Episode 30 | ADHD-Friendly Advent Day 7

We are on day seven of our ADHD Friendly Advent study.

We are finishing up week one.

But whether you have been with me this entire time or you are just finding me, you are not behind.

The study is specifically designed to be low effort and high impact and you are never behind wherever you are.

So let's dive in.

But if you are new here, my name is Rachel.

I am an ADHD and a Jesus lover and I am on a mission to help women with chaotic brains seek, find and live the abundant life that Jesus offers us.

And if you are new and you don't already have your workbook, there is a free workbook that goes along with this.

You can download that at the Link link in the place where links live.

And without any further ado, let's get into today's study.

One more thing real quick.

I want to know what you want to see going into week two of this study.

So if you like these longer videos where I am breaking down my own answers, I am giving some context.

I'm kind of explaining different terms, reading the scripture.

Let me know in the comments.

Or if you would prefer a more succinct version where it's just, okay, here's the scripture for today, Here are the questions, here's what you need to do.

Boom, boom, boom.

Two minutes or less.

You know, you're done and out of here.

So let me know what you would like to see.

Everything is in the workbook.

All of the scriptures in the workbook.

The songs that we're listening to are in the workbook.

The questions are in the workbook, all of that.

But yeah, let me know if you like these longer videos where I kind of dig into my own answers and explain a little bit more and it takes a little bit more time.

Or if you prefer for it to be nice and succinct, maybe I'll do both.

I don't know.

But let me know in the comments.

Okay, now we're getting into it.

So this week's song is oh Come oh Come Emmanuel.

We've talked already this week about how I absolutely love the version that Skillet released very recently.

So go listen to the song again and then meet me right back here where we are going to read Luke 1:1 through 38.

That is today's scripture passage.

That is the scripture passage for the entire week.

We've broken it up throughout the week and we're going to read it all in one.

Go.

Go.

All right, so let's read.

We are in Luke 1, starting with verse 1, going through verse 38.

And I am in the ESV.

In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah.

He had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth, and they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord, but they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Now, while he was serving as priest before God, when his division was on duty according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.

And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him.

But the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, and you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink.

And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb.

And he will turn many of the children to Israel, many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.

And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient of the wisdom, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.

And Zechariah said to the angel, how shall I know this?

For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.

The angel said to him, I am Gabriel.

I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and bring you this good news.

And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.

And the people were waiting for Zechariah and they were wondering at his delay in the temple.

And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them.

And they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple.

And he kept making signs to them and remained muted.

And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.

After these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived.

And for five months she kept herself hidden, saying.

Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.

And.

And he came to her and said, greetings, O favored one.

The Lord is with you.

But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

And the angel said to her, 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 he will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

And his kingdom, of his kingdom there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, how will this be, since I am a virgin?

And the angel 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.

And behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son.

And this is the sixth month to her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word.

And.

And the angel departed from her.

That was a mouthful.

And as you could hear, I stumbled over my words a little bit.

But that is okay, because we are about progress, not perfection here.

So, no, I am not going to go back and record that.

We are just rolling with it.

We are rolling with it because that is the kind of authenticity that I like to promote here.

What started to strike me as I was reading this, again, I didn't.

This is not part of the prompt or anything.

This is not part of the journaling section.

But I was really struck by the differences between Zachariah and Mary.

And I think it's a really good picture that we can have of what actually is important in the kingdom of God.

So we have Zachariah, who is much older, much more experienced.

He's very prestigious.

He even has.

He's in a place of religious authority.

For him to be the one entering the temple to light the incense, that is a very prestigious position.

He wields a lot of religious authority.

And we do see that he is a righteous person.

Now we know that no one is completely righteous.

And so we have to kind of take that with a little bit of a grain of salt and understand the scripture is not saying here that he was perfect because we see him sin later in the passage when he doubts what the angel is telling him.

But he is described as a person who is upstanding, whose heart corresponds with his actions.

He's not just going through the motions of religion.

He actually believes what he's doing.

He actually has faith in God.

He just has a moment of doubt.

And when the angel comes to him, not only is he troubled, he also is struck by fear.

And we see his interaction with the angel end on a note of doubt.

He asked the angel, okay, basically we talked about yesterday what the original word is for when he says, how shall I know this?

He's basically asking, okay, and how am I supposed to believe this?

Okay, and how am I going to know that this is actually true?

He's not just asking for clarification like Mary is later.

She's asking about the mechanics of it.

She's going, okay, all right, and what's next for me?

He's going, how am I supposed to believe that?

So then after that, the angel delivers the last word, going, okay, you doubted me, so you are now mute until your son gets here.

In contrast to Mary, who ends with the last word, some other things we know about Mary.

She is very young.

