I was reading Oswald Chambers today and was blessed by what he had to say. I think you will like it. It comes from “My Utmost For His Highest” November 28th, page 247.

Be blessed,

Bro. David

“Being justified by his grace…” Romans 3:24

The Gospel of the grace of God awakens an intense longing in human souls and an equally intense resentment, because the revelation which it brings is not palatable. There is a certain pride in man that will give and give, but to come and accept is another thing. I will give my life to martyrdom, I will give myself in consecration, I will do anything, but do not humiliate me to the level of the most hell deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do is to accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God; we must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us if we think we are sufficient of ourselves, we have to enter into His Kingdom through the doors of destitution. As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit.

My prayer: God, give us the revelation that we cannot do this on our own. We cannot honor you, serve you, or bring you glory in and of ourselves. We need the power of your Spirit to fill us so that our lives will reflect your glory. Lord, we need you everyday, for everything, at all times. May you empty us of ourselves, our pride, our self sufficiency, and our self exaltation, so that we can be filled with your sweet Holy Spirit.

I believe that we as a church are in a time of shaking. Now as we think about shaking the image that comes to my mind is that of an earthquake. You all know that an earthquake is the release of tremendous power caused by the tectonic plates of the earths surface as they move, and they are always moving even though it is slow and mostly undetected. (Sorry my science teacher is coming out. Please keep reading, I am going somewhere with this.) As these plates move against each other pressure builds until the force is so great that the plates reach a breaking point at which time the pressure that has been built up is released and the surface of the earth trembles. Now we know that sometimes this moving is very insignificant and barely felt, but at other times this moving is great and causes great destruction and transformation of the landscape that is affected by the moving. This moving has caused the destruction of entire cities, the production of great lakes as the chasm created by the quake is filled with water, and even mountains as the earth is pushed upward. It was an earthquake that caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards for hours in 1812. The power of an earthquake is almost more than we can even comprehend.

Now to my title, “Why the shaking?” There are several reasons why the Lord sends a shaking to his people. Let me remind you that everything God does is for our good and his glory, so don’t be deceived into thinking that shaking is bad or is a punishment from God. No the shaking is just a tool God uses to move us into his glory.

I think the Lord uses the shaking in our life to first of all show us our weaknesses. When everything in our life is stable, secure, prosperous, and generally going good we tend to drift away from our spiritual disciplines, and devotion to the Kingdom, and slowly settle into a rut of existing and trusting in our own abilities to get us through. Because there is nothing major going wrong we think everything is right, so our prayer life, evangelism efforts, and passion for holiness take a back seat and slowly start fading away. It is in the shaking that we are reminded of our weaknesses and our utter helplessness to make a difference in our world without the power of Christ at work is us. Now I’ve never been in an actual earthquake, but I can imagine the helplessness one feels as the ground beneath his feet begins to move uncontrollably, and the fear of uncertainty that grips his heart not knowing when it will stop and how much damage will be done. It’s in the atmosphere of uncertainty and the revelation of our helplessness that God shows us our true need for his power in our life. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The shaking of God brings us to remember that we can’t control anything, and that without Christ we are helpless and hopeless in this world. In other words, the shaking reveals to us our spiritual poverty.

Next I think the Lord uses the shaking to draw us to himself. When we are able to see our poverty and realize that our material prosperity doesn’t necessarily equate to spiritual prosperity, we are faced with the fact that if we are to be a lighthouse for Christ then we have to get plugged into the source. The problem with always walking in prosperity and never having a challenge is that we, as I mentioned before, start trusting in ourselves, and we also tend to grow complacent and comfortable even though the demonstration of Holy Ghost power and the fruitfulness of Godly righteousness isn’t evident in our life. I believe that God uses times of shaking in our life to draw us out of complacency, and draw us to his heart so that we can no longer live in our comfortable disillusionment that all is ok. It has been said that the greatest enemy of the church is apathy. I would agree. How can we grow comfortable when all around us a world is in desperate need of the power of the gospel to change their lives. But the problem is that when the trouble of the world is so far away it doesn’t move us to action. An earthquake in California doesn’t send me running for cover, but let the ground beneath my feet begin to move and it will be a different story.

