Midweek Advent – December 17, 2025
“Trust In God” Luke 1:26-38
Curt Engle, Ascension Lutheran Church, Littleton, Colorado
Do you trust that God has a perfect plan for your life even when your experiences seem to deny it? I would like you to put yourself in young Mary’s sandals for a minute. You just got engaged, and you’re hanging out, minding your own business, in the boring city of Galilee named Nazareth. Now picture the angel Gabriel coming to you, out of the blue, without warning, and saying, “Greetings O favored one, the Lord is with you!” Would you be skeptical? Would you be scared?
If your answer is yes, then you are in good company. Mary was greatly troubled after hearing these words from the angel. “What kind of greeting is this” she thought. “Why am I favored? I’m a nobody in a nowhere town.” Mary was right. She didn’t do anything to deserve the title “favored one”. Then Gabriel, reading her thoughts said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”
She didn’t understand how God was going to use her to give birth to His Son. She said, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
“Gabriel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God… For nothing will be impossible with God.’” (v. 35)
Our God is the God of the impossible. We are reminded of this every Christmas with the virgin birth of God coming in a weak way, a child born to an unknown couple in an unknown town.
We’ll get to Mary’s response to Gabriel’s powerful proclamation later. But for right now, let’s think about all the impossible situations this put Mary and Joseph into.
The accounts leading up to Jesus’ birth are no fairy tale. When you consider the chapter following our text in Luke chapter 2, there are few places in the bible, if any, where the Gospel is presented more attractively than in this Christmas text. It’s what warm Christmas scenes are made of! It’s what we’ve known since we were kids! Yet for all its poetic beauty, the account is initially unsentimental. There is talk about decrees, taxation, lineages, rulers, places, names, trips, pregnancy, and rejection. For all its romanticism, the Christmas account is a drag. The flat, unsentimental character of the account is also a reminder of the Savior’s state of humiliation and its role in the saving Gospel: “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:11). “There was no room…in the inn.” (Luke 2:7)
So why do we have all these negatives leading up to Jesus’ birth? Great joy wouldn’t have happened without preluding it with hardships and great fear. Mary went from fear, to trusting God; to being exhausted in a cold barn, to joy when her soul was delivered by faith from sin, death and hell when she pondered all these things in her heart. It was all part of God’s perfect plan. How about you? Do you trust that God has a perfect plan for your life even when you can only see a mess?
Well, He does. The God who does the impossible can turn bad things into good. God does have a perfect plan for your life.
We have an example of God turning the most horrible thing that happened this year, Charlie Kirk’s assassination, into something good. Kirk’s assassination was political. He would go to different colleges around the country and invite students to debate him on his politically right views. And he was killed for that. But the most memorable thing he preached to students was Jesus Christ. And his death in early September caused a spiritual awakening. Young Americans flooded churches and on September 26th, just over two weeks after Kirk’s assassination, there were 300 young adult Baptisms and1,000 professions of faith In Christ at an UniteUs event at the University of Florida. There was also a powerful testimony of a former Satan worshiper renouncing darkness and declaring Jesus as Lord.
Can you think about a time in your life when God turned your suffering to good for you and /or for the progress of the Gospel?
I can think of one. Years ago, I was off work for a year because of the lack of work at the electrical union hall. Financially, we were okay, but my mental health was suffering. I wasn’t exactly trusting that this was God’s plan for me. I felt useless. Then one night I could hear my wife singing Jesus Loves Me to our 6-year-old son. “I am weak and He is strong”. “Isn’t that the truth,” I thought. “Jesus loves me, this I know.” I decided at that moment that I would let the bible tell me so. I started attending a weekly bible study which led me to taking classes at the Rocky Mountain Theological Institute in Colorado Springs. I eventually got a long-term job through my electrical union at the Children’s Hospital in Aurora, but that wasn’t the good thing that happened as a result of being unemployed for a year. The real treasure was learning more about Jesus’ love and His salvation.
I learned that even though humans meant to do evil to Jesus on the cross, God meant it to do good, to bring the gift of salvation to all. He underwent agony, desolation, and deserved punishment of fallen humankind. In return, sinners receive forgiveness and a share in His Sonship (2 Cor. 5:21).
Let’s go back to Mary’s response to Gabriel. When we last left Mary, she was skeptical and scared of God’s plan for her. She said, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
Then the angel Gabriel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God… For nothing will be impossible with God.’” (v. 35)
Now here’s Mary’s response. Without hesitation, Mary, still not knowing entirely what God’s plan was at this point, said, okay I’ll do it.
“Behold I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (v.38) She trusted in God.
When she heard those words, “The Holy Spirit will be upon you. Nothing will be impossible with God.” Her fear turned to faith.
She trusted that God could use the weak and the unknown to accomplish His will.
She trusted in God’s selection of her, an unmarried woman to be the mother of Jesus.
She trusted in the miraculous manner in which the pregnancy will be brought about.
She trusted that through her pregnancy God would be with her in a wonderful way.
She trusted in the fullness of God instead of the nothingness of man in the conception and execution of God’s plan of salvation.
She trusted that our God is the God of the impossible.
We, too, are suddenly reminded of the miraculous conception of our faith through Baptism and the Gospel message.
There, too, the Holy Spirit comes upon us.
There, too, the power of the Highest overshadows us.
There, too, a holy thing is born–faith, a new man a new creature, a rebirth occurs:
Old things are passed away; behold, all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Can we have the same trust in God that Mary had? Absolutely! Even in uncertain times we can trust that God has a perfect plan for our lives because we have been given the same Holy Spirit Mary was given!
Remember that the message God said to Jeremiah, he is saying to us as well, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Trust in God’s plan for your lives even when things aren’t going well. Nothing is impossible with God. Amen
