Touching Wonder Part 2
Pastor Tony Ashmore
Sunday, December 13, 2009
www.churchatmirrorlake.com
Sermon Notes:
The Wonder of Christmas
Luke 11:33 Message “If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don't get musty and murky. Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room."
Luke 1-2 Joseph, Mary, Gabriel
Joseph: Like any man, he had dreams, probably plans, of what his life would look like:
- Career
- Family:
- The perfect wife
- Sons to inherit his completed dreams
- Grandkids to enjoy
- Probably a hope to make a solid future for his kids in his village. Probably did not include assuring the future of every boy and girl ever born.
Mary: A young teen-age girl full of dreams:
- Husband and home
- Kids:
- Watching them grow up
- Watching them pick wives
- Holding grandkids
Gabriel:
- Had seen it all—the rise and fall of Lucifer
- The creation of Adam and his intimacy with God
- The betrayal by Adam
- Years of disobedience by generations of Adams
The story of Christmas is the story of an awesome God interrupting our temporal, broken world with everlasting plans that include us. Each person involved in the story had plans—for the initial days and years that make up the beginning and for the future that would be forever changed. Some had probably thought about plans for eternity, but most, like us, probably had spent a lot more energy on plans for now. Like Joseph and Mary, each of us are invited by God to participate in wonder—and to find our true destiny beyond our wildest dreams.
Keys to wonder we can learn from Joseph, Mary and Gabriel:
- Faith—Church history is not made by well-financed, well-resourced individuals and institutions. History is made by men and women of faith who have met the living God. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
- Obedience precedes understanding—What we see and know is not all there is. The end as we know it is not the end at all. But it does call us to a choice—our way or God’s way. (“Whoever wrestles with God…puts his whole life at stake.” Jacques Ellul) Never forget that nothing is impossible.
- Context is everything. The virgin birth only makes sense in the context God’s eternal plan. Our lives will make sense. Count on it. Live as if He is coming back and Heaven is real.
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