Prepare Him Room
WORTH THE WONDER
Luke 1:38; Luke 2:19
Intro: Every December, we get really good at making room for things. Room for extra food. Room for relatives we only see once a year. Room for decorations we swear we’re going to throw away next year—but never do. Some of you already had to move stuff just to sit down today. But here’s the irony of Christmas: The one Person Christmas is about is often forced to compete for our attention. We sing songs about Him. We put Him on cards. We even put Him in nativity scenes—usually safely tucked between a donkey and some straw. But when it comes to our daily lives—our plans, our fears, our thoughts, our future— the sign often reads: “No Vacancy.” That was true the very first Christmas. Jesus didn’t show up to a city that said, “Welcome, we’ve been expecting You.” He appeared in a world that said, “Sorry—we’re full.” No room at the inn. No room in the schedule. No room in the system. And if we’re honest, not much has changed. Most people don’t reject Jesus because they hate Him. They don’t receive Him because they’re busy. Busy surviving. Busy planning. Busy coping. Busy trying to hold life together. And that’s why the Christmas story is so surprising. God didn’t start His rescue plan with a king, or a sermon, or a miracle. He started it with a teenage girl…who had questions…who had fears…who certainly did not have life figured out. But she made room. Before Jesus ever took up space in a manger, He took up space in Mary’s trust. Before He ever lay in her arms, He lived in her thoughts. That’s the invitation of Christmas. Not, “Get your life cleaned up.” Not, “Understand everything first.” But simply: Will you make room? Today we’re going to look at Mary’s story and ask two honest questions. They are questions believers need to answer… and questions skeptics are allowed to wrestle with. Because the great tragedy of Christmas is celebrating it every year but never making room for the One who came for you.
- Will I Trust God When His Plan Interrupts My Own?
When the angel appeared to Mary, her whole life was turned upside down. A teenage girl, engaged but not yet married, told she would carry the Messiah. She could have panicked. She could have argued. Instead, she said:
Luke 1:38 “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
That’s not Mary resigning to fate — it’s trust. She’s saying, “Lord, Your will may disrupt my plans, but it will not destroy my peace.”
“I’m glad to be Your servant. I long to do Your will.”
Mary’s question is now your question: Will I trust God when His plan interrupts my own?
illus: How can I trust God when I don’t understand what is happening? Corrie ten Boom often told the story of riding a train with her father when she was young. She asked him a difficult theological question about why God allows suffering. Instead of answering, her father stood up and asked her to carry his heavy travel case. She couldn’t lift it. He said: “There are answers too heavy for you now. I will carry them for you until you are strong enough.” It became a lifelong picture: When God interrupts your life with something too heavy to understand, you trust Him the way Corrie trusted her father — He carries the part you cannot lift.
Mary carried the Christ child, but God carried the mystery.
She did not rely on herself.
Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding…”
How could her own understanding and limited life experience explain a virgin conception? Not possible. But she trusted the God who doesn’t require her comprehension to accomplish His purposes.
Psalm 37:5 “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”
Mary committed everything — her reputation, her engagement, her body — into God’s hands. She was convinced He would bring His promise to pass. And Isaiah promises:
Isaiah 26:3 “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”
Even if we have all the data, it doesn’t guarantee us peace. Peace comes from God who gives it to the ones who trust Him.
In fact, her faith sounds much like Abraham’s from the OT:
Romans 4:20–21 [Abraham] “did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform”
Mary stood in that same stream of faith – fully convinced that God do the impossible with her.
Abraham believed God could bring life from Sarah’s barren womb. Mary believed God could bring life from a virgin womb.
Application: Prepare Him Room in Your Heart (by trusting in Him).
- Will I Make Room in My Mind to Dwell on What God Is Doing?
Luke 2:19 “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
Mary didn’t just experience the events of the first Christmas – she meditated on them. She turned them over, reflected on them, and saved them to the hard drive of her soul.
