I'm Running On E

Isaiah 40:28-31

Reverend Kahala Bolton

April 3, 2011

If you will please stand for the reading of god’s word and open your bibles. Turn to Isaiah chapter 40 beginning at the 27th verse and closing at the 31st verse. I will be reading from the NKJV version. You read along silently and I will read aloud.

Now Turn to your neighbor for god, and look them straight in the eye and say I’m running on E, Turn to one more person for Jesus and say, I’m running on e, turn to one more person for the holy ghost and say “ I’m running on e!” - You may take your seats. –

Intro:

Just so you can understand where I am going with this, let me give you a little back ground of where I am coming from. “is that all right?” a few years ago, my mother and I were on our way back home coming from a doctor’s appointment she had in far north Dallas close to central expressway and 635. And for whatever reason, my mother decides that we would be ok to make it back to our side of town on ¼ tank of gas – “someone say ¼ “. I remember her saying that we will be ok and when we get to our side of town, we will fill up. But the only problem with that was, we were driving and found ourselves at a standstill in traffic. (Have you ever found yourself stuck in a situation and you felt like you could not move from that place? so you can relate!) Now ya’ll know how traffic can be in Dallas, sometimes it can take two hours to get to where you need to before you even reach your final destination. So here we are sitting in this parking lot of traffic and the longer we sat there the more the gas hand would drop. I found myself becoming disturbed about that thing because we found ourselves in a situation that we had no control over. We were running on e and could see a way out.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I thought about that situation and reflected on how when we start out in our lives, we are all fueled up and energetic. Even at the beginning of this year, many of us made the declaration that I’m all in”. We declared that we would get new jobs, start new businesses, excel in our ministries, reconnect in our marriages, make good grades in school and lose those last five pounds. But here we are a quarter of the way through the year and a lot of us have run out of steam and energy. We want to go somewhere but we don’t have the means to do it. Yeah we come to church every Sunday and Thursday expecting god to do something but we leave here tired, frustrated and weak!

See there’s a lot of anxiety associated with running out of gas. I know a lot of you may not admit it. But that’s where I found myself that day. As we were sitting there in the car, I was stressed and perplexed and we did not know what to do. We did not know how the situation was going to turn out. We were aggravated because we could not maneuver out of the situation. It seemed there was no way out. And What I realized even more so about that situation is that if you are not careful, “catch this” you will find yourself pushing something that should be caring you. Can I get an amen!?

See some of us are facing great trials right now in our lives. But I discovered that our god is very interesting. See he doesn’t give you an itinerary for your journey. He doesn’t hand us a map plan or spell it out for us. He doesn’t tell us all the hell we are going to have to go through to get to the promise. All he does is show us the promise, because if we are honest with ourselves, if we really had a clear view of everything we had to go through to get to where we are right now, some us would say, “no thank you god, I’ll just stay right here. It’s all right!

The everlasting god!

And that’s where the Israelites found themselves in the beginning of our text. So two rhetorical questions are asked: Have you not known? Have you not heard? Isaiah was reminding the people that god made the world and all that is in it. The nations rise and fall at god’s command. So why we complain about gas prices and the economic situation, we need to remember that god has no equal and everything is held in the palm of his hand. Everything that is happening is being permitted by god. How do I know? I’m glad you asked! The word says: The lord is the everlasting god! The creator of the ends of the earth. Everlasting god means god is enduring. He exists throughout the ages. He does not come and go, he always is.