Delights of Christmas – Day 19

well good morning friends and welcome to day 19 of delights of christmas i cannot believe that it is december 19th and we are six days away five days away from christmas eve and obviously six from christmas day and i'm super excited christmas is my favorite time of year i love it. And I love reading the Christmas story. So we're going to continue looking in Luke chapter one verses 46 through 56. And this is known as Mary's Magnificat. It is the song of praise that she sang after being with her cousin or while she was with her cousin Elizabeth. After that baby he leapt in Elizabeth's womb, and then Mary just gave a beautiful song of praise and adoration. So it says this, and Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of the servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things to me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. And Mary remained with her, that is Elizabeth, about three months and returned to her home. Mary's Magnificat, this beautiful song of praise. She was a blessed woman and her response to the favor of God was blessing back to God. Her heart was overflowing with praise. Did you hear all the pronouns? He, he, he has done great things. He is mighty. his hand, his heart, his power, all of her blessing and all of her adoration directed back to God. What a testimony of humility and love for a woman who was so young, a young girl in fact, so wise yet so discerning even in her youth. I wonder today what is your Magnificat to Jesus? What is your song of praise? What's in your heart today? What's your heart filled with? Is it filled with joy and gladness and praise for God? Or is it filled with frantic and fear? And oh my goodness, I have a gajillion things to do and only five, six more days to do them in. What is it? Are you overwhelmed with to-dos? Are you overwhelmed with praise and adoration during this Advent season? I want you to think about that today. And your challenge is that I want you to not write down a list today, but make a list, a praise list, if you will, to Jesus. And what I like to do oftentimes is I just take the alphabet from A to Z and I list a praise, an attribute of God for every letter of the alphabet. Now, it gets a little tricky when you get to X, but, you know, you can cheat a little bit and just say excellence or something. Anyway, I just encourage you to do that today and just offer your Magnificat to Jesus. Let's pray together. Father, you are holy, you are righteous, you are true. You are our burden bearer, our promise keeper, King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus, you are Emmanuel, God with us. Thank you for the gift of who you are. Help us today to remember to praise you in all that we do. We love you, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Let me tell you one more thing, that praise sends the enemy running. So if you're having a rough one today, just start praising Jesus. Just start naming those attributes out loud to God. And the enemy, he doesn't like that, so he'll go running. You have a great day and we'll see you tomorrow. you

Originally published at warren.church.