God wants to birth a miracle through you. “What? I’m not qualified. I don’t know much about the bible and I have lots of doubts about how all of this God thing works. There has to be someone more worthy and qualified than me.” Don’t sweat it. God doesn’t need your ability. God simply needs your availability so God can work the miracle through you.
Jesus said….”Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that conceived the miracle of Jesus in Mary’s womb indwells in every devoted Jesus follower. God births miracles through ordinary people.
Jesus was ordinary. Isaiah said…”He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Does that sound like the profile of a world movement leader to you?
Most of us can relate to being ordinary. From the time we are children we become cruelly proficient in developing a social pecking order. Who is cool, smart and beautiful and who is not is often determined in the first weeks of kindergarten by the natural leader and the class clown.
Jesus himself was at the bottom of the pecking order. He came from the lowest socioeconomic class and a speck in the road community called Nazareth. Jesus would have never made People’s magazine list of top fifty beautiful people in the world or been listed in his high school year book as the most likely to do anything.
Throughout Scripture God chooses ordinary unqualified people to do miracles like the ineloquent Moses, child David, barren Elizabeth, a teenager named Mary and a day laborer named Joseph. God unleashes his extraordinary power through ordinary people to perform miracles that change the world. I don’t know about you but that is great news because I am about an ordinary as they get!
But to be used to birth a miracle, we must be willing to be used and to pay the price. Grace is free but it is not cheap and the birth of a miracle is always costly. Ostracism, rejection, changing your plans are just some of the costs of birthing God’s miracle. Becoming pregnant with God’s son was not the miracle for which Mary and Joseph had been hoping and certainly not before they were married.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a Messiah who was born not only to die sacrificially on the cross but to show us how to live sacrificially. Sacrifice is not a pleasant word. It makes some of us uncomfortable and most folks would rather have a holly jolly Christmas than to give themselves as a “womb” for an honest to God Christmas miracle, and yet we cannot separate the manger from the cross.
I received an email several years ago that said…”I cannot take another Birthday Gift to Jesus Christmas so our family is going to search for another church home that celebrates Christmas more like the traditional Christmas we know.”
How biblical is the “Christmas we know?” Most of our Christmas traditions start with little biblical truth. Even our Christmas Carols are sanitized versions of a rather traumatic event….”The cattle are lowing the baby awakes, the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Yeah right! Who can relate to a newborn who doesn’t cry? The biblical Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety not good warm fuzzies. I don’t blame the former member, because we have all grown up with those feel good Santa Claus Jesus Christmases where we are oblivious to God’s heart for those who suffer in our own backyard and to the ends of the earth.
The miracle of Christmas is about a sacrificial gift. It is easy to get excited about a newborn warmly wrapped in a manger bed of straw but the cradle comes with a cost. You cannot separate the cradle from the cross. The cross is the center of the entire Christian message including the message of Christmas.
Jesus call to follow him in the way of the cross challenges every Christmas tradition and value we hold to be truth. Miracles do not appear out of thin air like magic. We will not receive and deliver God’s miracle unless we are ready and willing to pay the cost.
Christmas is about a miracle and miracles don’t just happen. They are born through the pains of labor. Pain is not comfortable, but if we are willing to go through it, God will conceive and deliver a miracle through us. If we do all that we can, God will do what we can’t.
One week from today we will assemble for Christmas Eve worship. Have you stepped out of your comfort zone yet and invited someone to join you for Christmas Eve worship? Two Christmas Eve’s ago I was pulling out to get ready for worship when I stopped to speak to one neighbors while they were checking their mail box. As I drove off I did the uncomfortable and invited them to Christmas Eve worship. Their response: ”I thought you were never going to ask. We would love too!” People are waiting for your invitation.
And have you set aside or yet determined the offering you will bring to celebrate Jesus birthday? Have you sacrificially down sized your own Christmas so that God can use you to birth a miracle? Are you prepared to give a financial gift to Jesus that at least matches the value of the gifts you are giving to family and friends? Are you ready to take the next step and acknowledge by your sacrifice that Christmas is not your birthday?
Yes, God performs miracles through ordinary people like you and me, but like Mary and Joseph, we must be willing to commit to the pains of labor so that God can do the impossible through us.
Invite your family, friends, neighbors and bring your sacrificial offering, Birthday Gift to Jesus, on Christmas Eve. Then get ready for the miracle God will perform through you into the lives of people you know and love and even to those who dwell in Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Mexico.
Are you ready for God to birth a miracle through you? I am!!
Christmas Eve Worship
3:00 PM Contemporary, Family Friendly
5:00 PM Contemporary
7:00 PM Traditional
Merry Christmas,
Rick
