Blessed Art Thou Among Women by Rev. Christie Bature: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

You Have Been Empowered to Prosper

The theme is blessed among women. Touch your chest and say, I am blessed among women. Somebody is thinking, we are all wearing the same shirt, so how am I blessed among them, am I not just one of many? That is exactly the problem. You have decided to see yourself as a number, but you are a blessed one among many.

Two verses carry this theme. In Luke 1:28 the angel greeted Mary as highly favored, and in Luke 1:42 Elizabeth called her blessed among women. The word blessed means empowered to prosper. Put your hand on your chest and say, I am empowered to prosper. Notice that empowered is past tense. God is not going to empower you. God has already empowered you.

Most women of African descent are raised, without many words being said, to accept that we have no right to dream big. So we cap our own capacity, cap how high we can go, cap what we are permitted to have. We hear empowered to prosper and quietly transfer it to the American woman or the British woman, not to us. I am from the northern part of Nigeria, where women were raised to have no voice, no opinion, kept in a separate section of the house. When I became a Christian and saw that God speaks to daughters exactly as he speaks to sons, it took me a long time to accept that I too was allowed to dream. It is the same brain, the same Spirit, and God is not partial.

What Are You Doing With the Empowerment?

A woman confessed healing for thirteen years on a wheelchair while others give up after one week. She understood that her own words and heart could either open the door to healing or tie God's hands, because you carry the power to stop God from doing what he wants to do in you.

So the question follows: what are you doing with your empowerment? One believer will declare every morning that the Lord is her healer, and by the next morning she is reciting every ache to a friend on the phone. She was empowered to enforce healing, but with her confession she was empowering the enemy instead. It took me years to train myself so that when the enemy comes, the first thing out of my mouth is the word of God. Even now, when I catch myself saying the wrong thing, I stop and say, no, I take that back, this is what I am saying.

Empower the Fruit of Your Womb

Elizabeth also blessed the fruit of Mary's womb in Luke 1:42. So have you empowered the fruit of your womb to prosper? Our children must see us praying and see us choosing God first every day. I once asked God whether I had put enough of God in my children that they would choose him when they were boxed into a corner. A few days later I stumbled on a chat between two of them. One admitted she sometimes doubts God's reality, and the other answered that the way she knows God is real is by looking at their mother. God let me see it to answer the very question I had asked him.

Our children live in more dangerous times than we did, in a system rigged to exclude God, where believers are the odd ones out. One of the ways you empower your children to prosper is to teach them to stand even when they must stand alone. I saw a video of children taken into a mosque on a school trip and told to kneel and bow their heads to demonstrate prayer, and one boy stood rod straight and said, this is not how I pray, I am not a Muslim. Peer pressure is only strong because we have not taught our children how to stand by themselves on what they know is true.

Find Your Kindred Spirits

There is so much to unpack in Mary and Elizabeth meeting in one space. Elizabeth had spiritual sensitivity; she picked up Mary's encounter with the angel before Mary said a word. They had no phones. Something in Elizabeth simply responded to what Mary was carrying. How spiritually sensitive are you?

You have to find your kindred spirits. Some of us hold on to relationships God is trying to take us out of, because of familiarity, because we are people pleasers, because we are love addicts, and all those people do is muddy the waters so we cannot experience the empowerment God has given us. Women are drawn to the things of the Spirit. The name for woman, Ezer, helper, is the same word used for the Holy Spirit as helper, so a woman does not always need to understand; she senses that God is present and she is sold out.

But sensing is not enough if we stop short. In John 20, Mary Magdalene reported the empty tomb, and Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved both ran. Love outran Peter and reached the tomb first, but love stopped at the door and did not go in. Peter, who carried the responsibility to build the church, ran inside. Love will take you to the door, but if you do not grow your sensitivity to go beyond where others stop, assignments will come and pass without you even being aware. Your attendance is good and your service is good, but where is the private time between you and God where you hone that sensitivity?

Be Comfortable in Your Calling

Elizabeth called Mary blessed in Luke 1:42 and called herself blessed in Luke 1:45. She was confident in her calling and comfortable being who God asked her to be. She was not threatened or envious. She never asked why she only carried John while Mary carried the Savior. She was comfortable with her office, her body, her age, and her assignment.

