FYW2 Who Is Blessed By God?

Luke 1:45 (NKJV) Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.”

When we consider a single verse like this, it can raise so many questions! If we consider a few verses before and after, many of those questions will be answered. A little more study, and we will find more answers. Asking questions is a great way to receive revelation from God! Here aresome questions we may ask ourselves when we read an isolated verse like this.

1) Does God still bless people?

2) Who is the “she” in this verse?

3) What things were told her from the Lord?

4) What did she believe?

5) Why did God want her story included in His Eternal Word?

6) How do I qualify for God’s blessing?

7) What is this blessing?

8) How will I know I received it?

9) What does “fulfillment of those things” look like today?

10) Does this blessing only apply to female believers, or can all believers access it?

11) Will God tell me things like He told her?

12) Why did the author of this article choose this verse to write about?

Every verse in the Bible is connected to every other verse. Viewing Scripture in context helps keep you safe from deception and errors. Context can be determined by asking standard investigative questions. These include  1) Who? 2) What? 3) When? 4) Where? 5) Why? 6) How?

Why Did I Choose This Verse to Write About?

I will answer the last question first. I chose this verse to write about because many years ago I learned that confessing and meditating the Word of God was required to grow up in Him. I began collecting Bible verses and made an Excel spreadsheet to contain them. I chose Excel believing someday I would tag the verses to sort by category or topic, or search by verse or number. Excel handles text adequately and allows me to manipulate my list in ways that a word processor like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer cannot.

My personal habit has been to cycle through my list using the verses to make declarations of faith, to meditate and ponder the wonders of God, and to use the verses in prayer for myself and others. I would read them aloud, then personalize each promise to apply to me, appropriate the promise by faith, and then pray for people on my prayer list applying the promises to them.

I read the Bible using a customized reading list of ten groups of books, and typically read the whole Bible through about twice per year. As I read, God blesses me daily with fresh insights and “peeks behind the curtain” of my understanding. He links verses or concepts for new understanding. This opens my heart to see Bible stories and concepts differently. It also makes my list of specially significant verses continuously expand.

God began to impress upon me a few years ago to begin writing. I did not have clarity on what kind of writing. I have been writing for many years in a limited form for sermon notes. I began by writing a book. I finished the book and began a second book. I am looking for editorial and cover design services to finish the books. I also realized I needed to build an author platform. That started me learning to write for blog posts. I already post sermon notes on my website (www.livingwordseeds.com) but God was showing me I need to expand into other forms of writing.

One of the first ideas God gave me about writing for a blog was to write about each verse in my personal confession list. Luke 1:45 is the first verse in my list, so I began with that verse.

Unpacking The Verse

“Blessed”

This word comes from the Greek makarios and means blessed, happy, fortunate. It appears about 50 times in the New Testament. For this person to be recorded as “blessed”, they had to receive a “blessing”. We become blessed by a blessing being imparted or given to us. In The Kingdom of God, there is only ONE BLESSING. It is THE blessing of God. This is the blessing God intends every person ever born to live in. God released His blessing upon Adam at creation (Gen 1:28). God reiterated the same blessing to Noah after the flood (Gen 9:1). It is the same blessing that was on David when he killed Goliath, upon Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It is the blessing brought back to earth and made available by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is for you today!

Acts 3:26 (NKJV) To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.”

Luke 24:50 (NKJV) And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them.

The blessing of God is His “empowerment to prosper”. The blessing is really the Holy Spirit in all His magnificent dimensions of expression in our lives. The sacrifice of Jesus was necessary for the Holy Spirit to be sent to earth. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Holy Spirit, is the blessing of God in our lives. We cannot be healed without the work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot be born again without His work. We cannot receive revelation without Him. And we cannot “prosper and be in health” (3 John:2) until we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. Jesus demonstrated what a born again believer is able to do. Jesus also said that the works He did, we would also do, and even greater things! (John 14:12)

“She”

By reading a few verses ahead of Luke 1:45, we realize the “she” refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary was blessed by God. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit in her life caused the physical birth of an eternal spirit being, our Lord Jesus Christ. The blessing Mary received “empowered her to prosper”. She was able to supernaturally conceive the Lord Jesus because the blessing of God was working in her heart. It is impossible for anyone to conceive without a father! And it is impossible for us to conceive the Word of God in our heart without the blessing of the Lord. Mary was told something physically impossible was going to happen to her. She believed it (Luke 1:38 says “Be it unto me according to Your Word”). The Bible makes some big claims and bigger promises, but they will be impossible for you until you choose to believe God. Then all things are possible!

