Editor's note: there are two Connect Devotionals this morning! We hope you enjoy both pieces from Bella and Lana.

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Promises → Joy

Bella Segnere

Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.” (Luke 1:42-45 NLT)

The word “promise” is fairly overused. People say, “I promise” this or that, but too often nothing comes of these empty promises. And we’re all guilty of this, myself included.  However, there is someone who offers promises unlike ours: God.  Whatever God promises, he will do, he will fulfill. And that should give us more joy and hope than anything we could ever imagine.

Notice how our theme of “joy” runs throughout this passage: Mary, Elizabeth, and baby-in-the-womb John are literally jumping for joy. That is not the only example of joy that can be found, though. Elizabeth says to Mary, “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said” (verse 45).  Joy embraces other emotions, and I think two of the ones we see in this comment are gratitude and bliss. But most importantly, Elizabeth feels this way because the Lord did as he said he was going to in the Old Testament, and she is ecstatic that Mary believed in God. Elizabeth and Mary didn’t know quite yet what promise God was fulfilling, but they certainly knew that some promise was going to be fulfilled.  (We now know that the promise is Jesus being sent to earth to save all of mankind only because we can see the whole Gospel put together!). 

Our human promises can be fragile and often break. But this passage shows just how vital certain promises are to creating a source of joy in our lives and in the lives of others. Weak, human promises alone are not enough to bring us this joy… but God’s strong, hopeful ones are! Because of that, we should be like Mary and Elizabeth in their trusting of the Lord and his promises. That is how we can achieve the truest and most beautiful form of joy.

This week, how can you lean into the promises God has made you? Promises of prosperity, of eternal life, and of so many other things. How can you take that one extra step into trusting God, so that you can receive the gift of his joy?

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Genuine, not Knock-Off

Lana Waters Liu

(John’s) father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied (Luke 1:67).

As we meandered the sidewalks of NYC on our first visit there, my husband and I encountered tables piled with famous-label merchandise.  At really great prices!

Yep, you’re right—they were knock-offs. Some were obviously so, even to the uninformed like me. (Prada is not spelled Pradia.) Others were mighty convincing.

In today’s scripture we are told that Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit. We know from Galatians 5:22 that the Holy Spirit’s “fruit” or manifestation is love, joy, peace, (and more). That genuine fruit is genuinely on display in the Christmas story—including here within Zechariah as he prophesied a declaration of what God had done and would do.

Zechariah, you’ll remember, had been a skeptic (Luke 1:18, 20), unable to initially discern the genuine-ness of the angel’s message to him about his son-to-be, John. Yet now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he knew and proclaimed this Holy Truth.

There were knock-off “messiahs” and “prophecies” in that day. Some of them no doubt looked and sounded more “genuine” than others. The thing is, knock-off messiahs, messages, merchandise and emotions did not stand up to close scrutiny then any more than they do today. They are shoddy, no matter how they appear. They are a disappointing stand-in. A ruse.  Counterfeit.

Genuine is top-quality. So top-quality, in fact, it is far beyond our purchasing power. The only way we are going to get “Genuine” is if it is given to us.

We all yearn for love, joy and peace, don’t we? Maybe especially during this season, during these turbulent times, in our particular circumstances of sorrow and suffering we yearn for genuine love/joy/peace. 

We aren’t going to be fulfilled by knock-off versions. Just aren’t. Ah, but the genuine is being offered to us. Genuine love, joy and peace awaits. It’s the deeper-than-emotions love, joy, and peace that lives deep within our beings where the Holy Spirit resides 

We can’t pay for it. But we can ask. (And He will never give us a knock-off!)

Bet you can guess what the next step for us to take is!