Highly-Favored

Being Favored can mean a lot of things. It can mean you get special attention or special gifts. It can mean being the favorite among a group. It can also mean that you look like a relative, like when someone says, “She favored her mother”. Being favored in the English language is a good thing. Mary is called Highly Favored by Gabriel. Not only is she favored she was favored at another level of favored.

A lot of people give her a high standing in an art of worship, but the favored here doesn’t mean worthy of worship or an elevated position of authority. The word here for favor is Charis, a word synonymous to, “graciousness, joy, benefit, favor gift, good-will, thanks” and is especially used to describe those who receive undeservedly from a master (1).

Mary was in a position of becoming benefactor, being gifted and graced to carry the Messiah in her womb. She wasn’t worthy of it, but she was blessed with the job, and not an easy job. Its important to know as she carried the Messiah in her womb and it was credited to her as being blessed we also carry the Messiah in us and receive this anointing as well. Mary is not someone to idolize but to resonate with, someone we don’t attain to become but we understand because we ourselves carry the same spirit of Christ in our bodies and we are also undeserved benefactors.

I walk around, and I sense anointing of the Lord. I feel it more when I’m actively doing the Lord’s work and in good spirits, of course, but I know even when I’m not ‘feeling it’ that this special blessing is still there. Its undeserved but its there because I accepted the grace. I benefit from this grace. There is a decision in this grace. I have the blessing, but I have to walk in it. I have to do more than carry the blessing, I have to be a part of the process of giving birth to it. I have to practice joy, I have to work for giving thanks and receiving the authority of Christ in me. Authority can lay dormant.

Jesus was placed in the womb by God, a miracle, and He is placed in us, another miracle, but He wants to grow. He doesn’t just want to be a small god in you, He wants to expand to a place of growth in you. This maybe is a strange analogy, but work with me here. If Christ was put in Mary and she carried him, then she delivered him to be brought to the world. She gave him up from herself, so God could use him to bring people out of darkness. She couldn’t keep him to herself or lock him up in her womb, He had to come out!!

God wants to be let out of the womb, He grows in you and then His spirit overflows because there’s no more room for containment. That’s the beauty of Revival. Its not an enforced visitation, its an overflowing river of joy. It happens supernaturally but is also a natural concept of growth within a contained space. A growing thing cant help expanding. The more a baby grows, the more it pushes on the belly of a woman. MY son asked if the belly can pop and I had to explain a little about childbirth. Christ needs a way out. He needs a way to reach those around you and he wants to use you! Your mouth, your actions, and your God-given giftings are ways He can stretch out. Let him out of yourself and stop keeping him bottled up. Let what He’s been teaching you in secret be brought out to the daylight. Its a season of revelation and revival. Its a time of new birth!

Mary had to deliver Jesus, and that you can bet, was a hard job. It was hard to carry him and be ostracized and it was hard to go into labor, but how much more was the joy of holding the child in her arms and seeing up close, the son of God! Mary understands persecution for carrying Christ. She understands the Labor of delivering Him to the world, but she also knows the joy of the outcome.

Mary didn’t lose Christ when she gave birth to him, she loosed him. She let him out! As a result, she went through both joys and pain. I’m sure even as Jesus’ hometown rejected him, they rejected her as well. She watched Him die! But she also saw him again and we can suppose she was in Jerusalem when He went into heaven and when they received the spirit of God. Oh how it would feel to receive yet again Jesus into herself so intimately! The only mother to have been born again by her own child. The only person to share her child with the world in two different ways.

You are gifted, blessed, abounding in grace and good-will because Christ lives in you! You are highly-favored and with that comes heavenly expectation. No wonder Mary was concerned about the angels words! She was feeling insecure about what this new challenge would look like but she also felt the expectation of heaven! Can you imagine receiving your task or calling from God’s right hand angel? You can bet all of heaven was watching and waiting for that moment Jesus was born, and even angels overflowed to share the news of Jesus to the shepherds in the field!

Heaven was overflowing over Christ’s birth and heaven is not going to hold back much longer because He will come again! Its clouds are about to burst open with trumpet calls. The armies of angels stands on their toes, about to announce the 2^nd coming of its great King! It can’t wait but can you?

Go with the ever flowing will of God and rejoice that you have been blessed to carry the spirit of God to the nations! He was never meant to be bottled up. You can’t contain the spirit. Let it flow. Let go and let Him go so He can go further, work deeper, and show up stronger through and in you!!

There is no more denying Him. He will reveal himself to the ends of the world and He will come with revelation and revival and it will be everything to the believer and it will mean everything to the unbeliever, and the unbeliever’s eyes will be open, open only to judgment and revelation to the state of themselves.

Come Revival. Come judgment. Come Conquering King. Overflow in me.