She didn’t let the moment rush past her like holiday background noise. She held the sights and sounds of that holy night — the shepherds’ testimony, the angel’s announcement, the miracle she herself carried — and she pondered them.
Meditation transforms doctrine into comfort, theology into emotion, belief into reality.
And here’s the truth: every one of us already knows how to meditate.
You never stop thinking. You’re in constant dialogue with yourself. You make plans. You weigh options. You imagine outcomes. You rehearse conversations. You even fantasize about your future.
The real question is not: “Do you know how to meditate?” It is: “What occupies your mind?” (What lives rent-free in your head?)
To meditate is to intentionally dwell on what you value.
illus: You see what you mentally rehearse. There’s a well-known cognitive principle called frequency bias: The moment you decide to buy a red Honda, you suddenly see red Hondas everywhere. Why? Because your mind notices what it meditates on. Mary meditated on God’s actions — so she saw His hand everywhere, even in a manger, even in census travel chaos. If you meditate on anxiety, you’ll find it everywhere. If you meditate on Christ, you’ll see Him everywhere.
But pastor, isn’t meditation something that Hindus and Buddhists do? Yes. And they also fast, pray, and go to the grocery store. Would you stop doing any of those things because someone in a false religion does them, too?
The question we should ask ourselves is not whether the other religions incorrectly practice meditation or not. The question we should ask is whether the Bible teaches us that we should be doing it.
Psalm 1:1-2 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.
Psalm 119:97 Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.
Joshua 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Meditation toys with what it treasures. It enjoys reflecting on what gives it satisfaction. It spends time reveling in what it loves.
So — is there such space for Christ in your thoughts? Does God captivate your mind this way? Do you delight in thinking about Him? Does the gospel brighten your day, bring you comfort, excite you about eternity?
Is God real? Is He greater than the whole cosmos? Really?
illus: Think about how vast God is: Is He greater than a universe that stretches over 93 billion light-years wide? (the speed of light is approx. 186,411 miles per second! Multiply the number of seconds in a year - 31,536,000 - by the speed of light and then you'll know how many miles are in a light year. Don't waste your time, it's both astronomical and unfathomable!)
Does the God of your thoughts match the God who surpasses the cosmos? Do you delight in meditating on His greatness? Does His reach and power bring you comfort?
Meditation trains the mind to delight in Him — to savor His greatness until your heart finds joy in it.
Thomas Manton – “What we take in by the Word, we digest by meditation, and let out by prayer.
J.I. Packer – “Meditation is thinking over and dwelling on the things we know about God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of fellowship with God.
Isaiah 55:2a Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?
That’s such a good question! Do you realize that God Himself is the one who is asking? Consider it for a moment. Who would be so foolish as to spend their entire paycheck on something that leaves them empty? What’s the answer? You. Me. All of us!
Our mind is like a treasure chest full of riches. We love plunging into this treasure chest and marveling at our achievements (big promotion, physical fitness, successful children, exotic vacations, impressive houses, new cars, comfortable retirement, etc.)
Absolutely all of us meditate on things that either make us happy or that we think will make us happy.
Mary’s treasure chest was full of God’s activity, not her anxiety. She held the sights and sounds of the angel’s message, the manger, and the visit of the shepherds in her heart. She replayed them to give glory to God and to rise above any worldly distraction.
Mary refused to spend her mental currency on fear, cultural pressure, or what others thought. She spent it on the Word made flesh.
That’s what it means to prepare Him room in your thoughts.
Application: Prepare Him Room in Your Thoughts (by meditating on Him).
Conclusion: Mary teaches us that preparing room for Christ doesn’t start with decorations, carols, or even outward religious acts. It begins in the heart — with trust. It grows in the mind — with meditation.
This Christmas:
- Will you trust God when His plan interrupts yours?
- Will you make room in your mind to dwell on what God is doing?
Prepare Him room in the deepest part of who you are. Trust Him when His plans overwrite yours. Meditate on His greatness until joy floods your thoughts. And when you do, the Christ who came to a manger will come to dwell in your heart richly.
