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I absolutely love the story of Mary and the birth of Jesus. You know this because I am always preaching about the events. In our text we read about the events of that fateful day when the angel of the Lord told Mary that she was going to have a child. It shocked Mary when God told her that. She knew the scriptures of how the Messiah would be born of a woman and born to a virgin. In fact, everyone in Israel knew those scriptures. They knew that the scriptures said that "one day" it would happen, but as the words of the angel sank in, it began to dawn on Mary that God was no longer talking about "one day" but was talking about "right now!" That's the way some people are about God's blessing or receiving the Holy Ghost they know that God could do it "one day" but miss the point: God is wanting to do it RIGHT NOW! The same attitude that Israel had about that natural birth is unfortunately the same attitude that we Christians tend to get into about spiritual births and people being born again. We know that God can cause a great harvest to come "one day," but our minds go into shock when God tries to tell us "right now." Not when you get everything lined up right. Not when all of your bills are paid and all of your work troubles are over. Not when 40 years have passed and God has sent angels to visit every one of your family members personally. Not when you have memorized the Bible and know every possible answer to any question that new people might ask. Not when you rearrange your schedule and pray 7 hours a day and fast 6 days a week. Not when the church gets money enough to by a fleet of buses and start a bus ministry. We come up with all kind of excuses of why we can't have a harvest RIGHT NOW! But God is saying, "not later, not when some sort of criteria is met, but RIGHT NOW I want the prophecies to come to pass!" We've got to get out of the mode that "one day" we will have a harvest and "one day" I'll win somebody to God! It will never be the perfect timing of your life, but today is the day of salvation in God's timing! Let's have revival "right now!"

Hey, a little fear about suddenly finding out that you are going to have a baby is natural. Mary feared, because the angel told her to "fear not." There is always a little apprehension when we begin to talk about winning someone to God NOW! There is always a little fear that begins to creep in when the preacher begins to talk about let's stop talking about winning somebody to God and not just get excited that it may one day happen, but let's do it now! The first response is fear and the second is to look at our situation and find an excuse of why we can't win somebody to God! Mary looked at the angel and said, "but how can this be, I'm not even married, and I'm a virgin." You know what she was saying? She was saying "But I've never done that before." "I've never had to bear the burden or even had that kind of commitment before." "Can't you use someone who has already had 12 children and kind of knows what to expect?" "Surely the plan of God is for someone with a little more experience to teach Bible Studies?!" Is your excuse the fact that it is something that you have never done? That you have never taught someone on water baptism or never prayed somebody through to the Holy Ghost? But the divine plan of God was not to take someone with experience but to take a virgin, someone very much unlearned in the ways of childbearing and conception and allow her to find out by practical experience! If you are waiting until you know everything before you become a soul winner, then you have missed the point and the perfect will of God! God said "a virgin shall conceive!" And the son that came forth was the only perfect man that ever lived! Don't tell me you have to be experienced and know everything to win somebody to God and produce a healthy Christian! Jesus Christ came through a virgin!

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In those days, the betrothal or engagement was a little different from our society today. First of all, the father of the groom is the one who decided that it was time for his son to marry. The choice of girl had very little to do with the boy or girl or even the mothers. When the father of the groom found what he considered a suitable mate for his son, he would approach the father of the bride and arrange a purchase price. The average price was around 50 shekels per girl. The girl was then "engaged" to the young man and in fact was his legal property. You may be surprised to learn that one of the words for husband in the Hebrew literally means "owner!" So for a girl and a boy to be engaged meant that the girl's purchase price had been paid and that the girl belonged to the boy in every way EXCEPT in a sexual sense. The girl continued to live in her father's home during this time but he had no longer had any legal right to her. He couldn't sell her if his debts got to bad and could not commit her to any other family or work unless the husband-to-be approved. The engagement period usually lasted at least a year and sometimes even longer. During this time, the groom and the groom's father would usually build a home or a place for the married couple to live. This engagement was a binding contract and could not be broken by anyone except the groom's father. The boy could not break it, the girl could not break it, and the bride's father could not break it. The only exception to this was if the groom's father was for some reason not in the picture, then the son had to act as both the son and the father! That is why when the scriptures say that Joseph sought to put Mary away privily, they prove that Joseph was an older man and that his father was probably dead or not present in the family because he had the legal right to decide to break the engagement himself. He being the son, had to also act in the role of the Father! Thus was the circumstances of Mary when the angel came and told her about the upcoming birth.

