Becoming a Woman of God

1 Corinthians 13:11-13.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Mother’s Day Sunday, May 11, 2025.

Today we are going to talk about maturity.  Whether you are a young girl on the edge of womanhood, or a seasoned veteran, God has made you for the things that you will face.

I say this because we often feel like we are facing things that are too much for us.  “I can’t do this!”  We may say.  However, it is often us simply being afraid or intimidated.

Let me just say that we do not need to worry about our ability to do it (whatever “it” may be) when we face these things.  Yet, we do need to learn how to do it with God, in relationship with Him.

Let’s look at our passage.

The intimidating nature of maturity

In this passage, Paul is dealing with spiritual gifts within the Christian community that are being expressed in their meetings.  In the middle of two chapters about spiritual gifts (chapters 12 and 14), he shows them that godly love is the foundation upon which any spiritual gift should be exercised.

Most of chapter 13 focuses on the necessity of love and what godly love looks like.  However, at the end of the chapter (in our text), Paul uses the example of a child becoming an adult in order to make his point about spiritual gifts.  This is a natural progression in the life of every person.  When we reach adulthood, there are things that were a big part of our childhood that need to drop off.  Conversely, there are things that are a part of our childhood that should never be cast off.  He ties this back to the godly love that he has been calling them to do.  Faith, hope, and love are intended to remain in the life of an adult. 

Of course, Paul’s point is not about natural maturity.  He isn’t even talking about spiritual maturity in our lives, though that is an element here.  Paul sees this life, where Christians are living mortal lives by the power and leading of the Holy Spirit, as the childhood of our eternal life.  At the resurrection, we will enter into the adulthood phase of our experience.  There are things in the spiritual life of this age that are God-given, necessary components for now, but they will no longer be needed when we step into the perfect relationship with God the Father and His Son that will be experienced then.

Let’s pull on this maturity angle a little more. 

Every child faces the intimidating nature of the maturity process.  Some can’t wait and rush into adult things.  Whereas, others are reticent and slower at moving forward.  Both types face feelings of being in over their head, or even paralyzing moments that can keep us from starting, or finishing.

We need to see God’s signature in the fact that the things we were made to do are intimidating to us.  The things we were made to do will require us to become greater than we are now.  However, it is not something that you go to school in order to be trained.  Working a job and providing a place to live takes discipline that few teenagers have.  However, everyone of those teenagers (short of a debilitating condition) were made with the capacity to grow into a person who can do that.  Things like schooling, work, marriage, having children, and even growing old, can be given preparation, but the preparation will not make those things easy.  The things themselves cause us to grow, to mature, to become more than we were before.

A young person is not yet equal to the task before them, but they will grow as a person as they trust God and walk forward into the task.  Part of maturity is discovering just how childish our thinking is about adult things.  Reality crashes into the infantile notions in our head.  This helps us to mature.

Why do we have a society of people, young and old, who are kicking against reality?  Less and less kids have had an adult model maturity in a good way.  The supports in our society that used to encourage kids to move forward are all but shot.  Kids need good examples of moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teachers and bosses who can example to them a proper response to these difficult things.  The active parenting of a mom and dad are meant to come off, like training wheels.  However, this analogy loses the idea of a relationship that has matured into something greater.

Long before a kid knocks on the door to adulthood, they have discovered that they have weaknesses and shortcomings.  Some of these are physical.  They can be permanent, but many are taken care of by physical maturation.  Other weaknesses will have to do with character. 

In fact, physical maturity acts like a sort of deadline.  It will happen whether you are ready for adult life or not.  All children need to be taught about the God who loves them and provides help for their failings.  They need to know that they can go forward even when things are not perfect yet.  Notice the transition in our text from verse 11 to verse 12.  This life is the childhood of eternity.  We are not yet what are going to be.  We are in an imperfect time.  Paul is recognizing that things are not perfect in this life, but God has made a way for us through Jesus.  The Corinthians were pursuing something that seemed to be the perfect in their mind.  But, they were thinking like kids.  Their understanding of what God was doing in them in this mortal life needed to grow.  Spiritual gifts are for this life, not the next.  What is important is to do them by the love of God and for His purposes.