They have told us for centuries that women cannot be trusted, that women are not safe or kind together, and we bought the lie. In Genesis 34, Dinah grew up surrounded by women fighting for the attention of one man, with no one teaching her how to be a woman, so she went looking for connection among the daughters of the land and her life ended in tragedy there. Do not conclude that women cannot be trusted; ask instead whether you can be trusted, because you attract your kind. In Genesis 4, God told Cain to bring an offering, and the outcome was never made dependent on Abel. Cain brought from the perception of his mind and Abel from the goodness of his heart, so how did God's verdict become Abel's fault? Sin was crouching at Cain's own door.

Women Build One Another

Every time women failed to do good among themselves, we got catastrophe, but look at Naomi and Ruth. Two women connecting in purpose with no competition. Naomi did not resent Ruth; she pointed her toward Boaz and showed her exactly what to do, and the younger woman was humble enough to obey. When an older woman gives you counsel, take it even when it does not make sense; she has been somewhere and seen some things.

Make it a point of duty to affirm the women around you, without lying. I will not tell you that you are the prettiest woman in the room, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I can tell you that I like how you show up faithfully, or that your contributions in meetings come from an angle no one else sees. If you spend your time affirming, you will not have time to gossip, and you will be building another person up instead. Let the younger women give the older ones the flowers they deserve, and let the older women guide the younger. And never say that this generation does not listen; they do listen, just on the go, and under pressure you will be shocked what comes back out of them.

Be Accommodating and Humble

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for months with no notice given, and as long as Mary needed the space, the arms, and the support, they were available. Please be accommodating. And be humble. James 4:6 says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble, and grace elevates and protects. Humility does not come to us naturally, so it must be deliberate; even little children refuse to say sorry, because the enemy plants the nature of pride early.

Someone recently sent me a very condescending message, and that old nature rose up, asking who she thought she was. The Holy Spirit said, who do you think you are? He asked whether I would throw away the training of a decade over someone on her own journey, and then he told me to call her, greet her warmly, and check on her, and to make sure everything was gone from my heart before I did. Like David in Psalm 139, do not only search yourself, invite God to search you, and he will shine his light until you cry out, because he is coming for a church without spot.

Carry the King in Humility

Mary had been told she carried the Messiah, yet she did not sit and wait for Elizabeth to come pay homage. She stood up carrying the King and went to squat in someone else's house, where she owned nothing and had no rights, because she needed Elizabeth's covering and connection. Nobody was designed to do life alone.

Compare two men. In Genesis 37, Joseph had a dream and immediately broadcast it to his brothers, and he ended up bowing in a pit. In 1 Samuel 16, the honored prophet came all the way to Jesse's house to anoint David, and the Bible simply says David returned to the sheep. He did not strut around announcing he was king; even after killing Goliath and being sung about, he went back to the flock. That is intentional humility, keeping yourself low until God seats you. Some of us truncate the call of God because we are already trying to show where we belong before we arrive anywhere, and a heart in the wrong place will never get there.

Activate the Blessing Through the Word

When I give someone a gift and they set it down without opening it, I lose the joy of watching their joy. That is what we do to God when we refuse to activate the blessing. You can keep saying you are blessed while remaining broke, sad, and afraid, because you have not opened it.

How do you activate it? Through the word of God, our manual. When the disciples could not cast out a demon in Matthew 17, Jesus said that kind comes out only by prayer and fasting; yet even after Jesus fasted forty days in Matthew 4, the devil still came, and what he used to banish him was, it is written. If you sit down with the word of God, you will be amazed how quietly your life transforms until you look up and realize how far you have come. For over twenty years I have read through the entire Bible once every year, in a fresh translation each time. When people ask how I became this woman, the answer is the word of God; when trouble hits, after the first human feeling of pain or anger, the next thing that rises out of my mouth is scripture. The word can knock you to the ground, but it puts a bounce in you so you rise right back up.

Remember Elizabeth, who stood against her husband's family in Luke 1:59 and insisted the child was John until God confirmed it and loosed Zechariah's tongue. Be comfortable where God has placed you and operate in power from there.