Prepare Him Room: Part 4- Preparing Room For Love

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

In our house. Our my oldest son, Jackson is

home from college and I see several other college home

people and it's such a different deal.

Automatically when the kids come home, it's like my house just

feels different. There is like a a piece that

settles just knowing that all the chickens are in their roost,

right? And we saw a little bit of that.

Last week we talked about joy. We've been talking about

preparing room in this holiday season for the coming of the

King, right? Like for Jesus to come.

And we talked about preparing room for hope.

And one of the things about hope is like, I don't when Christmas

comes. The point of hope isn't that we,

you know, the lights turn on. Oh, hey, hope.

The point of hope is we feel afraid.

But what? Christmas does what Jesus does

is points us to a time when all things will be made new, when

all things will be set right. So that we don't.

Have to be afraid. The same thing with peace.

What we saw last week with Joy was Mary having received this

crazy the virgin will be with child, and the child is going to

be the king, the Messiah, the one who had been promised

literally in the Garden of Eden. And Mary's just freaked out.

And so she runs to her cousin's house.

Cousin Elizabeth. And what we find is in that

connection and in that community, in that relationship,

Mary and Elizabeth both experience the coming of joy,

the beginning of joy in that place.

And so as our kids come home and our kids are all around, we see

that we prepare room in our place for joy and.

What we're going to see today is the next part of that passage.

Last see last week we saw Mary and Elizabeth come together and

we saw Elizabeth recognize this thing that God was doing in Mary

and she said, Mary, this is the mother of my Lord that has come.

And this was the first prophecy, this prophetic inside as she

sees this is my Lord and the John the Baptist in her womb

left with joy and Mary and Elizabeth was filled with the

Holy Spirit. And what we have today is a

poem. If you look in your Bible and if

you read it in, you know, and you read it in the context, it's

indent, right? It's set off lines.

Anytime that you look at that, anytime that you see a passage

that's like that, you can know it was either a song or a poem

of some kind. And So what that means is that

what we're going to look at today is a prophecy from Mary.

We saw a little bit of a prophecy from Elizabeth.

We saw a prophecy from John the Baptist in utero.

Remember, he leapt. In A room.

And so today we're going to see a prophecy come from Mary.

So before we jump into the Scripture, before we jump into

the passage, we've got to talk a little bit about.

What is a prophecy and what do we?

Do. With prophecy when it comes.

Because a prophecy isn't just telling the future right?

It's not just. Right.

Like the Cowboys are going to win the Super Bowl or something

like that. That's not.

That's wishful thinking. That is hope that is going to

disappoint someday, right? That's not prophecy.

What prophecies? And we saw this last year in the

meeting when we talked about the Revelation.

What prophecy is it is a declaration.

It gives it an insight. And prophecy is a declaration of

what God is doing. So when you go back and you read

about Jeremiah and Isaiah, the message of the prophets was God

is at work in this place. And the reason he tells us that

God is at work in this place is because he wants us to get

involved in it. The point of pointing out what

God is at work is to say, hey, he's doing good things, you

should get in line too. And that puts.

The responsibility on us to say yes or.

To know so as we read Mary's prophetic utterance, say it's

called the Magnificat and we're going to read it's because

there's very early she talks about her soul magnifying the

Lord. We're going to talk about that

and we're going to look at that. But before we get on this, it's

important that we come to this the right way to this passage,

because it's very easy to get this.

Really wrong, right? So what do we do when we come to

a prophecy? These set off poems that are

supposed to show us God's word. The first thing that we do is

slow down. There are multiple readings.

You can read it right on the surface level of what it says,

but there's more underneath that's going on.

So we we slow. Down.

We need to humble ourselves. We need to realize that God got

this message out into the world because He wanted people to hear

it. He wanted people to be impacted

by it. He wanted people to touch it.

And sometimes when we look at it, when we stand far back, we

just go, Oh yeah, I know what that means.

And we just moved on. Especially something as familiar

as this. If you've been around the church

for a long time and you've seen this, we're familiar with it.

We may even be able to quote it from memory.

And sometimes it's so it loses its teeth.

But if we humble ourselves and move in to listen, the prophecy,

this prophetic word that comes to us might just have an impact

on our hearts and it might just change things.

And again, we should expect that God wants to change things.

We should expect that God wants to change our attitudes, our

hearts, our responses to other people, our responses to

ourselves, our responses to him. We should expect that.

And so some, but but we don't, we don't like that.

I mean, I want him to change you.