Paul doesn’t touch on this, but you can rest in God’s design even when life is going along faster than you desire.  Just like physical maturity presses the issue in our adult matters of this life, so it will continue to push us to the edge of death and beyond.  Like any deadline that is along way off, we can spend little time thinking about it, until it is knocking on our door. 

Adults need to empathize with kids going through this transition, just as we all should empathize with people who are transitioning from this life to the next.  The biggest thing we can do for one another is to love one another with the love described in this chapter, God’s love.

I hope that you are hearing the truth that you can face these things and rest in the fact that God has designed you for them.  You are not the one who just can’t do it.  Don’t dwell in the land of anxiety and worry.  Instead, rest in God’s wisdom and foresight.

The need for maturity in natural things

We need to mature in body, in mind and in interpersonal relationships.  When we talk about anxiety, we are recognizing the internal development of our heart and mind.  We need to grow in emotional maturity as well as cognitive maturity.  In fact, the things that we feel and think will naturally change (hopefully mature) as we grow older.  However, we can hit roadblocks in this.

Some people did not grow up with the ideal situation.  God intended that a child be produced in the context of a man and woman who love each other with a godly love and are committed for life to one another.  The child is meant to be born into a home of love that expands to make room for them out of love.  This will help the child to mature in many ways.

Yet, a kid doesn’t have to have a “perfect situation” in this world in order to mature in body, mind and social skills.  Many people have come out of very bad situations, and yet chose to live differently.  Other people’s poor choices do not have to rule our life.  Oh, they will impact us, but they cannot take our decision to grow up in body, mind and relationships.

Paul is writing to the Corinthian Christians who were having a lot of maturity issues between themselves.  Some respond to such a problem through isolation.  However, God did not make us to be alone.  Even an introvert is merely a descriptor of those who are more internal than those who are external-oriented.  They are both in relationships.  In fact, we are not equipped to do life alone, and the human race would die out in one generation if we all chose the alone path.

Mother’s Day emphasizes those women who have come into a relationship with a man and have given birth to a child.  This is God’s design, and it works best when the parents love the child from the context of their own loving relationship.

Though the majority of men and women are “wired” for marriage, there are some who are not.  Yet, even the celibate life is not lived alone.  We are designed to be in appropriate loving relationships with others.

As you mature physically, emotionally, mentally and socially, the supports that were there in your childhood are being removed.  Some happen fast.  However, some happen slow.

The hardest support to face is that of the people who have loved you in your life.  In general, people face the passing of their grandparents, then their parents.  It will eventually become our turn.  This is always a challenge.  The child is destined to become the parent, then the grandparent, and then a memory.  It is the wisdom of God that has determined to use this imperfect time in order to bring us to the perfect that He has for us.  He is using the imperfect to perfect us for perfection.

The recognition of this requires us to step into the moment of each stage.  We put behind us childish things and take hold of the adult things.  We can fully engage, not because we are perfect, but because we can trust that God has provided for us all that we need.  It is not all up to you.  God is with you every step of the way.  Learn to rest in Him, but also trust in Him as you embrace each stage.

The need for spiritual maturity

This brings us to spiritual maturity.  There are many people who have matured and learned to interact socially with a minimum of adverse effects on others.  This is good, but we need more than socially adjusted people.

In verse 12, Paul compares this life to the life that will be when the righteous are resurrected and Christ returns.  This life is partial, imperfect.  The life to come will be perfect or complete.  In this life, we see God and life itself as if through a dim mirror.  But, in that day, we will see God face to face.

It is important for every adult to recognize that they are called to be a spiritual child in the care of a Heavenly Father.  All of this is headed somewhere greater than what we see today.  No child can fully comprehend the life of an adult.  So, it is for us thinking about the next stages with Christ.  God has a perfect plan to use these imperfections to bring us to a perfect place by His help.

This brings us full circle.  You were made to be like Him, to image Him.  There are some ways that a child becomes like their parents without any thought.  They begin to look more like them and take on their mannerisms, ways of thinking, etc.  However, other things require work.

Being made in the image of God means that we are designed to reflect God to the world, to the universe, around us.  Yet, sin has impacted our ability to do this.  Through Jesus, God has made it possible for us to become like Him, little by little, until we are completed in the resurrection.  We live this life with imperfection being perfected by God’s help, but we will not be perfected until that day Paul is talking about.

