Outline // The Gift & The Receipt #1: The Promise

WONDER causes:

• News to spread.
• Learning to be motivated.
• Questions to be asked.
• Prophecies to be believed.
• Hope

Isaiah 9:1-7 // Hope in the Messiah

• This prophecy shows that Jesus was always the plan. 
• God has had a plan for humanity to be returned to right standing with Him, ever since the dawn of creation! It’s ALWAYS been written in the stars, because it’s written in creation, it’s written in the very breath of God!

Hope is so powerful!  Hopelessness is so powerful too.  The enemy wants to rob us of hope.  Because we do all kinds of dumb things when we’re feeling hopeless.  When we can’t see our way forward. We make bad decisions when we’re hopeless.

Genesis 3:15

• The gift that was promised from the very beginning!

Luke 1:26-38 // The Birth of Jesus Foretold

• Mary surrendered, way beyond just obedience.  
• Mary acknowledges fact!  A lot of us think faith is not acknowledging reality--that’s not it. She says I am a virgin.  That was not a faithless statement.  That was just factual.  She just needed to know how God was going to overcome that fact. Once that was answered–she was good to go. Some of us worship our “facts”.  The ways in which we DON’T see God working…we worship those.  We have no faith, because we’re too busy telling God what’s possible! 
• HIS ways are HIGHER than our ways.  His thoughts HIGHER than our thoughts.  We may not see what’s possible, but HE DOES!!

Luke 1:46-55 // Mary's Song of Praise

•  Mary was a person of deep worship.
• She was ready and available for God to speak to her.
• How do you become available? And turn the "ringer" up loud?
  • In worship.  “God inhabits the praises of His people.”
  • In gatherings of believers. “Where two or more are gathered, there I am among them.”
  • In the Word. “the inspired Word of God”
• If you’re not showing up…how can you hear Him?
  • “Seek and you will find! Knock and the door will be opened to you!”
  • “Draw near to me…and I will draw near to you”, says the Lord!
• Turn the ringer UP LOUD by constantly pursuing the presence of God! Go find Him! He’s not hard to find! But you do have to be looking.

Luke 18:18, “So pay attention to how you hear. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them.”

• When God makes a promise, He also gives the tools needed.
  • Elizabeth was older and wiser, filled with the holy spirit
  • From the Garden of Eden until now, God gives us helpers! We were meant to live life in community! LEAN IN in times of trouble, not away.

Waiting reminds us HE is in charge…
Waiting teaches us faith & trust & patience.
Waiting reveals our idolatries…reveals what’s more important to us than God’s plan.
Waiting usually also prepares us.  
Waiting encourages us to remember what God has done in the past.  To instruct our hearts and reminds ourselves!
Waiting reminds us that this life is just a blip on the length of eternity.
Waiting should make us grateful. When our prayer is finally answered.
Waiting reminds us that God is the promise-maker, and the promise-keeper.