And make no mistake, you would not believe how much I go home

and pray Lord, change him just like, and then he's like, well,

how about you, Jason? I'm like Lord.

I pray for them. That's enough, Lord, right now

you're busy, right? We'll come back to me at a later

time, right? So I want to warn you in advance

about a couple of things to be careful for a couple of impulses

that might come up as we read this passage.

The first one is defensiveness. You might read this and get a

little insulted that Jesus would talk about you.

I sort of know like Mary and and and Elizabeth, they, they didn't

know you. They did not know your

situation. This is not to you.

But what I would say is the point of a prophecy is to point

out a space where there's distance between what we're

doing and what God is doing. And so if you begin to feel a

little bit of conviction, if you begin to little bit like, hey,

now you're reading my mail a little bit, my encouragement

again is humble yourself, slow down, back up and go.

What's that about? What's going on in my oh, what

am I supposed to do? Because the point of conviction,

the point of that thing is alignment.

The reason, it's like, you know when your call wheel starts

doing this, the point of doing this is to get you to go to the

Firestone so we can fix it so you can ride without.

The bump, bump, bump, right? It's the same thing here.

If we read something in your heart, it feels like a dagger in

your heart. Instead of just going, Jason,

why you're offending me? I'm like, I don't like to start

going God. Is that the cause of a bump in

my life? Is that a speed bump that I keep

running into? And what can I do?

So the first thing to be careful of is defensiveness.

Jesus isn't mad at you, but boy. Does he want to save you and me

and us? The second impulse that we need

to be careful of is rushing to application.

Where we sit back and just go. I know exactly.

What this is about, and this is about them and this isn't about

me. And so now I'm.

Praying for all of my friends who this comes to and who this

deals with, but it never does me right.

What I want us to do in this time is let the story work on

us, because when we come to the King, when we come to Jesus, we

don't come perfect. We don't come without need for

growth. Now listen, we come covered in

grace, right? Like when you stand before the

Lord, the Lord never says you don't have anything to work on.

When you come to the Lord, he looks at you and says, we.

Will take as long as it takes to get that right.

Let's walk together. So don't dismiss this.

And don't run too quickly to apply it and to write it down in

your life and to make a change. Move slowly and let it work on

us. And in order for us to read this

story well, we even have to be aware of our.

Filters. I know right now you're

wondering, like, are you ever just going to tell us the

freaking story? I am.

But listen, what if the truth wrapped up in this is too

seismic to step in tenderly? What if this is not a pool that

you just jump in head first because there's something that

God has been trying to get out into the world and get out into

our lives since the very beginning?

And what if the entire systems that we live in and the entire

systems that we're a part of are aligned against this message

getting in? And what if everything that

we've done and built apart this kind of resists this?

And so we have to like we have to be aware of what's going on

in us as this comes right. So here's the key question for

us to ask as we come to some of these passages, really a lot of

these passages that we get a question that we ask ourselves

when you're dealing with your kids, when you're dealing with

your spouse, when you're dealing with a cranky Co worker or a

cranky boss. Here's a question to contemplate

for your life, for you as you sit at home, when you think

about the fights and the struggles and the arguments that

you get. And here's the question, is it

more important for us to be right or to get?

It right do. You hear what I'm saying?

Are we just trying to win arguments so that we are more

right than the other guy? I'm not saying you do or don't.

I'm asking a question. This is always, this is always a

good thing. Like, is it more important to me

that I just be when when you get stand before somebody and they

have a different perspective on reality or a different view on

something, on different view on economics or on football or on

tennis or on the price of tea in China or whatever it is.

And they come and they have different information for you.

What's your first response? Do you argue with them?

Do you begin presenting your point, or do you consider at the

outset that you could be wrong? I think of this Dumbledore and a

famous line from the book where he said.

I think I'm right. But I could be wrong.

And there's power of. Humility in that perspective

which we come to these things. Because the way that we come to

this passage of Scripture, the way that we read this

magnificent that Mary said, we read this as 21st century

people. We live in a technological,

we're on the other side of the industrial revolution.

We have all of these things that they didn't have.

We are 21st century Americans. The word freedom means something

to us that it doesn't necessarily mean to others.

And we can stand next to each other arguing.

About what freedom means, without ever understanding what

they mean by freedom, or what Jesus means by freedom, or what

you mean by freedom. We're 21st century Americans

from New Braunfels, TX. A town where things grow, a town

where things are flourishing and expanding, but also a place

where it's expensive to live. It's hard to find a house that

is affordable in time. Where do?

