Do you want a gift

This is a podcast episode where the host, Anna, expresses her gratitude to the listeners for their support. She prays for them and emphasizes the importance of seeking God's word for truth. She discusses the lessons we can learn from the characters in the story of Jesus' birth, particularly focusing on Elizabeth's patience and ability to rejoice in others' blessings. She also mentions Zechariah's struggle with faith and encourages listeners to trust in God's abilities. The episode highlights the importance of celebrating God's work in others and having faith in His plans. Hey there, it's Anna with God's Podcast and I want to say thank you. Thank you to each and every listener who comes each and every week to listen to what God shares on my heart to share with you. I am so overjoyed and I am so honored to be able to share God's word that I can reach as many people as I can through this podcast that was created for God. So thank you. Thank you so much. It honestly means the world to me. Let's pray friends. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Father, I come to you through your Son, Jesus Christ, and I lift up each and every person listening. I ask you, Father, to open their ears, their hearts, and their minds, to give them wisdom and understanding of your words, Father, that I am only your vessel being used by you, Father, and they know that they need to go back to your word and get discernment from you. Father, we want to glorify you and praise you because without you, none of this would be possible, but through you, you have made it possible to share your word with confidence, with love in my heart, knowing that it comes from you. We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen. In this third week of the birth of Jesus' story, there are so many characters to choose from that played a role and can teach each of us something. Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, Zechariah, Caesar Augustus, the innkeepers, the wise men, the shepherds, and the characters I mentioned in the previous episodes, each had a major role in the story of Jesus' birth, but more than just their roles, we can learn from each character, lessons we can apply to our own daily lives, lessons that can change our perspective of how God is also moving in our lives. We can learn patience. We can learn faith. We can learn to be obedient. We can learn to sacrifice, to surrender, and to share the good news with others, and this list can go on and on, but most of all, a reminder God meets us no matter where we are or what our circumstances are. God shows up and will direct you. God is always with you and will never forsake you. The birth story of Jesus reminds us that God is always with us, exactly what Emmanuel means, God with us, and we can have hope knowing that God will always be with us and will never leave us. I want to remind you of this, this season, as we're heading into the birth of Jesus. Jesus is the light. Jesus is the way, and he allowed us to get to God from his sacrifice, from his birth, and from his resurrection. We now can seek God through him. What a special gift that is. Is your heart open to this gift? Are you willing to accept this gift? Friend, I hope that you will open your heart to him and realize that this is the most precious gift, the most amazing gift, the most immaculate gift you could ever receive, and I pray that your heart is open to this precious, immaculate, amazing, spectacular gift God has given you because you will never receive anything like this in your life. I pray that your hearts will continue to seek him, continue to pray to him, and continue to have relationship with him. This is my prayer for you this season, that you may grow in him and learn to know him and allow him to love you. So this week, I want to remind you that if you are watching all the interpretations of Jesus' birth, they are exactly that, interpretations, and you need to go back to God and his word for the truth. Don't get me wrong, listen, I'm not saying by watching these interpretations, it is against what God's saying. I get it. We all want to experience, understand, and see what it was like for them and what they went through. It is a way to be able to see and experience to be with Jesus and to go through what they went through. I enjoy these interpretations as well. All I'm saying is the Bible will give you the truth and it will give you your answers. So when you do watch these interpretations, please go back to God's word so that you can see the truth in what God is saying. Okay, that's just my little reminder for the week. In this week's episode, it was hard for me to pick a character as we're in the third week and there are so many characters that played a role in Jesus' birth. So in this third week, I have focused on the character of Elizabeth. And maybe you wonder why I chose Elizabeth, but in learning her story and hearing what she had to go through and how long she had to wait, she had to be patient with the Lord. And so many of us need to learn this because we are in a season where we are waiting upon our Lord and Savior. She also had to not be envious when Mary came to tell her that she was pregnant too and carrying the King, the Messiah. Could you even imagine finally getting what you have been praying for, for so long and then somebody comes in, you love and shares their blessing with you that is bigger and grander and you have to be happy for them? Listen, we are human and sometimes it can be hard to be happy for others. But Elizabeth showed she was so happy for her cousin, Mary. She reminded me through her story that I should never be jealous, never be envious, never be angry, but to truly be happy for the blessings God gives others and how he may be working through others for his kingdom. In Luke chapter 1 verses 39 through 45, God truly shows the character of Elizabeth. It says, At the time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, she explained, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. This reminder shows us exactly Elizabeth's character and how we need to align our hearts with God, that when others are blessed, that we too should be overjoyed for them and show them our happiness for what God is doing through them. Not only is Elizabeth an example of how we too should act, she amplifies Jesus and his love for us. Nothing good comes from allowing bitterness, envy, jealousy, or