It's easy to think a supernatural event would endow us with great faith.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Angelic encounters grew Mary and Joseph's faith, but left Zechariah still doubting and questioning.

Yet faith is required to please God -- not merely in his existence, but in his character. This is despite whether we get the outcomes we desire or not.

Faith is hard. Unbelief is hard. We get to choose which hard we want. Both come at a cost.

We dive into the stories of Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, and Joseph and see how their faith journeys can impact our own. We see from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy how prayer is a practical and powerful way we nurture meaningful faith.

Empower yourself and your family to engage fully in God’s grand story. Subscribe to Hi(Impact) at Stephanie Presents for insights, encouragement, and practical resources!

Book Stephanie to speak to your women, parents, Christian educators, and students.

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If an angel came and spoke to you face to face, do you think from then on in your life you would be a person of great faith?

Why or why not?

If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.

Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.

If you are a parent, you also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.

Let's get started.

We are in the second week of Advent, at least when this episode originally airs.

And depending on the specific tradition of Advent that you may follow, you may find that this week's focus is on peace, or you may find that this week's focus is on faith.

And faith is the one that I'm going to be talking about today.

The entire Christmas story is full of stories of people who had to act out real faith, some who did this better than others.

And all of them were in a place of waiting when their faith had to be exercised in its greatest form.

And that is what Advent is.

It is a season where we wait with anticipation, not with hopelessness, but with faith.

But what exactly do we want to have faith in or for?

Well, I've talked before about the difference between having faith in God and having faith in outcomes that we want God to make happen for us.

Those are not the same thing.

We can desire an outcome, but we don't want to put our faith in an outcome.

Our faith is in God as a being, not in God as an outcome producer.

And faith is incredibly important.

After all, the Book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 6, tells us that it is impossible to please God if we do not have faith in him, and not only in his existence, but faith in his character that he rewards people who earnestly seek Him.

That is a profound statement.

It's not just enough to believe in God's existence.

We must believe in his character and that he cares for people and that he rewards people who do prioritize seeking his presence in their lives.

You know, as we look at the Christmas story, we see several people who had encounters where they had to make a choice about what they were going to believe.

Because ultimately that's what faith is, is what are we going to choose to believe when we don't necessarily have the evidence right in front of us that makes that belief easy.

And the first person in this lineup is a priest.

Zechariah and Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth were quite old.

They were past childbearing years.

We don't know exactly how old they were.

The Bible doesn't give us a particular age, but we know that they were old.

And to be barren in those times was a tremendous disgrace on the woman.

It was just assumed that it was her fault.

Or even if some people might have had a little bit more grace and kind of thought, well, maybe it's both of their fault.

It wasn't because of biology.

It was because it was a condemnation in some way on them of God.

So they had lived with this for we don't know how many years, but they had lived with this rejection, this cloud of condemnation, the questioning, the gossip, all of the mistreatment that they would have endured over the years in both small ways and in large.

And it probably even made them question themselves at different times.

And one day, Zechariah is performing his priestly duty.

Now, it happened to be on this day that he wasn't just performing a standard priestly duty that he did every week.

It may have been the only time in his life that he was serving in this particular priestly duty.

And while he's in the process of this, an angel of God shows up and speaks to him face to face.

Now, we might be tempted to think that if we struggle with faith, it is because we just haven't had any great divine encounter, like we haven't had an angel show up and talk to us face to face.

And if only we had that, or you can fill in the blank with your own particular set of circumstances or event, then we would have great faith and never struggle with doubting God again.

But that is exactly not what happens here after the angel delivers this incredible message that they are in fact going to have a child, a son, and that he is going to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies that Zechariah as a priest absolutely would have known and understood what prophecies that the angel was referring to.

So this wasn't a what, huh?

What are you talking about?

Moment.

This was a I know exactly what you're talking about kind of moment.

And yet after the angel delivers this news, Zachariah basically says, well, how do I know that this is going to happen?

I mean, in case you're not aware, I'm old.

And not only am I old, but my wife is old.

