Pastor How to Read LukeSample

Please read the Gospel of Luke 1:45,

45 You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.

How to be blessed? Believe!

Mary is ‘blessed among women’. Yet I must point out that our secular, modern idea of being blessed is quite different from spiritual blessings.

Mary will carry the stigma and shame of being a loose woman, a slut who had pre-marital sex and gave birth to an illegitimate child, for the rest of her life. When Jesus spoke about His Father, the Pharisees alluded to this when they sarcastically retorted: "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” (John 8:41 NKJV). The literal word used on Mary was “whore” (Young’s Literal Translation).

Sometimes being used by God to bring forth a miracle will give you a stigma for the rest of your life.

Imagine Mary trying to explain to her accusers that her Child came from the Holy Spirit.

‘Yeah right’ will be people’s scoffing reaction.

Trying to explain will just make it worse. Now she is a lying, religious, crazy whore who is saying God made her pregnant. Have you tried to explain spiritual things and it just made things worse?

Joseph also had to carry the reputation of being a fool for marrying a slut and bringing up another man’s child. Some of you may not be the one pregnant with a vision, but just supporting another person who carries a vision can make you look like a fool too.

Doing the work of God means you might be mocked by friends, trolled and canceled online, misunderstood by loved ones and falsely accused by people.

So are we prepared to be used by God?

Are we prepared to be ‘blessed’?