We work, we are a recreation place where people come to play

and have fun and have a good time, and that's not a bad

thing, it's just a thing that we have to contend with.

As part of our story and our reality and the tendency as we

read these things, as we tend to go to one kind of or more of

these areas as we errors, as we have our kind of our headset

right. The first thing that we do that

as we come to these things. We tend to interpret these

scriptures. Our filters tend to tell us that

when we come to this stories and the things that it says, these

are things about our private spirituality.

Like it doesn't matter so much out there.

These are just things for me to work on and I can go to to my

job and do what I want. And it doesn't affect my, it

doesn't affect the way that I spend my money or the way that I

that I talk to people or the way that I deal with my neighbors or

the way that when I'm an HEB and somebody does something

unthoughtful towards me, My private spirituality is my own.

And it doesn't have to affect. You in any way, lovingly,

graciously. The reason many people like the

kind of spirituality that doesn't affect other people is

because if we're honest in the dark of night, it doesn't really

affect us that much either, does it?

Spirituality is supposed to make a difference.

It's supposed to change. Our actions have consequences,

and so if we're not following Jesus, we won't begin to look

like Him. If nothing changes in our lives,

then nothing changes. The other side of this is like

the social gospel, right? Like when you talk about.

How do we fix the world? Right?

Like like some people just say, oh, it's just a sin.

Problem. It's in the heart.

Some people will just say, oh, no, like the problem's out

there. Like if you're going to help

people, like you got to solve other problems.

You like you got to feed them and you got to you got to

provide houses for them. You got to go all the way and

say, so is the problem just in the heart?

Or is the problem the programs and the systems and the things

that we do right? Like what?

Like is it just does character the only thing that matters or

does character matter at all? Is it enough to just give people

food? Do you teach a man to fish or do

you give a man a fish? You can do both.

You can give him a fish so he's not hungry, and then you can

teach him a fish so he won't be hungry tomorrow.

And there are all kinds of ways that we can move, that we can

move into this, right? And what I want to say is like,

as you begin to feel these things, like maybe these

convictions or this humility, you read it, you just like,

maybe I'm a part of this thing that I wasn't sure that I was a

part of before. What happens, what we call that

is humility. When you begin to see yourself

in a right relationship to Jesus, when you begin to

realize, like he is holy and I'm not, he is good and I'm not.

He loves my enemy and I don't. As long as I walk around and go,

yeah, me and Jesus, we're almost the same.

He loves all the people that I love and he hates all the people

that I hate. What happens then is our

intentions are right. Our desires are good to be

aligned with Jesus. But the problem is, we can have

great intentions and still subtly try to get Jesus on our

side. Jesus, you don't like these

people either? Look at the bad.

Things that they're about if we're.

I love y'all so much and this is hard.

If we're going to read the scriptures, the prophetic, the

hard ones, the good ones, the ones that transform and change

all that, if we're going to truly follow Jesus from the deep

passages and scriptures, we have to stop using this to affirm my

worldview. I have to stop looking at the TV

1st and then making this fit into that.

I have to start here and go, however uncomfortable it may be

for me in the moment. My purpose in life is to align

my life to this and that's all of it.

My money, my marriage, my kids, my sexuality, my free time, my

hobbies, all of it. Who I am, what I do comes back

to Jesus in this story. And so now that we're halfway.

Through the message and I haven't talked about the passage

yet. Let me pray for us to have open

hearts as we read this passage and let us remember that we are.

Wait a minute, not just we are. May we remember that our enemies

are badly broken. Grace and peace to you Luke

chapter one, verse 46. Remember Mary said or Elizabeth

says that the baby in her womb is left and she's been filled

with the Holy Spirit and Mary says my soul magnifies the Lord.

That's where this that's why we call it the that magnificate

right from the Latin phrase. Now that word magnify, you think

like makes bigger, right? Mary does not make God bigger.

God is already as big as He is. You think about a magnifying

glass, right? If you have a magnifying glass

and you're trying to look at something and it's around the

edges, it's all blurry and stretched out, right?

So how do you use a magnifying lens to magnify something?

You put it right in the center. Mary says my soul magnifies the

Lord. Some translations you have to

say my soul praises the Lord. The idea is Mary sets the

Father, sets the Lord right in front of her, right in the

center of her story. He magnifies the Lord and my

spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

So this is joy. This is that thing that she's

experiencing the presence of God in her in her midst, her cousin

Jesus, John the Baptist, This whole thing she says I

experience joy and now she tells us why, because he has looked

with favor on who on Mary. Now let's Mary.

