Let it be to me according to your word, the Christmas story of the Virgin birth

Welcome to episode 233.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 233. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, it is Thursday, the day before Christmas Eve when I am recording this, and I just want to encourage you with the word of God that Jesus was born in a manger. He was a baby. One of the most incredible stories ever told. Is this story about Jesus. And I wanna encourage you to get into the word of God over this holiday break. If you get Christmas off, I wanna encourage you to get into, and I went to Luke to reread this, and it's the Christmas story, and it's in chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Luke, but I want to go to chapter 1, verse 37 and 38. For with God nothing will be impossible. Then Mary said, Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be done to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. I want you to hear those words again: Let it be to me according to your word. How many of us have ever said that? To God. And how many of us, when we read the Word of God, do we say that? Let it be to me according to your word. If you ever needed a word over this holiday season, let it be to me according to your word. I want to give you another scripture that God is not a respecter of persons, and the exact quote is in Acts chapter 10, verse 34. Then Peter opened his mouth and said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." Again, that's Acts 10:34. So if God's word says that nothing is impossible with God, that's what the angel said in Luke 1:37, "For with God nothing will be impossible." for with God. You've got to have God in the middle of your life. Again, we go to the wheel in the middle of the wheel, but that's not what this episode is about. But if God is your center, if God is the one driving the ship, with God nothing will be impossible. Then you submit yourself to God, you resist the devil, and he will flee. Behold the maidservant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word. That is an incredible truth. And I want to stay in the book of Luke and go to Luke 18:7. And shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, Will he really find faith on the earth? That is a sobering question asked by God himself. When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth? That is strong as a garlic milkshake. That is a strong question and one that I hope he finds me exercising my faith. Now, do I do it perfect? Heck no, I don't do anything perfectly. What I try to do daily is I try to push up just a little bit of faith every day. If I can just increase my faith by 1%, and we talked about in the previous episode how powerful a 1% increase is, if you can just do that every single day, you will not even recognize yourself 5 years from now in your faith walk. And I'm telling you, over the last 28 plus years that I've walked with God, I can't even recognize the person I was when I started. And I'm sure it's like that with you. The more you get into the Word of God and the more you allow the Word of God to get into you, the more your life is going to change. You're going to get some pushback, I promise you. If it's anything— if you're anything like me, you're going to get pushback from friends and family from people on the street. It's crazy how much resistance there is out there to the Word of God, truly getting into the Word of God, because I see people roll their eyes when they see me coming or when I say something and I base it on the scripture. I mean, I've got people in my own office now calling me pastor and preacher. I do not have a church. I do not want to be a pastor. But anybody that gets in the Word of God somehow has to have a pulpit. I believe that we as kings ought to have the Word of God inside us so much that when the enemy comes, we pull that sword out and we cut him to pieces. In fact, when I submit myself to God, I can then resist the devil and he'll flee from me. So I ain't worried about Satan. He's a punk. He gets his teeth kicked in every chance I get. Now, that doesn't mean I do it perfectly, and it really doesn't mean that I go looking for the fight. But when a fight comes my way, I don't back down if I know it's from the enemy. I bring the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. I bring the Holy Spirit, and I bring the name of Jesus to the battle, and I walk in in the spirit arena. And I submitted myself to God, then I can resist the devil and he's got to flee from me. That is the word of God. Now, if I'm not submitted and I start fighting him in this physical realm, he is gonna mop the floor with me. And this is not a fight that I look for, and I'm not encouraging you. I say Satan is a punk just to call him out, just so instead of him hiding and lurking around in the shadows, It's a whole lot easier to fight somebody in the broad daylight than in the shadows and in the nighttime murkiness. We do not want to be pulled into his arena. We don't want to be fighting him in his octagon, if you will. If he pulls you where he wants you, you're in big trouble. We are not to fight him. We are to use the Word of God and the Holy Spirit and he will flee. Because if we start fighting, Satan is way too smart for me. I've told you multiple times, if I'm in a room with 3 people in that room, I'm pretty confident I'm not the smartest person in that room. So to arrogantly come at you and say, hey, I fight Satan all the time and win. No, I don't. I put the name of Jesus on him and I command him to leave. I don't want to fight Satan. I want him to leave. I want him to leave my house. I want him to leave the situation. I want him to leave out of the area. I don't want to sit there and see how strong I am in the spirit. I don't care how strong I am in the spirit. It is Jesus' power, and it is the Holy Spirit's battle. It's not my battle. What I'm to do is to stand. If I'm reading Ephesians correctly, my battle plan is to stand and stand therefore. So I just stand there, and I'll— I allow the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus to do all the heavy lifting. Now I'm going to see if I can pull all this together and get out of here before 10 minutes. I don't know that that's going to happen. In Luke 1:38, then Mary said, behold the maidservant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. We started with that scripture, and then we talked about Luke 18:8 where Jesus asked if when the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith here on earth? I want you to see the faith that Mary used. She said with her mouth, and I've talked on this before, that faith is voice activated. And the Virgin Mary said, "Let it be to me according to your word." I want those words to ring in your heart and ring in your ears and just look at those. It's in Luke 1:38. 38, and it's right before the angel says, "For with God nothing will be impossible." So the angel kind of encourages Mary that God's in control of this thing, and then Mary said, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word." And Mary was— if you can appreciate this, or you can kind of get a hold of this— Mary was impregnated right there with the word of God. The word is a seed. It is an incorruptible seed. And when the word of God comes in to your heart, it will change you. And that's what I'm talking about. When I start reading this word— this is soapbox moment— when I read this word and I put this word into my heart, it takes root. If my heart is right and I've dug out places for it to go in then it takes root and it starts to grow and my life changes. Mary's life changed. Our— everyone's life changed when Mary said, "Let it be to me according to your word." I want you to say those words, "Let it be to me according to your word," when you read this word of God. I want this word of God to get into you and I want it to impregnate you with this word. It will grow and it will create— this word is a creation. I mean, if you allow the word of God to grow, there is no telling what will come of it in your life. Well, I want to stop right there. I'm— I can feel myself getting up and about to jump on a soapbox, but let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for sending your son, Lord, the perfect story, and the perfect Savior and the perfect child was born in a manger by a virgin. Lord, this is wonderful news. It is great news, too good to be true news, but it is the truth, and Jesus is the truth, and the truth has come and set us free. God, thank you for your plan of salvation. Jesus, thank you for coming And I pray in Jesus' name that this listener, if they have already celebrated Christmas, Lord, I pray that every day could be like Christmas, like the Elvis song I hear multiple times every Christmas season. God, it is a wonderful thought that every day we could have something original from God come in our lives. God, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.