Welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks so much for joining me today.

As promised, today we will begin our Advent series on Martin Lloyd-Jones' book, My Soul Magnifies the Lord.

Meditations on the Meaning of Christmas. Today's chapter one.

It's been fun for me to reread this book. Lloyd Jones is so insightful and the Magnificat

is a much overlooked part of the scripture if you think about it. We learned to sing it many years ago

at church so I still have the text memorized because

of that, and I'm very grateful to have that tucked away. As I proceed, I will be summarizing and

quoting directly from what Lloyd Jones is teaching us about the Magnificat in his book.

The Latin word Magnificat means, my soul magnifies the Lord. P.S. Since announcing this study,

I have discovered that this book is out of print. I'm sorry. So for those of you who wanted to read it

as we go, good luck. I mean, maybe you can find one somewhere. But meanwhile, I'm going to

proceed as planned,

and I hope you'll glean some good encouragement for Christmas. In this opening chapter, we learned

some very important aspects of worship and how to view Christmas the way we should. Our author

begins by showing us stages Mary went through when she first received the news from Gabriel,

and she responded with, how can this be? She was initially incredulous. It seemed impossible.

But when the angel answered her authoritatively that with God, nothing is impossible,

she submitted herself to God and famously said,hold the handmaid of the Lord,

be it unto me according to thy word. Our author points out how common this response is in our own lives.

First, we think the gospel can't be true. We're incredulous, but then we are brought to a saving

realization of just who God is, and even if we

don't understand everything, we bow the knee and respond to the good news and follow Christ.

...