Describes herself on. The humble condition of his

servant. Mary is a.

Teenager, likely 13 or 14 years old.

Mary lives in the 1st century in Israel, one of the most

religious cultures in the history of the world.

It was not OK in the 1st century Nazareth for a 14 year old

unmarried teenager to be pregnant.

It was not OK. She was.

Subject to death under the Law of Moses.

That's the situation. Where this comes out of I praise

the Lord because he has seen my humble condition.

Now, Mary didn't say she's going to go back to Nazareth and

everybody all of a. Sudden is going to be OK with

it. Nothing about her situation has

changed. But the difference is Mary now

sees this in light of what's in the center, which is the Father,

which is God. She magnifies him and puts him

in the center. See, the problem is we want to

be in the center, and I want to put my experience in the center

of the magnifying glass. And then when all the stuff

around here goes wonky and screwing, oh God, what are you

doing? He's like, that's not how it's

supposed to look. Move it so that he's in the

center, He's looked on, He's looked with favor on the humble

condition of his service. Interestingly enough, in

whatever the place that you are humble in this world and

whatever place you are humble in this moment, wherever you just

acknowledge and recognize that you don't have the strength or

the courage in this moment to get out of it in that place.

I want you to hear the eyes of the Lord are on you.

He sees what is humble. He sees what is.

Yeah, what's going on, right. So it's humble, it's

conditional. Surely she says from now on, all

generations will cause me, call me blessed because the mighty

one has great, has done great things for me and his name is

holy. So Mary, what she's doing now is

defining her life in terms of God's action.

She defines her story now in terms of what God is.

Doing what defines your life. The move, the relationship, the

finances. The picture what, what is it?

Are you able to look in your life at the movement of your

life since the beginning, from the day, from whatever point

that you desire, whatever point that you are you able to look at

the movement of your life and go, I see God here.

If not, listen, I want you to know that's hard.

It's a hard thing to do on your own.

You're not supposed to do it on your own.

Find somebody who has been walking with the Lord and just

ask them, do you see God in my life?

It's a fair question. Now, if you're out there and you

are a follower of Jesus somewhere, start looking.

Wouldn't it suck if someone came up to you and asked you that

question? You're like, I don't really

know. Let me see where do you see it?

What does the activity of God look like?

Does the work of God in our lives look like victory and

lifting us up and making us strong and making us powerful

and let us letting us win and overcome and do all that?

You know, Mary says her humility, her grace, the

position and her position in this story is when she puts got

like a like the hub and a bike wheel where all the spokes.

Where all the things come to that holds the whole thing

together, Mary says. I have done that, says God.

From this point, because of all the things that happened now

God, you're the main character and my story.

God, when I get sick, it's about you.

When I get healthy, it's about you.

When I go to work, it's about you.

When I talk to my neighbors, it's about you.

When I fight with my. Spouse.

It's about you. When I'm afraid for my children,

Lord, it is about you. You are in the center, you are

in the middle, and all of this is ultimately coming back to

you. And it's not about Mary denying

reality. Mary doesn't suddenly go, I'm

not pregnant anymore. Everybody's ideas have changed.

Listen, this is the most important thing that we can

hear. It doesn't matter where your

life is right now. It doesn't matter what you're

wrestling with or walking through.

The power of God is right next to you, waiting to be put in the

middle. Will it look different?

Oh, oh, sure, because. You're not God.

But I know the point is if us, if most of us found ourselves in

the position where Mary was in this situation, we would run and

hide and we wouldn't tell anybody and we would probably

feel guilt and shame and fear and anxiety and a

discouragement. I mean, imagine, put yourself in

that. Place.

But here's where the story gets good, and here's where it

begins. Because this is a truth that's

applicable to you. I want to especially acknowledge

you if you're lonely, if you're afraid right now, if you feel

abandoned and isolated and left alone and discouraged and you're

looking. For a way, for any way to make

your story come alive means something, Have hope.

And what I want to tell you is that God's love fills people and

places that we most often avoid. God gets involved in the life of

Abram before he was anything. And he says, Abram, I'm going to

make you a nation. He found Abram when he was old,

passed the ability to do what he was going to do.

And God met him there and made something of him there.

He went to Moses, Moses who was a criminal, who was a murderer.

He was criminal and he was a foreigner in his land.

And God went to Moses and says, Moses, you are the one that I

want to lead my people out. Moses was a.