Transcirption:
Good morning. Let's go to the Lord in Prayer.
God, we thank you for the freedom we have to worship you. We lift you up this morning and thank you for the many blessings you've given us that we don't deserve. We thank you for family. I lift up our children to you this morning. Pray that you would bless our Next Generation Ministries.
Please bless Jen Jones with wisdom and leadership as she guides our volunteers to teach our children how to pursue you in both scripture and prayer. I pray that each and every soul in our kids and youth ministries will be radically changed and saved.
I lift up Refuge Church to you this morning that you would continue to do mighty things there. Please use Pastor Michael Caffey to spread the Gospel within that church and community so that Refuge Church would grow with new believers that also have a heart for the lost. I pray that GCC would also continue to have a heart for the lost and that you would bless us beyond comprehension with abundant finances that we would honor you through cheerful giving and our gift for Jesus our Lord offering. We pray for continued generosity through the matching Grant for missions that our supported missionaries would be blessed and invigorated by what you can do. We pray that you would use them to go and tell the world that Jesus is the way.
I pray for this Christmas season. I pray that eyes would be opened to who Jesus is and why his birth and sacrifice was the ultimate gift. I pray that lost souls would be saved in record numbers and that you would receive all the glory and all the praise. Please bless our Pastor Trevor this morning as he delivers your truth. Please open our eyes to see it, our ears to hear it and our hearts to receive the word that you have for us today.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
All right.
So glad to be with our church today on the Lord's Day. And let me just say a couple of housekeeping things. Next week is our the Gift for Jesus our Lord offering. And if you need to take one of these home with you, and remember, our challenge is that at Christmas we want to honor Jesus above everybody else that we honor on his birthday. And whatever the most expensive gift we buy for someone, we're going to add $1 to that amount at least and give Jesus a bigger gift than anybody.
That's what that's about. And so take that home with you. Going to be back next week. They'll be in your seats too. Also, I want to say that Jesus died to reconcile sinners to God.
And Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus is alive now. He's Lord of all. And the Bible never tells us to remember his birth. Did you know that? But it tells us over and over to remember his death.
And so that's why we come to the Lord's table. We do it at least twice a month to obey the Scriptures and to remember the that Jesus, it was necessary for him to die a violent death to pay for our sins so that we could become children of God. And so it's a noble right and holy thing as a believer to come to the Lord's table and celebrate that. I wanted you to just kind of feel some of the gravity of it today. Also the next couple of weeks during the Christmas break, Angie and I, my wife will be and we'll be working on our small group ministry.
And look, there's room for you. And if you like what you see and hear on Sunday mornings, this is just the front door of our ministry. And if you want to get the best of it, you need to be in one of our small groups. So if you're interested in that, now's the time to sign up. It says what's next for me on the ministry card.
The very first one says help me find a small group. If you check that box, put your name in a way that I can contact you, preferably like a cell number and an email address. We'll make sure that you get on a roster for our small groups that will begin again early in January. Okay, usa, we good? All right.
Well, today is part two of a three part series on Advent on Christmas that I call Prepare him room. Last week was worth the wait. This week is worth the wonder. And I really going to take two verses from Mary's story in Luke chapters one and two. And that's what will be our focus today as we talk about worth the wonder.
And I want to say to us that every December we get really good at making room for things. Room for extra food. Somebody testify Christmas goodies. Amen. Room for those relatives in our house that we'll only see one time a year.
Room for the decorations that we swore we were going to throw out and get rid of last year, but we forgot to do it. And there they are. Some of you had to move stuff just to sit down in your chair. Today we're good at making room. Well, here's the irony of Christmas.
The one person that Christmas is about, the Lord Jesus, is often forced to compete for our attention. I mean, we sing songs about him and we wrap gifts with paper that points to him, and we sing carols and put him on cards and we carefully tuck him away between barnyard animals and nativity scenes. We do all that. But when it comes to our daily lives, our plans and our fears and our thoughts and our future, you know what the sign often reads? No vacancy.