Angel, thank you for coming.

Appreciate the message.

But somewhere along the line, I guess it skipped your notice that we are not capable of having children at this point in life.

You know what's interesting to me is that Zacharias statement to the angel and question to the angel Isn't that different in terms of its wording than what Mary asked the angel when he appeared to her to say, you are going to conceive a child by the Holy Spirit.

That was even more miraculous than an old couple conceiving a child.

And why did the angel respond so differently when Mary asked him, how is this going to actually happen?

Than when Zechariah basically says, well, how exactly is this going to happen?

It was because one came from a place of unbelief.

It came from a place of doubt.

And that's where Zechariah's heart was.

And because of that, it's not a matter then that while the child isn't going to be born to you, it was a matter then that you're going to lose your ability to speak.

You're not going to be able to speak words of doubt.

You're not going to be able to speak words of unbelief.

You're not going to be able to speak words of faith or belief until this child is born.

So that was going to be at least nine months.

And we don't really know how much time occurred between the time the angel visited Zechariah and when the conception of their son John did occur.

But, you know, the gift of that silence was during those months.

It required Zechariah to have solitude, to ponder, to consider his words carefully before he just let them come flying out of his mouth.

And even though it was a rebuke, it was also a kindness from God that was extended to him.

This wasn't the angel throwing a temper tantrum and then throwing out some random punishment.

There was a deliberateness to this.

It was.

It was a way of saying, okay, you have responded to God's invitation into your life.

You have responded to God singling you out for a tremendous purpose and calling.

You have responded to this with your words and with a hasty verbal response of unbelief.

No thanksgiving, no praise, no gratitude, nothing like that.

And so you're going to get a chance to learn to think before you speak.

And so during the next several months, at what could have been the most wonderful time of his life with his wife Elizabeth, during her pregnancy with their son John, there was no ability for him to verbally participate, not to be able to ask her questions.

Hey, how are you feeling?

Hey, did you.

Did you feel the baby kick today?

Are you having any kind of morning sickness or are you feeling strong?

There was no ability for that whatsoever.

The other person that we see in this story is his wife, Elizabeth.

And I think what's fascinating here is we don't really know what kind of faith that she had.

The angel didn't show up to Elizabeth.

The angel went to her husband, Zechariah, but there was no angel that went directly to Elizabeth to give her the message.

So did Zechariah go home and explain what the angel had said through written form?

Did he not say anything about it for a while?

I mean, obviously when I say say, I meant did he not communicate through writt language what had happened for a while?

Did he wait a week, a day, a month?

Did he just think, well, I'm not going to say I'm not going to write anything to her at all until she starts showing signs of pregnancy.

And then I'm going to say, you know, through my written words, oh, by the way, now I'm going to let you know what happened back when I lost my ability to speak.

We just don't know.

That's just all left up to speculation.

So we don't know what Elizabeth's response was either when Zechariah communicated to her what had happened and what the angel had said, or when she first started feeling signs of pregnancy.

The Bible is unclear about that.

We see her response when she does conceive, she does not go running out around the village telling everybody, finally, and hey, all of you women that have been so incredibly rude and snarky and hateful to me, let me tell you about this conception and about my child.

She doesn't do any of that.

And I think we can see by her later actions this is a woman of dignity.

This is a woman of great self control.

She hides herself for about five months.

And does she also do part of that from fear?

Maybe there's the fear of losing the baby.

I mean, we just don't know.

There's so much about Elizabeth that is not told to us.

And then of course, we have the faith of Mary.

And when the angel comes to her and says, you are going to bear a child that will be unlike any other child that has ever been born or will be born.

This is going to be God made flesh in human form that you are going to carry in your womb, is there anything that any person could ever hear that requires more faith than that?

You might be tempted to say, no.

I mean, that's it.

But what about us and that we have to believe that that actually happened?

You know, that requires faith as well?

You know, in the book that AJ Sherrill has written called Rediscovering Christmas, he quotes the author, Glenn Scrivener, who says, Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus.

Atheists believe in the virgin birth of the use of the universe.