Herding sheep. On the backside of a foreign

nation and God went all the way to find him and said, you're my

guy. What about David?

David was the forgotten son of a shepherd out in the field.

The prophet had to remind dad, do you have any other kids?

And dad was like. David, go get David.

David The. King and Mary, humble teenager

in a backwater hamlet of the Roman Empire, carrying the Son

of God. At the time, Mary wasn't the

best person in Nazareth. She wasn't the most.

She didn't sign up for all the pairs.

She wasn't the most righteous, the most holy.

She wasn't we're. Just told that she was young.

And she was there and she was a virgin, and God chose her.

And I just know. Here's the problem.

I do everything in my power in my life not to be seen as poor,

not to be seen as weak, not to be seen as small, not to be seen

as ordinary. You know what we fight about

more often than not? Those things, they said

something mean to me. They're probably meaner than you

can imagine, and they're probably more right than you

like to admit. And what if that's not the

point? We confess every time we get

together. We're what?

We're badly broken. And then people pointed out to

us, we're like. Heck.

No Own it. Put your name on it.

The reason we fight is because we want to be seen as something

other than we are. We want to be seen like God, but

the question that confronts us at Christmas time is that what

if God's love is best understood and appreciated in our needs and

in our weakness? Seeing the West, we value

strength. We value.

Position. It's not just the West, it's.

Everywhere. It's humanity.

We value winning, We value victory.

We value strength. We value being over other

people. And the temptation here, right?

As we talk about Mary and her humility, right?

The temptation that we run into is to like over spiritualize

poverty, right? Like, we have new stuff, big

stuff. We just go, oh, yeah, well, I'm

poor because I don't, I don't like feel very good today.

But just know this Mary was not symbolically poor.

Make no mistake, in the town of New Braunfels, there are people

who live here who are not symbolically poor, and there are

those of us in here who aren't symbolically poor.

We're not poor in any stretch of the imagination except the way

that we often feel about ourselves.

And it's not just about financial poverty.

Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit.

Those who know that they don't have a prayer, Those who know.

And if I have to stand before Jesus and it's him and me, he

wins every time. He's right and I'm not.

If it comes down to an argument over why I did what I did and

why I should have done what I did, he wins every single time.

That's what humility is. That's what a poverty of spirit

is. To just go.

I don't have enough to stand on my own.

I'm not good. I don't make it.

I'm I'm too harsh. I'm too, whatever it is.

Whether you can see like the, the, the temptation here is you

just go, Oh, well, I'm I'm like actually poor.

Like I don't have enough. Like there's not.

This isn't about me like it is. The.

Question is not at Christmas time.

The question is not whether we have a lot or a little.

The question at Christmas time is, is Jesus in the center of

it? Do you use your riches for the

Kingdom, or do you use your riches for something else?

Do you use your? Poverty to be a victim?

Or do you in your poverty continue to see yourself as

favored by God, not with everything, but with enough to

give? How you relate to your stuff

will affect how you relate to God because Jesus said you can't

love God and they called it Mammon, right?

It's stuff. It's it's your truck and it's

your house and it's your hunting lease and it's your boat and

it's your all of the things, right, Your big purse and it's

and it's. All of the things and he says

like you, you, you, you're, there's, there are different

roads. You got to go down one road or,

or the other. And he doesn't say that you

can't have stuff. He's saying that if you love

your stuff, you will get rid of everything else for that.

Whatever stuff may be and stuff may be, reputation stuff may be

people saying good things and nice things about you, but

whatever it is, however you relate to your stuff outside

will affect how you relate to God.

And then when God is in the center, as God moves to the

middle of that magnifying glass, things start to get clear.

Because here's the reality. God has integrity since the

beginning, since garden, since the moment that he said let

there be light, God's character hasn't changed.

The reason that we trust him isn't because like we think we

figured out. The reason we trust Him is

because He has always proven to be faithful.

Look, verse 50, He says this. His mercy is from generation to

generation. Listen, God's posture towards

human weakness has always been mercy.

God's posture towards human weakness has always been mercy.

Now, here's the problem. If I am the main character in

this, if I am the main character in the story, do you realize

what's going to happen? You're going to spend your whole

life feeling like God is opposing you.

Because if you're in the middle of the story, you go, why can't

I have this vacation? And God says because you've

taken 4 vacations in the last five years and you're not

content, the secret's not in Wyoming.

The secret is in here. Well, God, my car broke.

Down. You abandoned me no, now you're

going to have to like share you're going to have to have a

carpool. My air conditioner went out.