That was true the very first Christmas. You know that. I mean, Jesus didn't show up to a city that had a billboard that said, welcome, we've been expecting you. He appeared in a world that said to him, sorry, we're full. No room at the inn.
No room in the schedule, no room in the system. And if we're honest, not much has changed. Did you know that most people don't reject Jesus because they hate Him? Most people don't receive Jesus because they're too busy. They're busy surviving, busy planning, busy coping, and busy trying to hold their own lives together as their own Lord and Savior.
And that's why Christmas is so surprising. Because God didn't start his rescue plan in a palace with the King. He didn't start it with a sermon on a mountainside. He didn't start it even with a miracle that most people could see. He started it with a teenage girl.
And here's what we know about that teenage girl. She had questions. She had fears. And all of us know that she certainly didn't have life figured out by this time in her existence. But she made room before Jesus ever took up space in the manger.
He took up space in Mary's trust. Before he ever lay in her arms, he lived in her thoughts. And that's the invitation of Christmas. It's not get your life cleaned up. It's not understand everything.
First, the invitation of Christmas is simply, will you prepare him room?
Today we're going to look at Mary's story and ask two honest questions. Let me say something about these questions. They are questions that all believers need to answer. And they are questions that every skeptic is allowed to wrestle with. Why is that, Pastor?
Because the great tragedy at Christmas is celebrating it Every year, but never making room for the one who came for you.
So question number one. You ready?
Will I trust God when his plans interrupt my own? You know, when the angel appeared to Mary, her whole life was turned upside down. Is that true? A teenage girl, engaged but not yet married, was told by an angel that she would carry the Messiah without ever having been with a man. And I think it's true that she could have panicked and she could have argued, but she didn't do any of that.
Instead, here's what she said. Luke, chapter 1, verse 38. Behold, the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. Can we agree that's one of the better declarations of faith in all the Bible?
That's not Mary resigning to fate. It's a young girl trusting her God. She's saying, lord, your will may disrupt my plans, but it will not destroy my peace. I'm glad to be your servant. I long to do your will.
Friends, Mary's question is. Now your question. Will I trust God when his plan interrupts my own? But, Pastor, how can I trust God when I don't even understand what's happening in my life? That is a fair question.
Let me answer it with a story. Corrie Ten Boom wrote the Hiding Place Survived the Holocaust. Christian hero. She often told the story riding on a train with her father when she was little. And she asked her father a difficult theological question.
Dad, why does God allow suffering?
Her dad didn't answer her question. Instead, he stood up from the seat in the train, and he asked his daughter to pick up his heavy travel suitcase. The little girl stood up, grabbed the handle, couldn't budge it, couldn't move it. And then she looked at her dad, and here's what he said. Honey, there are answers too heavy for you right now.
I will carry them for you until you're strong enough.
It became a lifelong picture and lesson for Corrie Ten Boom. When God interrupts your life with something too heavy to understand, you trust him the way Corrie trusted her dad. And God carries the part that you can't lift. Mary carried the Christ child. God carried the mystery.
That's how it works. And when you read about Mary in the Christmas stories, you find out that she didn't rely on herself. I think we're all pretty familiar with Proverbs 3, verse 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and finish it with me. Lean not on your own understanding.
Mary was about 14 years old.
How could her own understanding. How could her very limited life experience Explain a virgin conception. We're still struggling today with how to explain that it's not possible apart from God. But she trusted the God who doesn't require her comprehension in order to accomplish his purposes.
Do you know Psalm 37:5? Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. To pass, commit, trust and watch what God does. That's what that verse means. Mary committed everything.
She handed God her reputation. She handed God her future marriage, her engagement. She handed God her virgin body, put it all into his hands because she was convinced that God would bring his promise to pass.
You know what Isaiah said in Isaiah 26:3? You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
Brothers and sisters, even if we have all the data, does that guarantee us peace?
