May 1
The birth of a son to Zacharias, like the birth of the child of Abraham, and that of Mary, was to teach a great spiritual truth, a truth that we are slow to learn and ready to forget. In ourselves we are incapable of doing any good thing; but that which we cannot do will be wrought by the power of God in every submissive and believing soul. It was through faith that the child of promise was given. It is through faith that spiritual life is begotten, and we are enabled to do the works of righteousness.
To the question of Zacharias, the angel said, "I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee these glad tidings." Five hundred years before, Gabriel had made known to Daniel the prophetic period which was to extend to the coming of Christ. The knowledge that the end of this period was near had moved Zacharias to pray for the Messiah's advent. Now the very messenger through whom the prophecy was given had come to announce its fulfillment.
Desire of Ages, page 99 from the chapter, 'The voice in the wilderness'
The comment yesterday was that God could even choose Zacharias. The importance of that is highlighted in these words, “In ourselves we are incapable of doing any good thing; but that which we cannot do will be wrought by the power of God in every submissive and believing soul.”
There are two points to look at. The first is that God will do for us what we cannot. There is a condition. We have to be submissive and believing.
The second point is more important and follows from the first point. The good feeling we might get as we read this and experience the blessing does not come from building self-confidence. The submissive and believing soul has to have something to be submissive to and believing in.
As the last chapter pointed out, Jesus gave people great feelings of hope to people by lovingly applying the word of God to the needs of souls.
We are incapable in ourselves of doing any good thing, but we can believe in God’s promises and we can be submissive to God’s will. What does God do? He works a miracle by His power.
That is why Zacharias can have a last minute wobble of faith and yet be chosen of God. That is why we can have our wobbles of faith – and yet have the confidence that God can do all things for us.
So now we move to bluegrass. The band are the Bluegrass Brothers and come highly recommended. Well chosen Bryn. The song is ‘Six hours on the cross’. Please click on the picture to listen
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Assume you can do no miracles. You might even assume that you have no spiritual gifts, though of course you do. Now reconsider the words from our reading, “None could say that He had worked a miracle”. Jesus spent thirty years simply being a faithful church member and did no miracle.
What we do find is that Jesus healed without using miracles. “His words had a soothing balm.”
It is Sunday today. You might choose to do an act of random kindness today, on the other hand you might also decide that you are going to heal somebody today with some soothing words. To do that make a simple plan.
The first element in the plan is for you to invite the Holy Spirit into your life. The second element is to choose the person you would like to heal. The third element in your master plan is to work out the words – and then finally go out and use those healing words to do something special.