She was likely a teenage girl.

She was very inexperienced.

She did not have the standing in society.

She did not have the knowledge of religion, of the culture.

She was severely, severely behind Zachariah in terms of life experience, in terms of standing in the community, in terms of religious authority, in terms of authority of any kind.

This is a teenager who is betrothed to be married, but is still living with her parents, still subject to the headship of her parents.

She is also faithful.

We see that she is also favored by God.

And she also is promised a miraculous child.

Zechariah is promised a miraculous child.

It was not thought to be possible for him and his wife to be able to conceive.

And we know biologically it was not possible for Mary to conceive Both are promised a miraculous child.

But where we see Zachariah respond with fear and doubt, we see Mary respond with belief and even curiosity.

She's going, okay, so I see some biological problems standing in the way of this.

So how.

How.

Let me know how this is going to be accomplished, which is a very fair question.

It just.

I cannot even imagine being in her position and going, oh, wow.

And this is in a time where having a child out of wedlock was even more taboo than it is now.

It's absolutely wild.

But we see such stark differences between Zachariah and Mary.

This man who had everything going for him, who already had a proven track record of faithfulness to the Lord, when the time came for him to be challenged, he responded with doubt.

Meanwhile, this young girl, who had no authority, who had no backing, who had almost no experience, when she is faced with something that honestly is much more heavy than what Zachariah was promised, he was not going to have to be the one to carry the baby.

He was in a marriage.

There was nothing but joy ahead for him.

And yet he responded with doubt.

Meanwhile, Mary is faced with the absolute most terrible thing visually that can happen to a young woman in that society to be pregnant outside of marriage.

Zachariah is presented with a joyful experience.

Nothing ahead for Zachariah but joy.

He's not carrying the child.

He has nothing but joy from society, nothing but encouragement from society, nothing but approval from society regarding his circumstances.

Mary is faced with possibly a death sentence.

And she responds with, let it be to me, as you have said.

And this is such a beautiful picture of how the hierarchy of faith works.

I love how the Bible Project explains the kingdom of God as an upside down kingdom where the last are first and the first are last.

Mary, this child, had more faith in the moment.

When it.

When push came to shove, she was like, all right, let's buckle down, let's do this.

Meanwhile, Zachariah was like, okay, prove it.

And it's really cool.

Because experience, age, station, and even religious authority and a track record of following God faithfully cannot predict future faithfulness or impact.

And that's such a good reminder to us that our faith is happening now.

Our faith is not.

One decision we made when we were five at church camp and raised our hand and prayed a prayer.

It is not even the time that we walked through God, walked with God, through darkest time imaginable, and we were faithful.

That does not necessarily inform.

Now we see people who have done amazing things for God fall off the path.

Matthew 25 talks about people who have prophesied in God's name, who have done miraculous things in the name of Jesus, getting to the end one day and being told, go away from me, I never knew you.

Our faith is happening now, and our obedience is demanded now.

And our continued pursuit of Christ and his heart in order to be on the right path and have the yes when a yes is asked of us is happening now.

So that's my little rabbit trail that just.

I ended up writing like a whole page of notes as I was reading this.

Like, oh my goodness, what about this?

What about this?

What about this?

And it's really cool to see.

And I love the verse.

I think it's in one of the Timothy's.

Don't let anyone look down on you because of your youth.

I feel like even today, honestly, maybe even especially today, I can only speak to my own time period.

But there is so this questioning of younger people.

And at the end of the day, someone with less life experience can have much greater faith than someone who has walked with God their entire life.

So let that be an encouragement to you that no matter where you are in your faith, even if you came to Christ last week, I have a friend who came to Christ much later in life and like, did not even know the basic Bible stories.

And yet the faith that this woman has and the wisdom that she has in the Lord is insanely beautiful.

And she is an incredible friend, an incredible mom, an incredible wife.

She is just a wonderful human being.

And how she loves the Lord is, say it with me, incredible.

All right, so then we get into the bonus journaling prompt for today, which is what attribute of God do you see reflected?

And this week's scripture passages.

See extra resource number two for a list and explanation of his attributes, if you need a refresher.

So I went through this is all in the workbook, which again is at the link in my profile that is free to download.

And by the way, if you do want to support me and buy me a coffee, you can do that.

Also at my link, over in the place where links live, all of the questions, all of the extra resources, they are in the workbook.

But I just looked up and attached to the workbook just a list of the attributes of God.

There's kind of a standardized list.

Of course we can, you know, think of our own attributes, but there is a standardized list like omniscient, omnipotent, merciful, kind, all of that good stuff.

I don't know if kindness is one of them, but I don't remember off the top of my head, but the one that I selected, which I'm going to pause real quick and let you go and journal on that.