“Believed”

Mary believed something. To believe, we must hear, perceive, discern new information. Mary heard the words of the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:26-38). No one had ever heard words like that! It sounded crazy, impossible, too radical. But she believed him. We know this because it is recorded by the Holy Spirit that she said to Gabriel “be it unto me according to your word”. She took him at face value. She chose to believe the impossible. Her faith drew the blessing of God from His Throne into her womb. The power of God overshadowed her, and the word she believed “took upon itself flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Her faith in the Words God spoke to her moved the Lord Jesus Christ from His eternal Kingship into a manger in a stable. Her “work of faith” changed history forever.

John 1:14 (NKJV) And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Living Word of God could not descend into earth from heaven without someone on earth believing God. Satan won the whole world from Adam and is the “god (the ruler, Theos, a deity, same as used for God) of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). God had no authority on earth unless someone born on earth chose to believe Him! Jesus won it back by dying for all our sins, and He sent the Holy Spirit to empower all of us to prosper! That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only way to be blessed is to believe God! The blessing is available to anyone, but they must believe what God said. The way we become empowered to prosper, to succeed and thrive and flourish in any situation, is to believe God. Mary did, and look what happened to her!

“Fulfillment”

Bible meanings include 1) completion 2) fulfillment 3) accomplishment 4) perfection 5) maturity 6) validation

God has promised Mary something very special, and it shall come to pass. The word “shall” is one of the strongest terms we can use in English. It is unequivocal, decisive, explicit, and certain. We have seen that Mary believed God, but this is not Mary who spoke the words of Luke 1:45. It was Zacharias’s wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth was firmly convinced of the promise to Mary because of her own supernatural childbirth (Luke 1:5-25) of her son John. She states the truth that whatever God said contains the power of the Living God to bring it to pass. If we believe what God said, it shall come to pass.

The KJV Bible uses “performance” instead of “fulfillment”. The implication is that if God said so, He is obligated to perform His Word. God is bound by His Words just like we are bound by our words. Changing the frames around your world requires changing the words that constructed the frames.

Why Did God Include This Story in The Bible?

God is not a respecter of persons. This means God treats every person exactly the same. Every person ever born on earth has exactly the same opportunity. The outcome is determined by your heart, your choices, your will, but God offers the blessing to everyone. He must, because He gave it to Adam, who represents the entire human race. Whatever God provided Adam, He must provide for us! (Lev 19:15, Deut 1:17, 2 Chr 19:7, Prov 24:23, Rom 2:11, Col 3:25, 1 Pet 1:17)

He included this story about Mary being blessed and receiving a miraculous manifestation of God to show all of us that we can do the same things! No, we cannot believe God for Jesus to be born again in our town! That is silly and irreverent, and misses the point. Mary received a specific Word. She believed it. It manifested out of the spirit realm into the here and now on earth.

When you receive a specific Word from God, and believe it, and stand on it, and insist God honour what He said, it too shall come to pass! You cannot take historical events, or what someone else did or received, and believe God for it. Faith is rooted in what God said. He must say it to YOU, and YOU must believe HIM personally. You must incubate His Word in your heart like Mary did. From the time Gabriel spoke to Mary until Jesus was born, Mary did not speak a single word against that promise. From the time you hear God’s promise to you until the moment it manifests, you must not speak a single word against that promise!

How You Can Be BLESSED By God

Luke 1:45 (NKJV) Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.”

The BLESSING is attracted to and released by BELIEVING. Many hear God but do not believe. There is no blessing derived from ignoring God. Moving out from under the effects of sin’s curse into the realm of blessing is activated by your faith. You must believe whatever God says to you, then you must say so. Believing plus speaking what you believe brings God’s BLESSING. Believing but not speaking it out loud does nothing to relieve your misery.

God cannot lie. He said there shall be a fulfillment of what He said to you. This means we must listen to God and believe what He said. It is fine to listen to me, or other ministers, and believe what we say, but that does not release the BLESSING.

Tell the Lord you believe Him. Tell Him you believe everything He says. Tell Him you expect Him to do what He says. Do this in your own way with your own words. Every time you say it you are training yourself to hear Him and believe Him. The BLESSING is triggered by believing then acting on what you believe from His Word.

