Never Subtract The Supernatural From Your Life’s Equation

TITLE: Never Subtract The Supernatural From Your Life’s Equation! 02-10-2014

TEXT: Psalm 121

I survey my life. Nothing but problems –the cares of this world; --sickness in my family; --financial difficulties;--family problems of every stripe; --failure in almost every endeavor; --spiritual forces I seem powerless to overcome.

How did I arrive at such a place of disappointment and discouragement? My youthful zeal, my dreams of what God might have for me in life are gone. I probably dug this hole, this deep, mostly by my own willfulness. None of my problems are God’s fault.

I look down into my hands. What resource do I possess to help me claw my way out of this hole. What skills do I possess to meet the challenge? What are my strengths?

I look to the horizon. Maybe better days are ahead. Maybe a change is coming. Maybe I’ll win “The Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes” or the lottery. Maybe I can teach my dog to talk, drive a car or fly a plane. Ridiculous! But there’s still hope, Maybe I’ll be struck by lightning. What a day of rejoicing that would be!

I look to my right and my left. Who can help me in this dilemma? Can the doctor heal the physical problems plaguing my family or me? Can the psychologist give me the answer or cure the misery in my mind? Can the lawyer get me out of the mess I’m in? Is there a pill I can take which will free me from my addiction, my bondage, myself?

As I look down at my resources, as I look to the horizon for a coming change, as I look to around to see if there is anybody, anyone at all who can help me, I come up goose eggs. I have no resources which will help. I’m not going to find a bottle with a Genie in it tomorrow, next week, ever. I have friends, but they don’t have the power to solve my problems. As I survey my resources, I conclude, I have nothing. I’ve tried everything, and I’ve tried it a hundred times with no success. I’m stuck here.

I’m on the verge of giving up hope. Quitting. I’ve never quit in my life. but I’m thinking about it now. How do you quit? How do you throw in the towel? Simple, you abandon all hope in God.

Here is my message this morning: Never subtract the Supernatural from your life’s equation!

If you are looking down into your hands, calculating your resources, if you are looking ahead hoping the wind will blow better days in your direction, if you are looking to any professional, or any of your acquaintances around here to solve your problems, you are looking in the wrong direction. The Psalmist has an eureka moment. He finally comes to his senses and with an act of his will makes a conscious decision. He does what I encourage you to do this morning:

Psalm 121 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. 3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. 4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. 6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. 8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

If He can make everything that is in six days, if I will allow Him to, He can easily take the rest of my days and make something beautiful, something truly successful, something which will cause Him to say on that most significant of days, Matthew 25:21 Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Friend, if you have ever wondered what success really looks like, feels like, sounds like, that is it! That moment, those words, that Man –Jesus, lifting my chin with His fingers so I can look Him square in the face and speaking those words to me, Matthew 25:21 Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

--That is everything!

If I don’t experience that, then truly my life amounts to nothing. Isaiah 6:5 Woe is me! for I am undone... Jeremiah 15:10 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!