I am here to declare that it was not an accident that God chose a virgin girl in these circumstances to be the mother of the Son of God. In fact, in every way the story correlates to the church. The church is the Bride of Christ! One day after the Rapture of the church, the book of Revelation tells about a "Marriage supper of the Lamb!" We are not married to Him yet, but we are engaged to Jesus Christ! It is a binding contract! He has purchased us with His blood at Calvary! We are paid for and are now His property! We belong to Him! And He longs for the day when He will be able to sweep away His bride on the wedding day and we will know Him as He really is! He's even preparing a place for us called the New Jerusalem and has streets of gold and many mansions! When you go read the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 you will find that the city is compared to a new bride! Why? It is created for His blessed bride to which He is engaged! And I've got news for you: The awesome feeling of God's presence in our service is just holding hands with your groom-to-be. The awesome joy at receiving the Holy Ghost is just kiss from heaven! They are great, but they cannot compare to what it will be like on the honeymoon! Hang in there! I know you want more of God and want to feel Him in a more powerful way! That's great the marriage is coming and I'm not going to allow anything in this world to keep from showing up on my wedding day! I don't know how long the engagement will last and I know that we have to remain in this world, the house of our earthly father until He comes, but don't give up hope! He is coming back for His bride!

Paul told the church in Corinth:

That's why God puts a preacher in your life! That is why we must be holy and clean our lives of impurities, sins, and weights because Jesus Christ is coming back for a pure and virtuous church! He is coming back for a spotless church! He is engaged to a holy church. I'm here to tell you that there are many churches that consider themselves as the bride of Christ but do not really teach against sin and allow you live however you choose without ever hearing the sinfulness and separation from the world addressed from the pulpit! They are "Christians" on Sunday and whatever they want to be on Monday through Friday. Religion is just a Sunday venture. But they are proving by their actions that they are not the future bride of Christ. Jesus is not coming back for a worldly church that lives however she wants to live! Jesus Christ is coming back for a pure and holy church! The true Christian church, the bride of Christ is a virgin in Spirit!

The reason that Joseph was going to put away Mary was because he thought that she had cheated on him and been impure. The only reason that Jesus Christ will put away His bride is if they are unfaithful to Him! And just like Joseph had to act as both the Father and the Son, so is Jesus Christ both the Father and the Son who is getting married! Nothing about the couple that God chose to be Jesus' parents was by accident! But if you will be faithful to him, Jesus Christ will not put you away! He is the only one who can break the engagement and He will not if you will remain faithful to Him! But we must be faithful! And just like Joseph, Jesus Christ is much older than His bride, in fact He is the Ancient of Days that existed before the world began. And just like Mary, the church is much younger and has only existed for 1,973 years. But yet that older man loves us and is devoted to us! If we are faithful to Him, He will be able to provide for us and love us!

I could go on and on of how the story of Jesus' birth and Joseph and Mary applies to us today as the church, the living bride of Christ. For instance, before Mary found out that she was going to have a baby, her older relative, Elisabeth, also found out that she was going to have a baby! Her baby, John the Baptist, was going to go before Jesus and point people to Jesus! In the same way our older cousin, the nation of Israel also gave birth to the Law and that Law points us to Jesus Christ. We can read the Old Testament and see that it points to our Husband, Jesus Christ!