I'll read the prompt one more time.

What attribute of God do you see reflected in this week's scripture passages?

See extra resource number two for a list, an explanation of his attributes if you need a refresher.

Or you can just Google attributes of God and that will be one of the first things that comes up.

So take a moment, pause this video, go journal on that prompt.

You can rewind it if you need to hear it again, and then meet me back here when you're done.

All right.

Did you do it?

If not, one more chance, pause, go, and then we will continue.

So the prompt that or the attribute of God that I saw clearly in this week's scripture is his mercy.

And there's so many different layers here.

We have personal mercy, like Zachariah was not, not told.

Okay, well, you doubted, so never mind.

You are not getting the blessing that God had for you.

You are not going to be part of this amazing story anymore.

Even though Zechariah was punished, he was mute.

He wasn't able to talk to anyone about this incredible thing that happened and was like making signs.

And at one point later in the story, they like hand him a piece of paper like there's or something to write with.

I highly doubt it was paper in the sense that, you know, we know it like Dunder Mifflin style paper.

But God shows so much mercy, even just on a personal level.

And then we can zoom out a little bit and see the mercy that God has shown Israel.

God has redeemed Israel so many times throughout Scripture.

And whatever your thoughts are on Israel's actions right now, that's another story for another time.

We're not going to get into that in this particular video.

But we have seen God redeem Israel and restore Israel so many times throughout Scripture.

So we see his mercy and redemption here on a personal level, on a country level, and then we can zoom out even more and see God's mercy on the world, on humanity as a whole.

He had every right to just completely abandon ship, and yet he continues to remain faithful with that first bite of the apple or the pomegranate or whatever fruit you believe was on that tree in the garden.

God had every right to walk away.

And yet not only has he not walked away from us, he continues to work things for our good now.

And a very important point there.

And I just, I appeared on a podcast Yesterday.

The episode will be released a little bit later in January.

But one of the things that I talked about on the podcast that the host, Angelina and I were talking about on the podcast was whose definition of good we are operating out of.

We read that verse that says, all things work together for the good.

And.

And we're like, great.

It's gonna be good.

This is gonna be sunshine, is gonna be rainbows.

He has a plan for us.

Plan for prosperity, not harm.

Good stuff.

Happy times, Happy, happy times.

And that is not how it works, friends.

It is when we break down our definition of good and clear the rubble out of the way and go, okay, God, whatever your definition of good is, that is what I want.

When we surrender our definition of good and stop measuring God's magnitude by our own tiny, insignificant, deeply flawed and biased and skewed definition of good, that is when we are able to see beyond the corners of our own world and have an eternity mindset and genuinely begin to experience the glory of God, what He is capable of, how he wants to include us in his story, the fact that the God of the universe not just allows us to be part of the story, but wants us to experience it on the deepest, most beautiful level possible.

I don't even have words.

I do not have words for that.

So I want to encourage you today, take some time, noodle on the attribute of God that you most saw present in the study this week and dig into it, kind of dive in, read other scripture, look at original text.

I really love the Blue Letter Bible app.

That is one of my favorite tools.

I use it almost every single day.

The Bible Project is another phenomenal resource.

All of their content is free.

I listen to their podcast multiple times a week.

They're absolutely fantastic.

But really dig in and go a little bit deeper.

So we're kind of taking a little bit of a break from the study for tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be the first day of week two, which pretty much the only homework is going to be listening to the new song, which I'm pretty sure I've decided on.

This is all happening in real time.

I am creating the study and going along through the study for the first time in real time with you.

So this is just as much new for me as it is for you.

And it's been really fun and very rewarding so far.

So let me know your thoughts on this first week.

Again, let me know.

Do you like these longer videos where we kind of break it down and get into it?

These are uploaded as podcast episodes.

So if a podcast format would be a little easier for your brain to digest, that is available to you as well.

The link to that is in the place where links live as well.

Let me know if you like the longer version or if you would like a more sustainable, succinct version.

That's just like, hey, here's what to do today.

Okay, bye.

Go off and do it on your own.

That is also fine.

Different brains work in different ways.

And on this format, my entire purpose is helping you work with the brain God gave you because he gave it to you for a reason.

We were not designed to work like everybody else.

We're not going to work like everybody else.

And not only is that okay, that is beautiful.

Because even looking at the differences between Zechariah and Mary, God created different people to fill different roles in his kingdom.

Different people are going to learn and respond in different ways.

And that's not just okay, it's necessary.

And it is so beautiful.

Okay, make sure you follow.

Share tag a friend in the video.

Make sure to leave comments.

All of the things go.

Subscribe to my podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to.

It is the True Grit podcast with Rachel Grit.

That is all I have for you today, and I will see you tomorrow.

Bye.