Peace comes from God, who gives it to the ones who trust in Him. Will I trust God when His plan interrupts my own? When I begin to think about Mary, her faith sounds a lot like Abraham's from the Old Testament that Paul wrote about in Romans, chapter 4, verses 21 and 20 and 21. Abraham did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. Watch this being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform.
Can you see how Mary could think about that truth and go, well, God did it for Abraham and Sarah and promised them. Now he's made a promise to me, he must be getting ready to bring this thing to pass. Mary stood in that same stream of faith. She was fully convinced that God could do the impossible with her.
You know, Abraham believed that God could bring life from Sarah's barren womb. And likewise, Mary believed God could bring life from her virgin womb.
Before we leave this point, here's an application. What do I do with this, Pastor? Prepare him room in your heart by trusting in him. The verse says, behold the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.
That's question number one. Here's question number two. Will I make room in my mind to dwell on what God is doing?
Luke 2:19. At the end of it all, Mary's thinking back after the baby's born. And the verse says, mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. She kept them all and she pondered them. She thought about them.
Do you understand that Mary didn't just experience the events of the first Christmas? She meditated on them.
It means that she turned them over in her head. She reflected on them. She saved them. To the hard drive of her soul. Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
She didn't let the moment pass in a rush. Like Christmas music in the background, Mary held the sights and the sounds of that holy night. Think about it. The shepherd's testimony, the angel's announcement, the miracle that she herself had carried. And the verse says she pondered them.
Brothers and sisters, are you aware that meditation turns doctrine into comfort?
Did you know that meditation transforms theology into emotion that you can feel? Did you know that meditation takes belief and metamorphosizes it into reality? Everybody, look at me. Here's the truth. Every one of us already knows how to meditate.
What do you mean? Well, you never stop thinking.
You're in constant dialogue with yourself. It might be the only intelligent conversation you have in a day. Amen. Right. You make plans, you weigh options.
You imagine outcomes. You rehearse conversations that usually don't go that way.
You even fantasize about your future. Future.
The real question is not do you know how to meditate? The real question is, what occupies your mind? What lives rent free in your head? Will I make room in my mind to dwell on what God is doing? Let me give you a pretty simple definition for what meditation is.
To meditate is to intentionally dwell on what you value. To intentionally dwell on what you value.
Did you know that? You see what you mentally rehearse.
Let me give you an example. There's a well known cognitive principle called frequency bias. Here's how frequency bias goes. I'm in the middle of it right now because my house is for sale and we want to move and get a different house and know what I'm looking for? And I see it in every driveway.
Now here's how frequency bias works. That moment that you decide that you want to buy a red Honda Civic, what do you see? Dozens of on the highways, red Honda Civics. Friends. They were always there.
You just weren't thinking about them. Them. You weren't meditating on them. You suddenly see red Hondas everywhere. Why?
Because your mind notices what you meditate on. Well, Mary meditated on God's actions. So she saw his hand everywhere in a manger. In the ridiculous chaos of traveling to Bethlehem for a census on a winter night. Do you understand that?
If you meditate on anxiety, you'll find it all around you.
If you meditate on Christ, you'll see him everywhere. I want to tell you the verse again. Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. It's a verse about Meditation. But Pastor, isn't meditation something all those Hindus and Buddhists do?
Yes, and they also fast and pray and go to the grocery store and surf the Internet.
Would you stop doing any of those things because someone in a false religion does them too? No. The question we should ask ourselves is not whether other religions incorrectly practice meditation or not. The question we should ask is whether the Bible teaches us that we should be doing it. Let me give you four pretty familiar verses of scripture that talk about meditation, and I want you to see what God says you should meditate on.
Psalm 1:1 2 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 19:14 It's a prayer of David Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Let me meditate correctly. David prayed Psalm 119, verse 97.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day.
Joshua 1:8 this book of the law, Moses says, Joshua says, shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it in it day and night, that you may observe to do all according, to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Do you understand that God expects us to know His Word and to turn it over in our minds and to treasure it and think on it? I want my frequency bias to be the Scriptures.