This is where we come to realize that this life is a childhood to the adult life in Christ to come.  We won’t be doing church like we do today in the Millennial kingdom, but we will walk in love, faith and hope.  In that age, we will put off the childish things of this age.  They are entirely good for now, but fully inadequate for the age to come.  Christ will lead us in taking on the adult things.

If we only look at this world, then it is easy to lose hope and to lose faith.  Just as you can trust God’s design in you as an individual, we can also trust God’s design behind history.  He knows what He is doing.  Humanity will step into adulthood through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Paul ends with the point that some things do not change from childhood to adulthood.  Faith, Hope, and Love are the foundational aspects of every phase in which God has been dealing with humanity.  We must never let the things we do that are only temporary overwhelm the more important permanent things.  Live life out of a mutual relationship of love, faith, and hope between you and God, as well as you and other people!

Woman of God audio

The Lies We Come To Believe

Genesis 3:1-13; 18:1-2, 9-15; Ruth 1:3-5, 8-13, 19-21.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024.

We are going to focus on three different women in order to see a dynamic that exists between hurts and wounds that we experience in life and the lies we come to believe because of them.

How have I let wounds be a source of entrenching lies in my heart and mind?  Much of the Christian walk involves a person letting the Word of God and the Spirit of God help us to discover and remove the lies that we have been living by.

Let’s look at our passages.

Eve (Genesis 3:1-13)

In verse 13, we see that Eve realizes that she was deceived by the serpent, the devil.  She believed him and then did what seemed right.  The moment when a person realizes that they have been duped, or deceived, is a horrible moment.  That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach can occurs moments after you realize that you have just been scammed a lot of money by someone.  It is the same realization that Pinocchio had on the Island of Pleasure when he laughed at the other boy, who was turning into a donkey, and heard his own laughter turn into the bray of a donkey.

Eve’s wound is that she was deceived and then did something that brought harm to her husband and future children.  Of course, the results of being deceived are manifold, and they are not the only wounds a person experiences in life.  However, we will focus on this one.

Can you imagine later when Eve hears that her eldest son, Cain, had killed her next son, Abel?  Yes, there is that horrible realization of the unthinkable happening, but quick on its heels would be the realization that this is just another fruit of that prior deception and fatal action.

At this point, it is instructive to just recognize how the serpent, the devil (see Revelation 12:9), operates.  Her first mistake was listening to what that liar had to say.  This is subtly pointed out by God when He questions Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?”  The implication is more about the being with whom they have been talking, and not specifically what he said.  It doesn’t matter what the devil says.  It will always be a deceptive lie.

The devil’s first question completely overstates God’s command.  “Did God really say that you can’t eat from the trees of the garden?”  He first gets her to defend God by stating they can eat from all the trees but one.  Then, he directly contradicts God with a lie.  “You will not surely die!”  Thirdly, he accuses God’s motive for holding out this one tree from them.  “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  The implication is that God doesn’t want any competition, and so, He is holding you back from something good.

Now, there are lies that we are told, but there are also lies that we come to believe as a result of them.  The first lie may be recognized and then rejected.  I do not believe Adam and Eve were deceived by the devil again.  They knew that he had tricked them, and they would not be listening to his lie that they can do something to become like God.  It is here that the wounding affects our heart and mind.  Because of the hurtful situation, our heart and mind will gravitate towards ideas and thoughts that rise up within us.  The wounding process itself can embed a subtle lie into our soul.  These lies are harder to remove.

Take a young child who is abused for example.  They may be yelled at, and or beaten, while being told that they are stupid, dumb, and a pain in the backside by a parent who is consumed with their own pain.  As an adult, the child may come to realize that their parent was simply messed up.  They were not speaking truth, but emoting in the midst of pain, venting their frustrations on the easiest thing near them, you.  This does not guarantee an instantaneous freedom from the inner lie that you are not worthy of love because something is drastically wrong with you.  By the time an adult comes to realize the wound, they have lived with a lie for a very long time. Even when we know it is untrue, those lies are often our default response, almost instinctual.