Lastly I think the Lord uses the shaking in our life to free us from “every weight and sin that so easily besets us”. Heb. 12:1 Now we all know what sin is, but what is the “weight” the writer of Hebrews is talking about? I think that the weights are the things in our life that is not necessarily sin, but anything that hinders us from walking in and working out the kingdom of God in our life. Those things that hinder our spiritual disciplines, our witnessing, our praying, and our desire to fulfill Gods purposes for our life. Heavy debt, selfish pleasures, the desire to have more when less will do, the mindset of mediocrity which settles for just enough God to get by, the desire to please men more than God, and the longing for the trappings of this world over the fruit and demonstration of the Holy Spirit in our life are all weights that can and will beset us. And don’t think for a minute that you can handle these things and not become a victim of a besetting weight or sin. It’s in our pride and self sufficiency that we fall. That’s why the shaking is designed to bring us to repentance, not just confession. To repent means to turn away from something and start going in another direction. Confession just admits to something, but doesn’t change direction. In the shaking God is calling for repentance. For a shaking off of everything that hinders us from walking in the fulness of God. I think this is what God is saying in Heb. 12:27 “And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” (Italics mine) Now the question is, “How hard will God have to shake to get these weights and sins from us?” The answer to that is one that only you can answer. The truth is if we want business as usual, then we need to keep doing business as usual! But if we want revival, an outpouring of God’s Spirit, and a life changing experience with God for our church and community then we have to allow God to do the work in us that he desires to do. Uncomfortable or painful as it may be, we must present ourselves as living sacrifices so that Christ can work in us and through us a revival that will change our nation. It’s time for another great move of God in FBC St. Joe! God is shaking us, will we awaken to his call and be the catalyst for bringing revival to this land? I say, YES WE WILL!!

As I meditate on the significance of the Christmas season I am amazed at what this time of celebration can mean for those who are believers. I spoke Sunday about the message of fear not that the angels brought to the shepherds and how they became the first evangelist of the message of Christ when they went into the city and spread abroad the good news of Christ’ birth. This is important to us in our everyday lives, because like the shepherds most of the church is not serving in a “ministry” position, but rather in a “secular” position. (I put those terms in quotations because as believers there is no such thing as a ministry or secular position. We are ministers and witnesses for Christ wherever we are, and whatever we do, but for the sake of clarifying that we all don’t work in a church I used those terms.) The shepherds were not “ministers” as we would think of the priest or pharisee, or other religious service, but this day they became prophets who were telling the truth to all who would listen, and probably some who wouldn’t. Not the most likely candidates to fill this position from our point of view, but very likely and capable from God’s. I was reading in Amos 3 today and found verses 7&8  which speak to this kind of experience. “Whatever the Lord plans to do, he tells his prophets. Everyone is terrified when a lion roars – and ordinary people become prophets when the Lord God speaks.” CEV  King Saul in the Old Testament experienced this when he joined in with the prophets and started prophesying. Like Saul, the shepherds had a radical experience with God that they couldn’t keep to themselves. It was an experience that moved them from the routine of their mundane life to becoming evangelist telling the good  news of a savior that was born.

Now the question! Have you so experienced Jesus? Has he so radically moved in your life to drive you to share your faith and good news with those around you? I must confess that life has a way of getting us into the rut of the routine where we just exist as we move through the motions of our everyday life. But the truth is “when God speaks ordinary people become prophets!” It was the prophet Amos who also gave a prophecy that there would come a famine in the land. Not a famine of food or of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. Amos 8:11 We know that this famine did indeed happen as there were about 300-400 years from the time of the last prophets (called the inter-testament period) until John the Baptist came on the scene. I don’t know if that famine was due to God not speaking or the people not listening, but I do know that today God is speaking to all who have ears to hear. As believers we have the Holy Spirit living inside our hearts, so we have access through the blood of Jesus to the Father. This tells me that if we are having a famine of hearing the word today it’s because we aren’t listening. Often times the silence in our life concerning our Lord and our faith is due to not hearing the Lord as he speaks. My prayer is that we would cultivate a relationship with the Father so that we will hear when he speaks. I think we cultivate this kind of relationship by practicing the four spiritual disciplines of a believer: praying, reading our Bible, going to church, and witnessing. My prayer today is that God will speak as clearly to you as he did the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth, and that we will be so moved by what we hear that we couldn’t help but share.

Merry Christmas,

Bro. David