You're going to have to ask for help.

You're going to have to get, oh, we don't have any grocery money.

You're going to have to go to the church and let them help you

and take care of you. You're going to have to share

that with your small group. But if I know that this is his.

Story. If I know that my weakness and

my law and and my lack is an opportunity for Him to show His

benevolence and His goodness for me, then I am able to wait.

And the truth is that God's love doesn't change.

It hasn't changed. We can't redefine it just

because we have a different cultural moment.

We can't redefine what it means to say that God loves us, that

he has care for us, just because things have changed, because we

don't live in the 1st century anymore.

God's love is not angry. God's love is not judgmental.

God's love does not also affirm your every desire and.

Instinct without consequence. God does not say you're OK, I'm

OK, He says. I am God and I am holy, and I

will transform you as you follow me in every generation.

God's love. Looks like faithful, patient,

restorative, merciful love in every generation.

That person that you hate, that person who's your enemy, that

person who hurt you this week, God's love for them is faithful,

patient, restorative, and merciful.

So I guess the question that bears asking in this moment is,

do we believe that that kind of faithful love is being expressed

in God's world? As you walk out and you go to

HEB and you go to the store and you watch the news and you go to

the places, do you believe that God's faithful love like.

That is being act out in the world.

If not, what would happen if that kind of love did start to

get played out? What if all of a sudden got like

Thanos snapped, right? And all of a sudden God's

perfect, faithful, restorative, patient, merciful love was just

everyone. If that kind of love were to

happen, whose life do you think would be disrupted first?

Who would feel that kind of pain and that kind of change?

First? Mary tells us in verse 51, she

says this, He has done a mighty deed with his arm.

Now, when you read about God's arm, right, His strength, His

arm, His might, always, always, always in the Israelite

imagination. They're thinking about Egypt.

With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

He delivered his people from the grasp of Pharaoh.

And you know what the point in Pharaoh was?

You know what the problem with Pharaoh was?

Pharaoh worked them like dogs. They were slaves with no break

and no rest. So.

We do the exact same thing. We just call it workaholism.

We just call it on saving to buy more.

Like we just all the time, we never have a rest.

We never do all these things right and so.

In the mighty hands, talking about exodus, about leading out,

he has done a mighty deep. He has scattered the proud

because of the thoughts of their heart.

He has toppled the mighty from their.

Thrones and exalted the lonely he has satisfied the hungry with

good things and he has sent the rich away empty.

So I just want to kind of highlight this and unpack this

out and maybe some of it fits in your life and maybe some of it

doesn't. The first thing that happens

with this love, right? Love changes the way that we see

ourselves right. What does it say in verse 51?

When he has done a mighty deed, he's scattered them because of

me, right? So what he does is he begins to

move us slowly off of the center.

When he talks about the thoughts of the proud, right?

What Pride does is say I'm the story.

Pride is not. It's not thinking more of me

than about you. It's thinking of me more than

thinking of you. So humility isn't thinking less

of myself, it's thinking of myself less.

But when I'm in Pride, I wake up every moment and I think, how is

that going to affect me? When I go to the store and

somebody's walking too slowly, I think about how that's affecting

my day, not about the poor lady's Bursitis.

That is making her right. She's probably in terrible pain

right now. I don't think of that.

And So what God does gently and slowly but persistently, is move

us off of the center. And He does that by revealing

the pride in our hearts, right? So what?

Pride does is it rejects obedience because what pride

does is want to be the boss. And here's the problem.

Here's why pride never works. Here's why I'll handle my money.

I'll make decisions about this Here's the thing.

Because the. World will never cooperate with

you being the boss. Do you know why?

Because they want to be the boss.

You're on their territory. This is why we fight, because

everybody wants to be the boss. The boss of what's good and

what's right and what comes right.

And So what? Humility steps back.

Humility stands out and goes, I am so broken.

Like I don't have any. Business being the boss.

We people are fine. When they just go like, yeah,

well, somebody ought to do it, but it's not me because I'm not,

I'm not good, right? See, that's humility is what

comes when pride collapses. God's desire isn't to humiliate.

People, God's desire isn't to. Humiliate you, But I do want you

to know God's desire is to reveal to you just how

self-sufficient you aren't. Your bootstraps that you have

pulled yourself up by were given to you at birth.

When you were born in the United States, your bootstraps were

handed to you. Thank you Lord for the

bootstraps. I didn't earn them.