Satan doesn’t appear to us as a serpent anymore.  But, he is still a liar and our enemy.  There is a lot of water under the bridge of humanity’s history of listening to the serpent.  He has raised up lies in the form of wise-sounding statements, ideas, philosophies, and even wise-sounding false religions.  This sea of sophistry crosspollinates in a young person’s life as they grow up.  The wounds we experience will take hold of those things that are close at hand, which are often lies.

What were some of the things that may have stuck in Eve’s heart and mind following the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  We don’t know for sure, but here are some lies that we would tend to believe.

“I am so stupid!”  We can beat ourselves up for being innocent, but that wasn’t Eve’s true problem.  Her true problem is that she didn’t trust God, no matter what.  She isn’t stupid; she was just played.

“I messed it up and so I am not worthy of love!”  This can be between Eve and Adam, between Eve and her children, and between Eve and God.  No matter how many times another person tells us that they love us, we can internally rebuff the idea because we know that we are not worthy of love.  “If they only knew the truth about me!”  Or, “They are just saying that to be nice, but the truth is…” 

At this point, let me remind us that God shows up and speaks into the situation.  God never curses Adam and Eve.  He curses the serpent (you will crawl on your belly and eat the dust!), and He curses the earth.  When God finally addresses Eve, He points to one thing that He will do to her, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children…”  However, the second part points to something that will be more of a consequence of her sin, rather than a direct action of God.  “Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”  Verse 15 is somewhat vague and that may be on purpose.  It can have a perfectly good interpretation.  Eve will have a desire towards her husband, and he will protectively shelter her.  It is the imagery of how their relationship will be affected by living in a sinful world.  The woman’s weaker frame now becomes a liability and she will desire a husband to help protect her in this world, to which a good husband would give himself fully.  Yet, it also has some sinister connotations.  This is most likely because God is not just talking about Eve.  By extension, all the daughters of Eve will have individual experiences of life and with husbands.  It cannot be by accident that God warns Cain with these same words in Genesis 4.  He warns Cain that sin’s “desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”  This leaves room for a more sinister experience to happen between husband and wife.  A friction involving desire and power can infect the relationship in sinful ways.

Another lie that Eve could come to believe is this.  “I am no match for my enemy, so there is no hope.”  We should notice in Genesis 3:15, after placing a curse on the serpent, that God also promises help to mankind.  God sees that Satan has attacked humanity through the woman, and so, God states that He will put a hostility between the woman and the serpent, between her offspring and the serpent’s offspring.  He then promises that the woman will give birth to a particular offspring, and “He will crush [the serpent’s] head, and you will crush his heel.”  It clearly pictures a man, but a man who comes from a woman.  God could have spoke about Adam’s offspring, but it seems clear that God is signaling that the woman will be uniquely instrumental in the bringing forth of the head crusher.  This makes sense when we see the miraculous birth of Messiah Jesus.  No man was involved in the conception of Jesus.  Thus, God gives Eve and Adam hope, a promise.

It is easier to believe the lies of the wounds we receive than to believe God’s promises to us in His word.  There is always a hurt, cynical part of our heart that almost refuses to believe.  God let me be hurt, so how can I trust Him?  Thus, Eve may give herself fully to having children at first.  Hey, if I am going to give birth to the head crusher of my enemy, then let’s do this!  Yet, when Cain kill Abel, Eve realizes that this is more complicated than she may have thought.  Centuries later, they would understand that this will not be a quick turn around.  Thus, the long plan of God can be hard to trust even when it promises hope.

By the way, we must understand that Satan hated, and still hates, this power of humans to create offspring.  God had fit Adam and Eve against their enemy even before he struck.  The Satan tricked Eve, but she would have children.  For his plan to work, he is stuck tricking a new generation over and over again.  Talk about a drudgery.  Yet, in this, he would never know when one of those kids would raise up to crush his head.  Talk about fear.  Every time a man and woman put their trust in God and give birth to the next generation- now not to bring forth Messiah, but because we have a promise that He is helping us against our enemy- he hates it.  This is behind all the attacks against gender, marriage, birth, etc.  Satan hates us because God is using us to crush him in the dust.

