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Advent Meditation

 

December 4th 

    

12. Can God show Me things?

 

   

Luke 1:42-45 In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"

 

In the world at large there are a lot of weird, freaky things that go on. There are seers and people who claim to know the future from a wide range of backgrounds, frequently not godly. Why do we make that latter comment? Because if something like this does not have its origins in God, then it is highly questionable and history shows us many people who have been carried away by deception into the most weird and wonderful things that have only brought harm to them and to others.

 

Now we say all this by way of prelude to observing what is going on at this point of the Christmas story. Yesterday we observed that Elizabeth was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit' (that is the Spirit of God) and said that when that happens it is an experience of the presence of the Lord seemingly filling that person so that they are either equipped and enabled to do something they previously were unable to do, or they were filled with great joy. In Elizabeth's case both of those things happened. She speaks forth what can only be described as ‘revelation' and she has a sense of great joy.

 

It is revelation because, without being told by Mary, she instantly knows that Mary is carrying a baby and that baby is someone very special – her Lord! She praises Mary for having believed what God had said to her. Yes, she's even aware that what has happened to Mary has happened because God spoke to her. This insight, this revelation, is what the Bible refers to as prophecy, the speaking out of the previously hidden will of God.

 

Now unlike, the weird and wonderful characters who have a freaky sense about them that we sometimes find in the world, there is absolutely nothing like this about Elizabeth. She is simply an aging mother-to-be, who exhibits only goodness. But that's what you get with God. Yes He may speak through someone like this, but it is all goodness.

 

There are those who suggest that some of us are naturally more aware than others of the spiritual dimension in life, of the spiritual world, and that may be, but the Bible shows again and again that God is a God of communication, and so we may expect God to speak to us. It may not be as dramatic as it was here through Elizabeth; it may simply be that you are conscious of new thoughts coming, directing your eyes in God's direction, as you read the Bible, or even these meditations. God's way of speaking to us, can be that low-key!

 

The danger, when thinking about this aspect of God's activity, is that we see it simply as a means of finding out about the future – that's why people foolishly ‘read the stars' or use other similarly highly dubious practices to reassure themselves. No, when God speaks, He wants to bring us into a place of real relationship, or even deeper relationship, with Him, so that we can become recipients of His blessing, His goodness, for that's what love desires. Do you want to hear Him that you may come closer to Him? Then simply ask Him today for that to happen.

 

 

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                                                                          tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk