During my Roman Catholic years, I would gaze upon the paintings of Mary—demure, meek, serene, mild-mannered, holy, ethereal. The perfect woman. The flawless saint. The one untouched by the storms that seemed to swirl around ordinary mortals like me.
I would look at her and think, wouldn’t it have been nice if even a sliver of Mary’s serenity or sinless glow had been dished out in my direction? Did God go on vacation and assign the job to a distracted angel when I was being born? Because somebody sure slipped up on the demure and meek quota for me.
But levity aside, I did honour and admire and respect Mother Mary, but I could never connect with the soft, porcelain version that tradition had wrapped in layers of untouchable perfection. She seemed beautiful… and bland. Holy… and distant. Sacred… and boring.
But something shifted a few years ago when I began to feel a divine tug—a summons to look again, to look deeper, to look prophetically. And suddenly the veil lifted. The Mary I encountered in Scripture was nothing like the fragile figurine I had seen growing up.
Her story was definitely not sentimental or gentle. It was seismic and governed by divine fire, and her calling was not soft; it was the sharp edge of God’s unfolding redemption.
Mary’s “Yes” stands among the highest calls ever given to a human being. It is a call woven with faith, obedience, and spiritual warfare at cosmic levels. She was not merely a borrowed womb for the Son of God. She was the divinely selected vessel whose obedience would strike the first blow against the serpent’s head.
God had bypassed the religious elite, the movers and shakers of Judea and the political influencers of Jerusalem to go to Nazareth—a place dismissed and despised—because He knew in that place lived a teenage girl whose heart was tuned to heaven and postured for surrender.
When Mary said yes, she wasn’t simply agreeing to becoming pregnant. She was aligning herself with the eternal blueprint of redemption. Her yes unlocked prophecy, opened the door for the Incarnation, triggered angelic movement, enraged demonic forces, and ushered salvation into the earth.
Her obedience became a prophetic prototype: one yielded vessel can shift the destiny of generations.
With that single sentence, “Let it be to me according to Your Word,” Mary stepped into a war that began in Eden and her yes became a strike against ancient darkness.
“I will put enmity between you and the woman… he shall bruise your head.” — Genesis 3:15
“And the dragon stood before the woman… ready to devour her child.” — Revelation 12:4
Mary was thrust into spiritual warfare of the highest order. But how did she fight and what were her weapons?
- The Weapon of Surrender
Her first victory was not in doing—but in yielding.
Heaven backs surrendered vessels. Hell cannot counter them.
With one act of total trust, Mary aligned her life with the will of God, and instantly the full resources of heaven were dispatched to her. Surrender is not passive. It is an aggressive faith in God’s sovereignty.
- The Weapon of the Word
Mary was young, but she was not empty. Her Magnificat was a river of Scripture—echoes of Hannah, the Psalms, the Prophets. She did not fight with emotion; she fought with revelation. Like Jesus would later do in the wilderness, Mary wielded the Word that had been hidden in her heart, pondered, internalised, prayed through.
- The Weapon of Purity
Purity is not fragility—it is fortified strength.
Purity sustains spiritual authority because the pure in heart see God without obstruction.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”Matt 5:8
Mary’s purity was not the absence of struggle; it was the presence of devotion. It made her a vessel fit to host the Holy One.
- The Weapon of Endurance
Mary endured scandal, gossip, misunderstanding, and threats. She endured exile to Egypt, years of obscurity, poverty, and ultimately the unspeakable agony of standing beneath the Cross. But she remained steadfast and faithful through all the trauma, nurturing the promise until it was fulfilled.
Mary’s life reveals that spiritual warfare is won through alignment and agreement, not aggression.
Simeon had prophesied, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” And at Calvary that sword struck deep.
Standing beneath the bloodied Cross, this grieving mother fought her greatest battle of faith yet: she held on to the goodness of God while watching her Son suffer agony.
After the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, appearance and ascension of Jesus, Mary then waited and prayed in the Upper Room as commanded.
And as the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, she who had once carried Christ in her womb now watched Him be birthed into His Church.
Her yes had not ended in Bethlehem. It continued into Calvary and into Pentecost. And it will continue in every generation through those who will dare to surrender like she did.
Mary was not simply the mother of Jesus.
She is the prophetic picture of every son and daughter who carries the purposes of God, who nurtures the promises until they manifest and who wars through surrender, Word, purity, and endurance.
Mary’s life reveals to us what happens when an ordinary human says an extraordinary yes.
So, instead of indulging in the superficial shenanigans of Christmas this year, why don’t you give Jesus the precious gift of your resounding Yes?
If Miriam’s yes could change the course of history, so can yours.