They're not mine. And so when we realized that

what we have and what we have to look forward to in the in the

moment like this is the moment that I don't have to worry about

what's coming. I don't have to see.

You know why? Because I know that I can't

control the world. I can't control the economy.

I can't control what happens right now.

What I can do is be in this moment with him, utterly

dependent and lavishly appointed by God.

We have enough. We're be able to get here.

We have friends who can bring us and care for us and tend to us.

But if we insist on being the story, being the center of the

story, we should look just. Like it says here, we should

expect to be scattered, you should expect the world to not

play that game. And So what we do is we let go

of the future. You can have dreams for the

future, but if you try to make God, if you try to insist that

God fulfill all of your dreams, you may be disappointed.

But in humility, we can go. I will live and enjoy this

moment to the fullest of my ability, trusting that when that

day comes. He will be.

Filled with every good things because I've tended to him now.

But the only way that that happens.

Is if we see ourselves as we truly are badly broken.

Are you in that place today? Can you acknowledge that?

Look, I haven't been following God because I've been trying to

be God. That's the second thing.

Love changes how power works, right?

52 says He's toppled the mighty from their Thrones, and he is

exalted, the lonely. This is good for us today to

acknowledge and understand. Are you listening?

God is not neutral in this world to how power is used.

Let me say that again. God is not neutral to how power.

Is used in this world. God lifts up the weak.

God lifts up the poor. I'm not guessing.

He says it. He says it in the Old Testament,

and he says it in the New Testament.

Find that which is weak and ugly and bruised and downcast and

lost and afraid and lonely and ugly and replaceable and

forgettable, and in that place you will find God Almighty

stooping to lift up. It is the God who goes to the

what's the thing? The Manger with a pregnant

teenager to comfort her. There were no Pharisees.

There were no priests. There were no religious leaders

at the birth of Jesus. There were humble teenagers,

blue collar workers and foreigners who had crossed

boundary lines to worship the king.

Everyone else was too busy. God is not neutral.

To how we use power and let me tell you this, you may sit there

feeling like you're weak and like you're small part of God's

image in US is dominion. You remember it says he created

us in his image, male and female.

He created them and then what he said, he says go have dominion,

go lead the earth. So here's the thing, you have

power. You have authority in your

children and your marriage, at your work, wherever you go.

The question and and sometimes you just like that's the victim

thing, like I'm just a nobody. That's not humility, that's

pride. God has said go get to work and

you said I can't. Because I'm small, Because I've

got a bad story. Because I've got you.

Haven't read the book? Find the person whose story is

worse than yours. They're all worse than yours,

and God doesn't use perfect. People.

He uses fallen people. And you have been given dominion

by him. The question isn't whether you

have dominion. The question is whether you are

using it. Some of you are so worried out,

worried about trying to change Congress.

You're ignoring your kids. They're growing up lonely and

afraid. Turn the TV off and go to dinner

with your family. Use your power to do good, to

point to people. Do your words, do your actions.

Does your online presence make small?

People feel valued or do you make other people feel small?

My pastor talked about verse 52 and he said this right.

He got lifts, you know, lifts up and exalts.

He said everybody, this is you and this is me and this is

everybody. Everybody will be exalted and

will be humbled. You get to decide by whom and in

what order. Lift yourself up.

Go for it. I hope you get everything that

you've imagined because it's going to have to last you for an

eternity. My house breaks down.

It's like 4 years old. It's already falling apart,

right? I don't think it's going to last

a million years. And if that's the most important

thing, then that's not. It the people that I got

married, the people that stood next to me at my wedding that

were in my wedding, one of them is still in my life.

Everything changes. What are you building your life?

Around It's not going to be here.

Doesn't last forever. Unless it's Jesus, unless it's

the king, unless it's Christmas, a mighty king and a humble

major, It doesn't work. Love changes how power works.

And I just want us church. The world is watching how we use

power and the power that we celebrate.

They watch. If we tell them that our King is

mighty and sovereign and good and lifts up the humble and

cares for the weak, and that Mary and Joseph, as soon as the

baby was born and the foreigners were left, they became

foreigners and a foreign land, refugees and migrants.

As soon as we realize that and we begin treating people like

that, our power becomes a reflection of the goodness of

the King. Love changes how our power

works. Love changes what?

Satisfies us. Are you content?

Do you have enough? If you don't have enough, you

will never have enough. I'm not saying do you have

everything, I'm saying do you have enough?

You had enough to get here today.

You're going to have enough to get back wherever you're going.

Even if that's a ride from somebody else, you have enough.