God’s Word to us is intended to be a firehose that blasts the crud of lies that has caked itself on our hearts and minds.  It enables us to have faith and believe the Truth over the top of the lies that our heart wants to hang on to.

Sarah (Genesis 18:1-2, 9-15)

Let’s talk about Sarah, the wife of Abraham.  At the point of our passage, Abraham is 99 years old and Sarah is 89.  We might recognize that the ages of humans have been dropping ever since the flood.  Abraham lives to 175 years old, and Sarah lives to 127.  But, even with that in mind, the text tells us that Sarah has passed the age of bearing children.

Now, Abraham had been promised a multitude of offspring by God back when he was 75 (24 years before).  At some point, Sarah realizes that she is not going to have any children so she has Abraham bear a child in her name through her maid servant, Hagar.  This was a cultural mechanism that existed at the time.  Hagar would be considered a second-class wife of Abraham with particular privileges that would not be as great of those of Sarah.  This had happened about 13 years earlier.  Yet,  God had told Abraham that Ishmael would not be the one through whom the Promise would be fulfilled.  It would not be a child that came about by sheer will of man and work of the flesh.  Rather, it would be a miracle of God.

This helps us to see the wound that Sarah had.  She had been unable to bear a child for her husband to whom God had promised many offspring.  She had to live with the social stigma that her husband had no heir because she was fruitless.  She also had to live with the personal feelings of worthlessness.  No matter how much Abraham told her that he loved her, it would not be enough to fill the hurt of the wound in her soul.  He loved her and she loved him.

Let me take a few minutes to address polygamy at this time.  We should recognize that God gave Adam one wife.  The first time we see polygamy mentioned in the Bible, it is Lamech from the line of Cain.  Secondly, the polygamy we see with the patriarchs is itself instructive.  Abraham only “marries” Hagar because Sarah wants a baby so badly that she insists upon it.  Neither of them see it as good, but as an answer for a bad situation.  Of course, Isaac and Rebekah are a single couple with no polygamy.  Yet, with Jacob we see it again.

Notice that Jacob only has eyes for Rachel.  If it had been up to him, he would have only married Rachel and moved on.  Yet, Rachel’s dad tricked him into sleeping with Leah and consummating a tricked marriage.  Of course, he is not leaving without the woman he loves so he ends up married to two sisters.  Yet, these sisters are envious of one another and use the number of babies they have as a club against one another.  This causes Rachel to insist that Jacob have children through her maid servant (as Abraham had done with Hagar).  Then, Leah insists on the same with her maid servant.  None of this presents polygamy as an acceptable thing.  In fact, it begs the wisdom of relying upon it to answer a physical problem.  It only brought trouble to those who practiced it.

No husband (or wife) can fill the wound of their spouse with their love because there are lies that are entrenched within the wound.  Yet, God can use a godly spouse to help the other to heal.

Sarah came to believe that she would never have a child.  When did she become convinced of that?  Probably right before she suggested that Abraham marry her maid servant.  Even prophetic words from God to Abraham were not enough for her to trust and wait.  She may have had a little hope when Hagar had Ishmael, but it is clear that this dissipated.  She had given up on ever having a child as God had promised her husband.  She was the weak point of this plan.  God may love her husband, but He clearly doesn’t love her.  He would be better off to get rid of her.

I can’t know that all of these things went through her mind, but similar things did.  She had come to believe that she would not  be blessed of God and that she was worthless to her husband.

Yet, she would one day have a child as this passage explains.  The thought was ridiculous and caused her to laugh in her heart.  How many times do we give lip service to God, and yet laugh in our heart that anything will change in our life?  Of course, when we persist in idolizing lies in our heart, we will continue to chafe under God’s promises.  Sarah would laugh on the day she realized she was pregnant.  She names her baby “laughter,” Isaac.  However, that alone does not heal the wound.  How many other ways has the ideas of worthlessness and being unloved, not blessed, affected her life (our lives)?

Naomi (Ruth 1:3-5, 8-13, 19-21)

Of the three women, we know the most about what was going through Naomi’s mind.  If you pause and think about what is said by each of her statements, you will see that bitterness had taken hold of her heart.  She was wounded deeply.  Of course, we could say it is for good reason.  What human wouldn’t be bitter and sorrowful, if their spouse and children died and they were left alone and old in a world that was not particularly kind to old and alone people.