Choose your miracle.

And so that brings it down.

All of us have faith in the origin of the world.

We can have faith or not in the origin of the Savior of the world, just as much as we may disagree on whether the world even needs such a thing called a savior.

So we have this faith of Mary.

And yet I also want you to be encouraged to see that when you believe what the angel said to Mary as real, you are also on the same lines, believing with great faith, just like Mary and Zechariah and Elizabeth had to believe with great faith.

And then we have Joseph.

And sometimes I think Joseph is kind of the guy in the background there that we just kind of gloss over.

And yet his faith was tremendous.

And again, it might be tempting to think, yeah, well, not really.

Because after all, I mean, he has angels that shows up in dreams and tell him something.

It still required faith.

I mean, Zachariah didn't just have any old angel that showed up.

Zachariah had the angel Gabriel that had showed up.

Gabriel, who gives his name.

You know, there are different people in the Bible that encountered angels, but a lot of times they never knew the angel's name.

And Gabriel says, I am Gabriel.

Like, how do you not understand the significance of who has showed up and is talking to today?

Joseph could have had the same kind of response as Zechariah.

It could have been, yeah, I'm not sure that you're really an angel.

I'm not sure that I really believe this.

I mean, how do I know that Mary has conceived God's son?

I mean, that's quite of a stretch, angel.

And it was.

It was even more significant than what Zechariah was asked to believe.

So even though these encounters for Mary and Joseph and Zachariah involved angels, faith was still required.

Faith comes at a cost.

It also comes at a cost when we don't have faith.

And we see that in Zechariah's story.

But you know what?

Faith also comes at a cost for Mary and for Joseph.

When we look at the timing of the events that happened here, and nothing that's put in the Bible is put there by mistake.

We see that the angel comes to Mary and says, you are going to conceive the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and you are going to conceive God made flesh as a baby in your womb.

And we know because the angel says, to her, your cousin Elizabeth is also with child, and she is now in her sixth month.

All right.

And then the Bible tells us that Mary very quickly then got her stuff together and she went to visit Elizabeth.

And how long is she there?

She's there about three months.

Mary stays with Elizabeth from the beginning of Mary's conception with Jesus until about the time that Elizabeth is going to deliver John.

And Mary smartly realizes, okay, I don't need to be here in my condition when Elizabeth is going to give birth.

She is going to need the people around her that are here, that are part of her community.

It's best for me to pack up and to go home.

I don't need to be here and to be a burden when this baby comes.

So Mary goes back home, and at this point, she's towards the end of her third month of pregnancy.

This is about the time she's going to be showing.

It's going to be incredibly difficult at this point for people to not see that she's pregnant.

So what would a fiance tend to think?

Well, let's look at the timetable.

Maybe Mary got pregnant and then she went off to visit her cousin Elizabeth because she knew she had engaged in wrongful behavior with somebody, another man that she was not engaged to be married to, and she ran off to her cousins Elizabeth and was trying to hide from the consequences of that.

Could that have been a reasonable thought?

Yeah, maybe Mary went off to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and while she was down visiting her, maybe she got involved with somebody else, finds herself pregnant, and then has to come home when it's time for Elizabeth's baby to be born.

I mean, there were a lot of different scenarios that a person might naturally be thinking.

Joseph's natural thought was not going to be, you know, I bet that she has been selected to be the mother of the Christ.

And there's no doubt that he was heartbroken when he learns of her condition.

Did he learn it from her?

Did she tell him?

Did he learn it from a town gossip?

Did he learn it because he was contacted by Mary's father, who may have been incredibly angry and full of disgust and shame and condemnation, and felt that he had the responsibility to report this horrific scandal that his daughter had brought upon the family to Joseph?

We don't know.

It's interesting that we never really read about Mary's family and how they treated her and what they thought about her.

But it's pretty safe to say that the silence of all of that speaks something to us because Joseph decided that he would go ahead and take her as his wife only after God intervenes in such a way that Joseph still has to act on faith, believing this is true, this is God, this is an angel that has spoken to me.