Activation

God is not a respecter of persons. This means that if He said to Mary in Luke 1:45 that if Mary believed what God said, God would bless her, then if you and I believe what God says to us, we will be blessed. I take each verse and personalize it for me, like this:

“Lord you said to Mary that if she believed you she would be blessed. I say Lord that I believe you, and I receive your blessing. You told Mary, in essence, that every one who believes you is blessed by you, so I declare to you that I believer you,and I take your blessing. I believe there shall be a performance, a manifestation, of the things you promised me. Thank you for keeping your Word to me.”

You can structure this however you want, but the point is not subject to change though the words you choose may vary. And the point is this-you must BELIEVE what He said! The blessing does not follow the thinker, or the hoper, or the wonderer. The blessing tracks believers. It does not follow those who do not believe. Having said that, there is a mechanism by which you can change your own heart by deliberately saying things, but that is a topic for another day.

After confessing this over yourself, you can use this verse to pray for others. Pray that they would believe when they hear the Lord. Pray that they would understand the blessing is not working for them because they don’t (yet) believe Him. Sometimes I read the verse out loud to the Lord, then claim the promise for my prayer targets. You can pray for their mind to be opened to truth, so that when God does speak they believe Him (The Truth) instead of reject the truth.

Remember Romans 4:17.

Romans 4:17 (NASB95)  (as it is written, “A FATHER OF MANY NATIONS HAVE I MADE YOU”) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.

The way God causes things to change is by saying what He wants before it exists. When using Luke 1:45 in prayer for yourself or others, I find it helpful to think about this. The person we are praying for may not believe-yet-but after we have prayed for them once, in faith, does God answer prayer? YES!! Whenever we pray His will, the answer is YES. So when you ask God to work on their heart and open it up so they will believe the truth when they hear it, you must believe it has already happened. God answers every prayer instantly, without a nanosecond delay. However, spiritual forces and prior decisions and the environment they live in may affect the manifestation of our prayer. From that moment (the moment you prayed in faith asking God to prepare them to believe so they can be blessed), never ever ask again. If you ask again, you are telling God you didn’t believe Him the first time, or you no longer believe Him because the answer is taking so long.

After the initial prayer of faith using Luke 1:45 (or any verse-the principle is universal), you simply quote the verse over them and thank God for it. For example:

“Lord I thank you that you are working mightily on (insert prayer target name). Thank you for your angels working mightily to bring about your Word for them. Thank you that, as far as I am concerned, you have answered my prayer, and they now believe the truth whenever they hear it. Furthermore, since they believe the truth, thank you for the realization, the coming to pass, the manifestation of those things you told them. Thank you Lord for your faithfulness to bless them as they hear and believe and act on those things you said to them. Thank you, in Jesus Name!”

With a little practice you will grow and develop in this wonderful method of framing your world, and the worlds of others. You will enjoy a free flow in prayer and not be bound to a written script to pray. I have prepared a long list of Scripture verses and cycle through them confessing them and praying them over myself and many other people. Every time you quote a Scripture verse in faith, you are sowing a seed of God Himself into your own heart, into the situation, and into the hearts of prayer targets all over the world. That seed will grow and produce fruit!

Prayer for Repentance and Salvation.

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Saviour, I invite you to ask Him into your heart. If you knew the Lord but have not been hungering for Him I invite you to consider your ways and repent. He is faithful and righteous to wipe your slate clean when you confess your sin to Him! (1 John 1:9)

1 John 1:9 (NASB95) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He gave His life for you, and you honour Him when you give your life for Him. It is the right thing to do!

1 Corinthians 6:20 (AV) For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

You must give yourself to God for Him to come into your life and help you change. He will not force you! Ever. But oh! The joy and peace and hope He gives you!

Romans 12:1–2 (NKJV) 1) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Romans 10:9 (NKJV) that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

You must acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord, and you must believe He was resurrected from the dead by the Father.

Say this prayer out loud.

Heavenly Father I turn to you and acknowledge You as the Almighty God, eternal and sovereign over all. I have been rebellious, selfish, and deceived trying to live without You. I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He died on the cross to redeem me from death and sin, and that He rose from the dead, alive forever with You. I ask you to forgive me of all my sin, known and unknown. Please come into my life as my Lord and my Saviour. Thank you for forgiving me, and redeeming me from sin. I choose to trust You and put You first in every area of my life. I will love You and serve You with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my resources, for the rest of my life, beginning right now. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen!

If you prayed this to the Lord, please let me know! I have some resources to share with you, and will help you on your journey with the Lord.