But the point of all of this is that the divine plan of God was for Mary to have a baby before the wedding! This child would be the Son of God and would not be conceived through immoral means but by the divine plan of God! Mary looked at the angel and said "I may not know much, but I do know that it takes two to tango!" And she asked the angel "how can this be seeing that I have never slept with anyone!?" And the angel replied the "Holy Ghost shall overshadow thee and that Holy thing that is born of thee will be called the son of God!" How would the virgin have a baby before her wedding day? By the Holy Ghost! By the Holy Ghost overshadowing the woman! Any other means would have immoral! It had to be the Holy Ghost that caused the conception to take place!

Many churches want to try to win people to God through other doctrines or other programs but can I tell you that the God-ordained way to reproduce is the Holy Ghost! We, the church are engaged to Jesus Christ, but God wants us to reproduce before the wedding! How? By the Holy Ghost overshadowing us! And every time you read about born-again Christians in the New Testament, they are always referred to as the "sons of God." Why? Because God was trying to teach us the importance of having children even as a virgin!

Some of us have doubts, but I want to answer your doubts by telling you: not by your power but by the Holy Ghost overshadowing! We need to learn to linger and thirst after the Holy Ghost! We need to worship in the Spirit and allow the Holy Ghost to take control of our lives! Why? Because the Holy Ghost is overshadowing us! But don't forget why God has overshadowed us! Don't forget why we can feel His presence so mightily! It is so that there might be a conception in the Spirit! It is so that we would be able to win someone and reach someone for God! The whole reason that God filled you with His Spirit is so that you could give birth! We must reach someone! Winning someone and teaching them a Bible study and praying somebody through to the Holy Ghost must become a priority in our life! It is the purpose of the overshadowing!

And after the angel had finished talking, Mary said these words!

When she said "be it unto me according to thy word" I believe that the impregnation and conception happened right then! You see, God is a gentleman and He will not do anything unless you allow Him to do it! I am challenging you tonight! Why don't you lose all of the excuses and all of the doubts and why don't you get the attitude of Mary: Be it unto me according to thy word! In Matthew it is recorded that she said "let there be a performance of the things which thou has spoken." In other words, let it happen despite my fears and misgivings! And the very next thing that Mary did was go to tell somebody! We need to have the attitude of Mary: "I may not understand everything about the Bible or the way that God works, but if He wants me to have children, then so be it" And then we must immediately go tell somebody! It's not in the future, it's not to come, but revival is here! You winning people can start right now, but you must surrender to the will of God! With God, to have a baby, you've got to want a baby!

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It has always been the plan of God to use the model of childbirth to bring great spiritual victory. It was God Himself who chose and created the birth process of humanity. It was God who created male and female and commanded them to come together in marriage and create a family. When Eve stood outside of the garden of Eden shaking with fear from the wrath of God that was sure to follow her sin, God told her that it would be the seed of the woman, or through childbirth, that Satan's head or power would be crushed. So from the beginning of time, we see that God had a special design for childbirth in His divine plan. Writing about the events and promises made to Eve, Paul made a statement that has puzzled many a scholar that we read as our other text:

Paul said that the woman shall be "saved in childbearing." What did he mean? Not that having natural children in itself brings salvation for there are many other things that a woman must do to be saved. Paul was reminding Timothy who was a pastor that God's plan for redemption and salvation and victory has always been through child bearing! He said that Eve, the woman, was deceived and the only way that she could make up for her deception was through childbirth and continuing in faith, love, and holiness! I want to remind you that Adam was created in the form of the second Adam, Jesus Christ! Eve was drawn out of his side just as the church was drawn out of Jesus' side on Calvary! We as the church need to remember and be reminded that we have not always served God, but we were all once deceived and the servants of sin. Our salvation is going to come through these same things. We focus on faith, love, and holiness, but what about childbearing? Part of our being able to survive in living for God is to bear children. Our faith, love, and holiness become pointless and empty unless we make having spiritual children a priority in our life!