Meditation toys with what it treasures. It enjoys reflecting on what gives it satisfaction. Meditation spends time reveling in what it loves. Listen, you talk about what you think about, and you think about what you love. What does it say if you never talk about Jesus?
The question is, is there such space for Christ in your thoughts?
Does God captivate your mind in this way? Is there a wonderful do you delight in thinking about Him? Does the Gospel brighten your day thinking about it? Does it bring you comfort? Does it excite you about eternity?
What do you meditate on?
Let's go back a little bit more basic. Let me ask you a question. Is God real?
Is he greater than the whole cosmos, all of created things? Is he that big? Really? Have you thought about it? I want you to think about how vast God is just based on what we've Been able to kind of measure so far, you know, back in 2017, I think it was, or 18 this summer, Angie and I took our boys on a trip of a lifetime.
We went to. Ended up in the Washington, D.C. area for a week, and then we circled back around. And the last leg of the trip, we went to the Creation Museum. So in Washington, D.C. we went to the. What do they call those things?
So you sit in the room, you look up. Planetarium. Thank you. We went to the planetarium at the Museum of Natural Science, Smithsonian. You know what they showed us all the data about how big the universe is that we've measured so far.
You know what the conclusion they came to? It all happened by a miracle of chance. We got to the Creation Museum, went to the planetarium. You know what they showed us? Exact same data, how big the universe is.
You know the conclusion they came to in the beginning? God created the heavens and the Earth. Look, we're looking at the same evidence. We're starting with different worldviews. Does that make sense?
Everybody believes in a miracle. Either the Big Bang or God did it. I believe God did it. Now, look, is God greater than a universe that stretches over 93 billion light years wide?
Well, what's a light year? Well, look, listen. The speed of light is approximately 186,411 miles per second. 186411 miles per second. 5280ft per second times 186,411 miles.
That's the speed of light. A light year is the light traveling at the speed of light over a year. Multiply that by the number of seconds in a year. 31,536,000. You multiply 186,411 by 31,536,000, the speed of light, and you'll know how miles are in a light year.
Don't waste your time. It's both astronomical and unfathomable. The computers that sent the man of the Moon can't even calculate that. And it's just getting started. God's over all of it.
Do you ever meditate on it? Do you ever think about it? Does the God of your thoughts match the God who surpasses the cosmos? Do you delight in meditating on his greatness? Does his reach and power bring you comfort?
Meditation trains the mind to delight in him, to savor his greatness until your heart finds joy in it. Thomas Manton was a Puritan preacher. Here's what he said about it. What we take in by the Word. We digest by meditation and let out by prayer.
Holy smoke, JI Packer. Meditation is thinking over and dwelling on the things we know about God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God by the help of God as a means of fellowship with God. That's what Mary did in Luke 2:19.
Now God asks a question of us in Isaiah 55:2, why do you spend money for what is not bread, your wages for what does not satisfy? What does that mean, Preacher? First of all, that's such a good question. Do you realize that God himself is the one who's asking us this? Consider it for a moment.
Who would be so foolish as to spend their entire paycheck on something that leaves them empty?
Well, you would do that, and I would do that. All of us would be that foolish. Well, did you know that your mind is a treasure chest full of riches? And we love plunging into the treasure chest and marveling at all of our achievements. The big promotion we got, the physical fitness we achieved, the successful children we raised, the graduate degree that we earned, the exotic vacations we've taken, the impressive houses we live in, the new cars that we drive, the comfortable retirement waiting on us.
We think about this stuff all the time. We jump into that treasure chest. Absolutely. All of us meditate on things that either make us happy or things we think might make us happy.
Well, have you thought about Mary's treasure chest? It was full of God's activity and not her anxiety. She had the sights and sounds of the angel's message, the manger, the visit of the shepherds, all of that in her heart, and she turned it over. She replayed them to give glory to God so that she could rise above worldly distraction. In other words, Mary refused to spend her mental currency on fear or on any cultural pressure she would have on her, and especially on what others thought.