But the problem is if we are discontent.

If we walk around thinking I just need a little bit more to

get there, I just need a little bit more money, a little bit

more time, a little bit more relaxation.

I just need a little bit more. If we always just need a little

bit more If we are. Discontent.

You are in the center of your magnifying glass.

Your love is magnifying yourself because you think you are

entitled to something that you don't have.

In this great reversal, Mary says I've got trouble that's

coming, but in this moment I have enough.

Who's the main character in your story?

If you are the main character, you will never have enough.

There will never be enough. But if?

Father is the main character and your life is his opportunity,

your canvas for him to paint goodness on the world.

Then you'll have enough. And you may not have as much as

me, or as much as him, or as much as someone else, but he

will meet you in this moment today, and it will be enough.

This doesn't negotiate ambition. This doesn't negotiate you

wanting to do something and go somewhere.

What this what this negates is greed, but this negates is you

saying I need more to be OK. I need more to feel OK.

It negates consumption and it and it negates the system that

says those things are most important.

And let me just be entirely clear here, verse 54.

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy to

Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he spoke to our

ancestors. This thing that Mary's

experiencing isn't new. This has been the story since

the beginning. Jesus is the perfect expression

of God's eternally faithful love.

Jesus said it in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Greater love has no man than he lays down his life for his.

Friends and he said, I call you friends.

And within a few hours he had allowed the Roman Empire and

fundamentalist religion to hang him on a cross and murder him.

And then in Galatians chapter 3, Paul writes.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

To the Gentiles who live by faith, all the promises of

Abraham are theirs as well. And So what do we?

What do we get? We get provision, we get

blessing, we get an eternity with Him.

God keeps His promises. Are you ready to receive them?

How do we receive that? How do we walk by faith?

The first thing we have to do is we have to confess I've.

Been at the center of my story. I've made all of this all about

me. And then what we do is what the

word repentance is, is literally it's choosing someone else to be

in the center. Lord, I'm just going to move it

this much now. I'm not in the center.

Lord, You're in the center and keep me in that.

That's what happens. Listen, Mary stayed with

Elizabeth about 3 months and then she returned to her home.

I know what you're thinking. Centering Jesus is hard.

And the reality is, I don't want to.

Me too. I get it.

I don't want to do that either. But look, Mary gets these

promise. She has this experience, and

then she goes back home to the difficult parts where people

don't understand, where they don't see her.

And the point here is that we are transformed as we go, this

realignment. We're talking about putting

Jesus, and it's not a theoretical thing.

It's not just things that you think.

It means actually reorganizing. It means that we have to

actually face our fear if we want to have peace.

It means that we can't, we can't numb it anymore.

It means we have to stand there and look at it and watch God

walk us through it and find the peace.

It means that we have to actually build relationships if

we want to experience joy. It means we have to actually

slow down the things that we do if we want to experience peace

and in all of those. As you do those things, as you

walk by faith, as you say, I'm going to slow.

Down what happens as you begin to experience Jesus in the

after, not before because of not as an invitation to and so my

invitation for you. Here's maybe today you're here

and you've never followed Jesus. You've been around, but you've

never said maybe your story is I've been in the center of my

magnifying glass for my whole life.

Today's the day I want out it. It really is that easy.

Prayer is talking to God as if He's in the room because He is.

And you just say God, I don't want to be in the center

anymore. I have screwed this up and I am

ready for you to restore it and make it all new.

I move out, you move in, I'll do what you say. close your eyes.

Will you close your eyes for me? I just want you to have a moment

of peace to make that decision today.

And maybe you have never made that decision before, but today

you just say I want to be out and I don't know anything else.

I don't know how to do any else, anything else with that.

That's OK. Just make that decision today.

And maybe you've been following Jesus for a long time, but you

realize, but slowly but surely, maybe he's disappointed you,

Maybe he's hurt your feelings. But slowly but surely, you've

gotten into the center of your glass and you need, you need to

move back out. Jesus, I ask that you would love

us well as your church. We thank you for your grace.

We thank you for your peace. We thank you for your goodness

and your hope. We thank you for the way that

you love us. We ask all these things in your

name and for your glory. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about

experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and

community, and we hope that you've been able to experience

that today. As grateful as I am that you've

spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no

substitute for full participation in a local church.

I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it

is those who show up week after week, faithfully giving their

support and time and resources that make all of this possible.

If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,

or support you in any way, click the link in the description and

let us know. If you'd like to financially

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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you

in all grace and peace.