Today's Reading: Luke 1: 39-56
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read Luke 1: 39-56
Bible Study
May you have a blessed New Year! First day of 2013!
What's your New Year's dream? Do you have any at all?
This passage records the dreams of Mary and Elizabeth. N.T. Wright says:
Mary and Elisabeth shared a dream. It was the ancient dream of Israel: the dream that one day all that the prophets had said would come true. One day Israel's God would do what he had said to Israel's earliest ancestors: all nations would be blessed through Abraham's family. But for that to happen, the powers that kept the world in slavery had to be toppled. Nobody would normally thank God for blessing if they were poor, hungry, enslaved and miserable. God would have to win a victory over the bullies, the power-brokers, the forces of evil which people like Mary and Elisabeth knew all too well, living as they did in the dark days of Herod the Great, whose casual brutality was backed up with the threat of Rome. Mary and Elisabeth, like so many Jews of their time, searched the scriptures, soaked themselves in the psalms and prophetic writings which spoke of mercy, hope, fulfilment, reversal, revolution, victory over evil, and of God coming to the rescue at last.
All of that is poured into this song, Mary's Magnificat, like a rich, foaming drink that comes bubbling over the edge of the jug and spills out all round. Almost every word is a biblical quotation such as Mary would have known from childhood. Much of it echoes the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2, the song which celebrated the birth of Samuel and all that God was going to do through him. Now these two mothers-to-be celebrate together what God is going to do through their sons John and Jesus.
Wow, a long waiting is about to come true, how exciting!
Do you have that excitement in the first day of 2013 today like Mary that you trust that God is going to make your New Year's dream comes true?
How can you pray about your New Year's dream now?
What's your New Year's dream? Do you have any at all?
This passage records the dreams of Mary and Elizabeth. N.T. Wright says:
Mary and Elisabeth shared a dream. It was the ancient dream of Israel: the dream that one day all that the prophets had said would come true. One day Israel's God would do what he had said to Israel's earliest ancestors: all nations would be blessed through Abraham's family. But for that to happen, the powers that kept the world in slavery had to be toppled. Nobody would normally thank God for blessing if they were poor, hungry, enslaved and miserable. God would have to win a victory over the bullies, the power-brokers, the forces of evil which people like Mary and Elisabeth knew all too well, living as they did in the dark days of Herod the Great, whose casual brutality was backed up with the threat of Rome. Mary and Elisabeth, like so many Jews of their time, searched the scriptures, soaked themselves in the psalms and prophetic writings which spoke of mercy, hope, fulfilment, reversal, revolution, victory over evil, and of God coming to the rescue at last.
All of that is poured into this song, Mary's Magnificat, like a rich, foaming drink that comes bubbling over the edge of the jug and spills out all round. Almost every word is a biblical quotation such as Mary would have known from childhood. Much of it echoes the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2, the song which celebrated the birth of Samuel and all that God was going to do through him. Now these two mothers-to-be celebrate together what God is going to do through their sons John and Jesus.
Wow, a long waiting is about to come true, how exciting!
Do you have that excitement in the first day of 2013 today like Mary that you trust that God is going to make your New Year's dream comes true?
How can you pray about your New Year's dream now?
Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: What's your New Year's dream?
What I received today from Jesus is a question about whether we have a New Year's dream like that of Mary and Elizabeth, that God's promise will one day comes true.
How can Mary said in an instant this powerful and wonderful song "the Magnificat"? It is impossible? Only if she had been really soaked herself into God's Word daily and being filled by the Holy Spirit!
How well have your soaked in the Word of God and being with Jesus daily that the Holy Spirit can fill you to deliver such kind of joy to many other people?
Well, I think that's my New Year's dream as I ponder on what happened to Mary today. I pray and hope that I can soak in God's Word and be with Jesus more that I can be filled by the Holy Spirit each day to bring more joy and excitement to more people that God's Name will be glorified.
Yes, just as the message I got in my Christmas Eve sermon:
When God is being glorified, peace will pour down on us.
What I got today is that:
When God is being glorified, peace will pour down on us and joy will overflow within us!
Happy New Year!
How can Mary said in an instant this powerful and wonderful song "the Magnificat"? It is impossible? Only if she had been really soaked herself into God's Word daily and being filled by the Holy Spirit!
How well have your soaked in the Word of God and being with Jesus daily that the Holy Spirit can fill you to deliver such kind of joy to many other people?
Well, I think that's my New Year's dream as I ponder on what happened to Mary today. I pray and hope that I can soak in God's Word and be with Jesus more that I can be filled by the Holy Spirit each day to bring more joy and excitement to more people that God's Name will be glorified.
Yes, just as the message I got in my Christmas Eve sermon:
When God is being glorified, peace will pour down on us.
What I got today is that:
When God is being glorified, peace will pour down on us and joy will overflow within us!
Happy New Year!
Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank you for your blessing and protection in 2012. We humbly ask you to make our New Year's dream comes true just as your made Mary and Elizabeth dreams came true. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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