How is she supposed to explain all that?
She spent it on the Word made flesh. You know, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And in John 1:14, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling place among us. The Word has a name. His name is Jesus.
That's what it means to prepare him room in your thoughts. So how do I apply this question, Pastor? Prepare him room in your thoughts by meditating on him.
Did you survive that one?
In conclusion, today, Mary teaches us that preparing room for Christ doesn't begin with decorations. And it doesn't start with carols, and it doesn't even have anything to do with outward religious acts. All of those are fine. That's not where it starts though. It begins in the heart with trust and it grows in the mind with meditation.
So this Christmas, will you trust God when his plan interrupts yours? Will you make room in your mind to dwell on what God is doing?
Friends, prepare him room in the deepest part of who you are. Trust him when his plans overwrite yours. Meditate on his greatness until joy floods your thoughts. And when you do, the Christ who came to a manger will come and dwell richly in your heart. And I think all of us want that you received that word.
It's bow for prayer today. Thank you God for what the Virgin Mary really teaches us. Not that we should worship her, but that we should worship Jesus. Amen.
I'm closing the first service, but not the second. Would you stand to your feet if our if our prayer ministry team we'll come to the front. So did you like how gracefully I came back? I practiced that stuff.
I promise. I read our order of services every week.
Hey, we're going to pray for anyone and everyone about anything you want us to pray for. And let me tell you, if you haven't experienced our prayer ministry, you need to come and let our prayer partners pray for you. And if you can't think of something you need prayer for, then you're in the best spot because here's how you can get some of the best blessing. Come forward and say, look, I'm not really sure what God wants me to be prayed for, so just pray for me whatever he lays on your heart for me. And watch that wonder.
Alright, now we can be dismissed.
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Come and join us this Sunday at the Great Commission Church for a truly remarkable and uplifting experience. Great Commission Church is a family-friendly church in Olive Branch, MS. Great Commission Church is not just any ordinary place of worship; it's a vibrant community where faith comes alive, hearts are filled with love, and lives are transformed. Our doors are wide open, ready to welcome you into the warm embrace of our congregation, where you'll discover the true essence of fellowship and spirituality. At Great Commission Church, we are more than just a congregation; we are a family united by a common mission – to follow the teachings of Christ and spread His love to the world. As you step inside Great Commission Church, you'll find a sanctuary that nurtures your faith and encourages you to be part of something greater than yourself.
We believe in the power of coming together as a community to worship, learn, and serve. Whether you're a long-time believer or just starting your spiritual journey, Great Commission Church welcomes people from all walks of life. Our vibrant services are filled with inspiring messages, beautiful music, and heartfelt prayers that will uplift your soul. Every Sunday at Great Commission Church is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with God and connect with others who share your faith and values.
At Great Commission Church, we believe that faith is not just a solitary endeavor but a shared experience that strengthens and enriches us all. Our church is a place where you can find purpose, belonging, and the encouragement to live a life in accordance with Christ's teachings. Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church and experience the transformative power of faith in action. Be part of a loving and supportive community that is committed to making a positive impact in our world. Together, we strive to fulfill the great commission to go forth and make disciples of all nations. We look forward to having you with us at Great Commission Church this Sunday, where faith, love, and community intersect in a truly amazing way.
Great Commission Church is a non-denominational, family-friendly Christian church located in Olive Branch, Mississippi. We are a short drive from Germantown, Southaven, Collierville, Horn Lake, Memphis, Fairhaven, Mineral Wells, Pleasant Hill, Handy Corner, Lewisburg and Byhalia. Great Commission Church is conveniently located, making it easy to find and attend. Many people have even called it their go-to “church near me” or the "Church nearby" because of how accessible it is and how quickly it feels like home.
See you Sunday at Great Commission Church in Olive Branch, Mississippi!
