. You just ask God's help every day, multiple times a day. I couldn't do this without God's help. I pray for help and strength and Milly's deliverance, all the time. I simply could not do this without feeling that I was doing God's work in a small way. I've asked God innumerable times, you know, So what is my purpose here on Earth? hoping that he will add a new and grandiose dimension to this, which he never does. The message always comes back the same: Your job here is to take care of Milly. ("The Dick Staub Interview: Morton Kondracke" ChristianityToday.com, 8-13-02) Most of the time God calls upon ordinary people to do extraordinary things. One of my personal favorite scriptures is Romans 12:1-2, and I want us to recited it together from The Message bible. This is my prayer for you and I as individuals and it is my prayer for us as a church. My hope my prayer is that in this coming year we are known as a church for nothing more than being a surrendered people. Surrendered to God’s will and living it out daily. 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2 The Message Prayer: Lord Jesus, We lay our lives before you. You know the past. You know the ups and downs. You know the things that we would like to remember and the things we would just as soon forget. You know our pain and you know our joy. And Lord you know our present. You know the sorrow and the fear. You know the sickness and challenges of our lives today. You know the joy of family gathered and holidays. And Lord you know about tomorrow. You know where our path will take us. Today Lord, we surrender to you our past, our present and our futures. We pray that you will lead us and that we will have to courage to follow all the days of our lives. And now Lord as we go from this place I ask that you would be in all of our conversations and in our lives over this week that we are in. Thank you Jesus for coming and for giving us life. Amen

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