This is similar to Job.  He wrestled with how God could bring these things upon him.  What had he done? In his mind, he could only wonder why God was so against him.  Naomi probably said a lot of the same things as Job.

We see Naomi deciding to leave Moab and go back to Israel.  She sends her daughters-in-law back to their families because they will have nothing with her.  In short, she does so because she believes that she is cursed and they need to cut ties with her to get out from under the curse.

Naomi gives voice to several lies.  She states that the LORD is against her, and thus, she has no hope.  It is true that you have no hope if God is against you.  However, she was misreading the situation.  Yes, God let these things happen, but it was not because He was against her.

She also says that the LORD has dealt very bitterly with her.  She further describes this as the LORD testifying against her and afflicting her.  Thus, she is taking it personal.  God has done this to her, and by so doing, He has testified that there is something wrong with her.  These afflictions are taken as being from God to her.  We should be careful of thinking that every bad thing that happens is done by God particularly to us. 

In the story of Job, we see that it is primarily the Devil who is bringing these things upon Job.  Yes, God is allowing it, and so, He is secondarily responsible.  It begs the question.  Can you still trust God when He let’s bad things happen to you?  Will I cling to my hurts and stay stuck in unbelief towards the promises of God?

We need to be proactive in this and fill our minds with the Word of God, His promises.  Don’t laugh at it in your heart.  Or rather, I should say, remind yourself of these things when you feel a cynical chuckle rise in your heart.  Is there anything too hard for God?  No, of course not.  If it is not a question of God’s power, then it is a question of His heart for me.  In my woundedness, I am tempted to see God as trying to harm me and destroy me.  Yet, this can’t be farther from the truth.

When you doubt God’s love for you, you must take time to look back at the cross.  While [you] were yet a sinner, Christ died for [you].  Jesus went to the cross because He loves you and wants to redeem you back from the Fall of humanity, and he wants to deliver us from our enemy, the devil.

Both Sarah and Naomi saw God’s amazing answer in their life.  However, it doesn’t always come as a natural answer.  Some women will never have a child.  Yet, we can recognize that God has purpose in it that is good.  If I can’t have babies in the natural, then I can have spiritual offspring.  How many kids are growing up in this world without the knowledge of God’s love for them?  They will need spiritual moms and dads who come along side of them and help them to heal.

Take time this week to look back through your own life.  What were the ways that you were hurt?  What lies were embedded at that time in your heart and mind?  We are not talking about thinking positive thoughts so that we can attract positive things towards us.  This is about coming into conformity with the truth about what God says.  God loved Jesus.  Yet, he would have to die on a cross.  Everything would tell the human side that God has forsaken him, but God is not a liar.  Jesus pressed on because He trusted the heart of the Father and brought about a greater good than him becoming king of Israel in the first century AD.

Historically, I am a very bad judge of what is “good” in my life.  How many times has God shown me that things of my past, that I spent decades complaining about, were actually a blessing from Him.  They were producing something in me that would be invaluable later.

God tells us that we shall be perfect even as He is perfect (Matthew 5:48).  Can I believe Him?  By the Holy Spirit, with that life-force of God Himself, can I cooperate with God to bring about a good that I can’t even imagine?  Or, perhaps at which I would simply laugh because of all the lies entrenched in my heart?  Let us be those who drop off the lies, and grasp hold of the Truth of God’s love for us!

Lies audio

Rejoicing in God Your Savior

Luke 1:46-55.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on May 9, 2021, Mother’s Day.

Today, as we honor moms, we recognize The One who gave them the honorable position that they hold.

There are many days in the course of being a parent that would easily be classified as “not-rejoicing-days.”  However, there is one thing that moms can always rejoice in, no matter what kind of day it has been.  When you realize that our God is also our Savior, you can rejoice in the midst of very difficult times.

Let us remember as we look at our passage that Mary speaks these things and rejoices even though, culturally and socially, she is in a tough place.  It is the character and work of God that fills her heart with joy.

Let’s look at our passage.