How does the church have spiritual children? By seeing people born again. Jesus modeled salvation in Grace after the process of child bearing. Jesus told Nicodemus that you must be born of the water and of the Spirit! You must be born again! But a physical birth cannot happen unless there is a mother present. That baby needs a mother to provide a place to grow until birth and then care for it afterwards! If a church has faith, love, and holiness but does not see people born again, then their fruits of the Spirit are pointless and will quickly wither. How is a natural baby conceived? Most often by the mother lovingly receiving the seed of the Father. It is a natural process. Medical science will tell you that if natural conception does not take place when a man and a woman come together then there were 3 possibilities of what went wrong:

1. It was not the correct timing.

2. Something came between Mother and Father during the process.

3. Either the Mother or Father has underdeveloped or damaged reproductive organs.

If we are to have spiritual children then if I am not winning someone to God, it is because of one of these three reasons as well! Jesus said that the "seed" was the Word of God. It is a natural process that not all seed that is sown will fall upon good ground! How do you have a harvest then? You keep trying! If momma didn't get pregnant the first time, you keep trying! We understand that principle in the natural but why do we get so discouraged in the spirit? Too many people try to win somebody to God once or twice and because they do not see them born-again, they give up! It may not have been the correct timing, but you will never hit the correct timing if you quit! If you want to have babies, you've got to try to have babies! People will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and much time and effort to get pregnant or adopt a child! But are we willing to get as desperate for a spiritual child!? Which is more important? According to Jesus the second birth! It may not have been the correct timing, get back out there and try again!

The second reason why people do not win people to God is because something is coming between them and God! Sin that you refuse to get out of your life. A weight that keeps you from being able to effectively witness. A priority in your life that comes before God, whether it be family, job, hobbies, or whatever. You can hide the blockage for a while, but eventually it shows up in your life as unfruitfulness. When the Holy Ghost can move on people in a service, month after month, year after year, and they never win someone to God, it becomes apparent that there is something wrong -- something blocking the conception process. The only way to have spiritual children is to remove the sin or weight that is blocking the process! When this is the case, you know what is keeping you from reproducing, but it has to be your choice to remove it!

The third case is unfortunately by far the most common. Most Christians never become a soul winner because of a lack of spiritual growth or development. Let me first say that the problem is never God. His word, or His seed, will never return to Him void! God is perfect and God is all powerful! The problem is not God's power! I hate it when I hear people say, "well, the reason that we haven't seen anybody get the Holy Ghost is because God is not filling them." God has never withheld His Spirit from someone who will sincerely repent and turn to Him! I hate it when people say "well I'm waiting on God to fill somebody that I know with the Holy Ghost ." God is waiting on you to teach them and present it to them in faith! The problem is not God!

The writer of Hebrews condemned the Hebrew Christians because he said that they were old enough that they should have been teaching someone else the basic doctrines and instead needed someone to still teach them the basics. The terms he used was "you are babes still wanting milk when you should be eating steak." If a person grows to adulthood and never learns to feed himself and go to the fridge and get the milk for himself, we know that something is wrong. There is either something wrong with their mental development or they are extremely immature and selfish. After you have been in church a while, you need to be teaching Bible studies. Come to church to get fed a good meal, but you should not need to have the basics presented to you again and again. And I can tell you that you will never ever learn to feed yourself until you begin to study the scriptures on your own. Take the scriptures that I teach or preach and go study them on your own. Read your Bible on your own. Study something out on your own. Ask questions if you must but you go read the Word of God and you reinforce what you believe. Too many Christians think that the only Bible study that they need is whatever the preacher preaches, but you need to fall in love with the Word of God!