And we have been selected to be this couple who raises God's son.

That takes a lot of faith.

But that faith cost them.

Because there's no doubt that for the rest of their lives that they lived under a cloud of scandal.

Remember, everybody in Jesus hometown, everybody in Galilee, everybody in Israel did not come to believe in him as the Christ either during or after his life on earth.

There were people who always would have believed that Mary had fooled around with somebody else or that she and Joseph had been fooling around before they got married.

But either way, they would have lived under a cloud of scandal for the rest of their lives, probably with most people.

And one of the things that we can see in this story is that faith is going to come at a cost.

The absence of faith, not believing in God is also going to come at a cost.

It's just a matter of choose your cost.

I mean, choose your heart.

Which one is it going to be?

It's not going to be easy either way.

Faith has a cost.

A lack of faith also has a cost.

One of the most tangible ways that we can put our faith in action today is through prayer.

You know, in the divine conspiracy.

We've been looking at that a little bit over the last few weeks.

Dallas Willard writes, our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do.

And he goes on to say that his nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging, but his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not.

This does not diminish him, far from it.

For he would be a lesser God if he could not change his intentions when he thinks it is appropriate.

Now, I know some of you that might know the Bible really well might be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

I mean, the Bible says that God does not change.

And this is where we have to look at the beginning of what Dallas said.

No, it's God's character does not change.

God's intentions, his plans, his purposes do not change.

But is he responsive to us and to our prayers?

Yes, of course.

It's like, I will be getting ready to fix a Christmas meal here in a few weeks for my family.

I have the intention of providing a meal that everyone will enjoy.

But if one of my kids says to me, hey, mom, could you make this?

Or could.

Could you make that recipe gluten free or something along those lines.

I can adapt.

That doesn't mean that I am changing my character or my intention for the meal has.

Has gone out the door.

It means that I am responding to the request.

Dallas goes on and he writes prayer as kingdom.

Praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count and count for much as we learn step by step, how to govern, to reign with him in his kingdom, to enter and to learn this reign is what gives the individual life its intended significance.

You know, I close out every podcast episode by saying this statement that you have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal, and irreplaceable.

And I want you to really not just hear that, but to live like that's true, because it is.

But living like it's true requires faith.

You know, faith every day and getting up and believing that how you show up today matters.

That is faith.

That is extraordinary faith.

It's not just faith for people who have the encounters with angels that count.

It is the faith that says, I have come into the world for such a time as this.

My life, my abilities, my character matters.

That, my friend, is a tremendous life of faith.

So as you are going through this Advent season and then the Christmas season, and as you read, you might listen to music, you might attend pageants or concerts or dramas or whatever movies that play out and remind you of this Christmas story.

It can be a little disheartening if we measure our ordinary existence by people who experience these extraordinary events.

But I want you to try to reframe that a little bit and to see that a life of faith is possible today.

Whether you ever have an angel that shows up or not.

If you believe that the angel really did show up and speak to Zechariah, that is tremendous faith.

If you believe that the angel really did show up to Mary and say, you are going to conceive and carry and give birth to the very Son of God, that is tremendous faith.

If you believe that the angel showed up to Joseph and said, hey, Mary is pregnant, not by a human being, but because she has been selected to bear the Son of God in her womb, that is tremendous faith.

If you believe those things happened.

And of course, the greatest miracle of all, which is the coming of Christ in human form.

Emmanuel, God with us.

So as you go through the season of Advent, of waiting, be intentional with your prayers and exercise the faith.

They really do matter, whether the outcomes come the way that you are wanting them to or not.

Because again, our faith is in God's love for us.

Our faith is in his character.

It is not based on the outcomes that he does or does not produce for us.

Having faith or not having faith does come at a cost both ways.

We don't get either.

We don't get out of either of those without their coming a cost.

But we want to choose the cost of faith, not the cost of unbelief.

All right my friend, that's going to wrap us up for today and remember this and live like it's true because it is.

You have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal and irreplaceable.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening.

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