Mary worshipped God

We do not know the full situation of Mary’s background.  She is from a small village in northern Israel with a population between 200 and 400 people.  We do know that Mary was a devout follower of God who found His favor.  She would be the woman through whom the Messiah entered the world.

In verses 46-47, Mary breaks out into praise and worship of God.  There are many today who try to teach us to worship Mary, and say of her that she was without sin, but the real Mary teaches us just who she really is, a worshipper of God.  There are two aspects emphasized in her worship.  She magnifies Him from her soul, and she rejoices in Him as her savior.  None of us can make God greater in being, but we can speak out how great He is and lift up His reputation. 

In a world that is cynical, may we be a people who are worshipping God, by magnifying Him before others.  Moms, your focus is often on husbands and children, but make it your primary duty to worship God.  Worship is a whole life endeavor to declare to God that you know that He is worthy of being the center of our lives.

Mary also saw God as her savior.  This seems to be what makes her rejoice.  Who was she in Israel?  Yet, the Lord chose her to be the mother of the messiah.  This would be seen as a huge social changer.  The Messiah was destined to be the king of Israel.  Of course, we don’t know all that Mary was thinking.

There is a clear parallel between Mary’s worshipful praise in this chapter and the same type of thing from Hannah in 1 Samuel chapter two.  Some of the wording is similar, and perhaps Mary is thinking of Hannah’s situation when she found out that she would finally have a child.  Clearly, Mary’s situation is different from Hannah’s, but it reminds us that there is more to the story.

Mary isn’t just declaring that she is a saved person spiritually.  She is declaring that God is the one who saves her when she needs saving, past, present, and future.  All moms need a spiritual savior, and it would seem a near impossible task if God were not with you.  This seems to blow the idea out of the water that Mary was without sin at birth.  She had a savior because she was human like us and needed one.  She found for herself that God saw here lowly state and was blessing her.  So, moms also need one who can deliver them, or help them, in those moments that threaten to overwhelm them.  God had let Mary know that she was valuable to Him and that she had found His favor.  In Jesus, all moms can know that they have found the favor of God.  You don’t have to have the perfect child to get it.

In verse 50, we see that Mary feared God.  God’s mercy is on those who fear Him.  We’ve talked about this concept of fearing God before.  It is that recognition and understanding of the position and power that God holds.  It is a reverence that does not dwell in a place of fear, but shrinks back from the thought of walking away from God.  To walk away from God is to walk away from the source of all goodness in this universe.  It is to shut yourself off from that goodness and to become your own source.  Becoming the only source of goodness that you depend on in this life should fill you with dread, and a desire to run back to God our savior.  Mary clearly saw herself as receiving God’s mercy along with the rest of the remnant of Israel who feared God too much to cast off the Bible and follow the ways of the world.  They were waiting upon the Lord, though it seemed that He tarried.

In verse 52, Mary once again references the lowly and the mighty.  Mary sees herself as a part of those who are humble in circumstance, but she also has been humble in spirit because she looks to God to be her savior.  Too many people are grasping at life trying to save themselves, or find a new guy to be the latest greatest savior in their life.  Instead, we must humble ourselves and wait upon the Lord.  We must let Him lift us up in the proper time.  God is not enamored with men or women who are in high and mighty positions.  Rather, He identifies with those who are in lowly positions, which begs the question.  Does the exaltation that we want bring out the best in us when we get it?  Let God determine the proper time to lift you up and rejoice in His wisdom.  Besides, the only exaltation that truly matters in the end is the resurrection from the dead. 

Many times, we may feel like God has forgotten that He is merciful. Yet, Mary recognized the mercy of God.  In verse 54 and following, she is not just focused on herself.  She is rejoicing because God has not abandoned Israel, despite the many cynical voices within Israel.

How many moms have lived through the centuries where it seemed like God had forgotten Israel?  Here, we have a testimony from a woman 2,000 years ago saying, “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy!”  Listen, God is not just concerned with Israel.  He is concerned with you too.  He is concerned with America and all of the other nations.  It is sad to see the gentile nations turning away from the Gospel as an answer, but in the midst of these nations, there is a remnant of those who still trust in God, who rejoice in Him as their savior that knows just when to deliver, and deliver He shall! 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever!

Rejoicing in your Savior audio