hatred to creep into our lives. Celebration is the only appropriate response to God at work in others. Instead, we should rejoice with them just as Elizabeth did with Mary. There is so much greater joy in choosing to praise God for how he blesses others and what he is doing in their lives instead of dwelling on what he may not be doing in your life at this moment. The importance is God's work being done, not who he has chosen to do it through. Can you imagine what Mary must have felt when Elizabeth greeted her in the way that she did? You have to imagine Mary must have been so overjoyed herself in knowing that all her doubt, her fear, anxiety must have transformed into the confirmation she needed from God that everything was going to be right with him. The encouragement Elizabeth gave her is a beautiful reminder, an opportunity for us how God uses us to glorify his kingdom. So look for ways to use God's blessings and to lift those up he has chosen to bless to affirm God's work and to glorify his kingdom. He has allowed him to use you as confirmation that what they are doing is aligning with God. I also want to talk about Elizabeth's husband, Zechariah, his character of faith was challenged. He didn't believe right away when God told him and sometimes we too go through the same thing. In our life, sometimes it is hard to believe what God is doing and that it will happen even through God when he told us of this promise. We think we know more than God but we need to remember we serve a God we can trust and we can trust him with everything because he can do the impossible. We may have limits of what we can do but our God does not. I want to ask you a question and I want you to really think about this. Is there anything in your life that you are having a hard time believing God can do for you? Are you struggling with your own thoughts of you know best or that your ability to look past your own human thoughts to allow God to help you realize that he is the most high, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the one that existed before everything, the one that began where it says he is the word and his word is him, the one who decided to make you because you are so special to him, the one that created the mountains, the ones that created the rain, the sea and all the animals decided that you were so important to him that he chose you and made you exactly in his image because he is God and God is so big that sometimes we forget how big our God is. Sometimes he may leave our human minds baffled, dumbfounded because God's ways are so much bigger, grander, spectacular, magical, unimaginable to us and sometimes he will do exactly what he did to Zechariah in order for our faith to be restored. Sometimes we need a hard reality to realize it is God and not us. In this example, in Luke 1, starting at verse 19, the angel said to him, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not be able to speak until the day this happens because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time. Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak. And just like God's words say, when we doubt God, sometimes God will work in us until we change our mindset and that doubt turns into reality and we act in faith just as Zechariah did. When he scribbled his son's name, God let him speak. And his first words were to praise God, just like in Luke 1, verses 63 through 66. He asked for a writing tablet and to everyone's astonishment, he wrote his name, Izz John. Immediately, his mouth was opened and his tongue set free and he began to speak and praise God. Our God is a God of chance after chance after chance. Chance to believe, to have faith, and to choose him. So brothers and sisters, right now, make the choice and believe in God and what he is doing and praise him, for God is so big, so much more than we can even begin to understand. This season, you have the opportunity to walk in faith, to believe in God's promise, to accept his gift and to be transformed and allow God to work and bless you for his kingdom. Are you willing? Are you ready to accept this gift? Because this gift is like no other and once you accept it, your life will change. Your heart will change. Your mindset will change and your faith will change. I hope you accept God's gift because it truly is the best gift I have ever received in my life and I too want you to share in what that gift is and how it will make you feel. So please, lay down your life and surrender your heart over to God, for he will make all things right. I am not saying that this will be easy because it's not. It is hard each and every day. You have to make a choice and you have to surrender and open your heart to him and live a life in him that is not easy, but is so worth it. So I pray that this year, in this season, in this time, you open your heart to him and accept this beautiful gift. So until next time, friend, keep bibling, keep spreading God's word and open your heart to God's most precious gift. You will not regret it. I truly hope you enjoyed this episode this week and I hope that you can share it with someone in need because we all need God each and every day. We never know what someone's going through. We never know how we can help, but we can plant those seeds. We can help them see the light and just maybe save someone's life and allow them to surrender over to our God, our Savior, for his promise to spend eternal life with him. Thank you. Thank you for coming each and every week and listening. So until next episode, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Father, I come to you through your Son, Jesus Christ, and I lift up each and every person listening. Father, I ask that you continue to bless them, to use them for your kingdom, for your glory, for only you know their hearts. So I ask you to search their hearts and answer their prayers and carry them through whatever it is that they're going through. Father, I ask that you continue to guide them, to give them understanding of your words and be able to use what you give them in their daily lives. Father, I pray that they accept your precious gift, the most beautiful gift this season, and that their lives will be transformed. Father, I just want to say thank you, and I glorify you and praise you for you giving me such an enormous, amazing, beautiful opportunity to share your word, and I pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.