The main point here is that you will never really study the Bible until you have to teach someone else! You will never really apply yourself until it's you answering the questions! In other words, you will really only learn to cook when you have people depending on you for food. Paul had that in mind when He wrote:

Paul told Timothy by continually teaching others and continuing in the teaching, you will not only save yourself but others also! The teaching of others is what would bring and ensure his own salvation! It would be through the teaching of others that the basics would stay fresh and exciting in Timothy's life. It would be through the teaching of others that you would constantly stay focused and committed to God. Through the repetition of teaching, the Word would be "hid in my heart so that I might not sin against thee." But winning others and having spiritual babies just not just save pastors and preachers but all of the church! When Mary held that baby, she was holding the very thing that would bring salvation and victory to her! She could not have been saved without having that baby! When Eve had her son Seth, she literally fulfilled that scripture about being saved through childbearing because the great, great, 60 times great, grandson of that boy was the saviour, Jesus Christ! Eve literally had her salvation and victory over the defeats in her life through child bearing! The way that we will stay committed to Jesus Christ is for us to bear children! When we see someone born again because of the Holy Ghost working in us, we have our joy and power kindled just as it was on the day that we first received the Holy Ghost! Living for God become just as fresh and as exciting as the day we were born again! How? Through childbearing!

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In Genesis 17 and 18 we find that God told Abraham that Sarah, his barren wife, would have a child. When Sarah heard the promise of God, she laughed and said "yeah, right I am an old woman and Abraham is an old man." God caused both Sarah and Mary to have children -- your age has absolutely nothing to do with you winning somebody to God!

The problem with Sarah was doubt. She didn't think that God could do it. That's why SHE brought her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham and Ishmael was born. Sarah had the attitude: I don't think that God can do it through me, so let someone else have the child! But when someone else did have the child, it became obvious that Abraham was not the problem, Sarah was the problem and so she became jealous of Ishmael and Hagar, the one of whom that she had said "let her have the child."

Sarah did have the one son Isaac eventually, but Sara still limited God. God had promised Abraham that there would be a mighty family and many descendants come from him. It was not the will of God for Sarah to have only one son. Sarah unfortunately had the attitude that "I've had my one son, and got God off of my back." And she never had another child. In face, we find no record of her ever trying to have another!

Sarah died having only had one son Isaac. The interesting thing about Sarah's death is that she is the ONLY woman in the entire Bible whose age at the time of death is recorded in scripture. For some reason God wanted us to notice how old she was when she died! Why? Because I think that God wanted to tell us that she died with only one child when she could have had many, many more.

After Sarah died, Abraham married another woman named Keturah. She had 6 sons for Abraham! If Sarah would have had those six sons instead of Keturah, then Sarah would have borne 7 sons to Abraham, the number of perfect completeness in the plan of God! Because of her doubt, Sarah limited herself and missed the perfect will of God for her life!

The church also have the great promises of God that He wants to pour out His Spirit out upon all flesh! We cannot afford to limit ourselves with doubt! We must get it through our heads that God wants to use us to mightily reach others for Him! With God nothing is impossible! We cannot afford to have the attitude of Sarah!

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I close with this scripture:

The wise man said that there are four things that are never satisfied! The grave, the barren womb, the dry earth, and fire. All apply in the Spirit! People will continue to die, and we must preach to them the truth so that they are ready! The watery grave of water baptism is never satisfied, there will always be someone that needs to hear about that wonderful experience! The fire of the Holy Ghost will never stop burning until you stop allowing it to consume you! It constantly seeks more and more of you until it has changed every part of your life! A spiritually dry world, longs for the living water of Jesus Christ and do not even know what they are missing! And the Barren womb! Your walk with God will never be complete or satisfying until your spiritual womb is no longer barren! Even after you win one person to God, you will find that there is a longing in the Spirit that the Holy Ghost wants to overshadow you again and win someone else! In fact you will find that it is never satisfied but continues to grow in desire until you will want to see whole families and churches born again of the Water and of the Spirit!

But remember that there is even more to winning souls than just saving them, it will also save you! God designed that your salvation and victory should come through childbearing! May the attitude of Mary be ours: "let it be unto me as your word has spoken." And then go tell somebody! We must bear spiritual children!