• Today I wrap up my theme of looking at issues of the heart – we have spoken about aligning our heart, having hearts filled with a wild faith, having a heart for the house, creating room in our hearts for God, we have looked at how doing what is in our hands unlocks the door to what is in our hearts.
• We have said that our heart’s position to the world, to the sun and to the future will determine our success as Christians, because God desires our success in our faith walk and He desires to complete the work He began in us, but all too often we get to set the pace and we have the gauge set at zero because anything above that is not comfortable.
• Today I look at how when we combine each of these factors, it starts to shake the very foundations that we always thought would always stand, only to discover that they were for a season and that the season for them has now passed and God has seen our willingness to be start to really live.
• Radical lives call for radical obedience, and that takes radical faith and a heart for God.
• When we get to the point where we are stripped bare of our selfish ambitions, of our inward focus and our desire to be recognised or noticed, it is then that the good shaking starts.
• It is not a destructive shaking but a stock taking shake that determines what should be there and what should never have been put in your life in the first place.
Hebrews 12: 26-29 (NIV)
• When we are in surrender to God the shaking starts and His shaking is not selective – He shakes everything in your world – your attitude to Jesus, your attitude to this House, your attitude to the lost, your attitude to your own self-importance; your attitude to worship – all gets shaken and much more besides and He looks to see what was secure and what was merely window-dressing.
• Stuff that is rooted down and solid and genuine will stand, but the stuff that has been shifted into the house of your life by circumstance, by failure, by self-centredness, will all fail
• But look at the same verse in the Message – Hebrews 12: 26-29 (MSG)
• Historical and religious junk – gone! – Historical junk is when we hold to a way that once was but is not longer relevant – it’s an ark!
• Historical junk is when we say ‘this church has changed and I want to go back to the way it was’– that’s junk according to this – and Jesus said in Luke 9: 62 that anyone who looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom.
• Historical junk is when we allow voices from your past to have a vote in your future, to have a say in your emotions and in your decision making
• Religious junk is when we get cluttered up with rules and regulations and the work of our hands to please God, when God does not want your religion, He wants your relationship.
• American band REM sings the line –‘that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion’ – get into God’s light and let it expose the junk and lose your religion and gain your faith in Jesus Christ.
• Elijah witnessed the shaking – 1 Kings 19: 11-13
• There was a shaking happening in Elijah’s life – everything that he had stood up for was turning on him and the attack against our self worth will always come after a moment of victory
• He has just destroyed the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel but fear had overtaken him and he was on the run from Jezebel, and his world needed a shake-up so that he could learn to stop focussing on the threats of the world and focus on the voice of God that speaks a different message.
• He stands on the mountain and the shaking starts, but God is saying to him ‘I am sending this but this is not going to destroy you – this evidence of my power but I am not in it, I am above it orchestrating it’
• By saying that God was not in it the Bible is teaching us that God does not desire for our lives to be one continuous storm and earth quake and that if your life is, there is something wrong that needs addressing.
• But it also tells us that He will use anything to get His message over.
• Then He speaks and when God speaks we need to learn to know His voice because it will be a voice of stillness.
• Everything around Elijah shook but the voice of God was firm and steadfast
• But even more importantly, Elijah himself was not destroyed – God will not destroy the life, the ministry, and the faith of a person who is tuned into Him and whose heart is totally His.
• Elijah had been overcome by fear, and there is a reason why the Bible tells us countless times to not be afraid and have no fear – it’s because we are afraid and do have fear.
• Elijah was exhausted – but he was exhausted from running away from something he should have faced up to and conquered.
• Elijah was far away in a desert – he ran there himself and God had to perform a mercy mission to rescue someone who really thought he was doing okay but had come to realise that he was so frail and unable to do anything without God.
• But the shake-up came with new hope – because if you read on to verse 14 God gives Elijah 3 new tasks to fulfil and so he came out of the shake-up with new vision.
• God does not shake to destroy, but to renovate
• God does not shake to break but to restore and refresh
• God wants to shake your world for all the right reasons
• He wants you to see your life as meaningful and not futile and there’s nothing I can do to make that change in your thinking – you have to decide it – decide that your life is not futile.
• Get excited about how Jesus can use you no matter what your circumstances are
• Get excited about the fact that all you are going through right now is making you stronger
• Get excited about the fact that your life is strategically positioned to glorify God and all you have to do is make the right choices
• Choose to worship Him
• Choose to get involved in the life of the church
• Choose to be generous in all ways
• Choose to love, choose to reach out, choose to be like salt that brings flavour.
• Choose Jesus, choose life, choose to be rooted in the Word and when you choose right you live right, and when you live right you shine right and when you shine right you represent the Kingdom that is advancing throughout the earth...
• The kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ who died for you, rose again to set you free and lives so that we can worship Him and trust Him and love Him with all our hearts
• Shake your world, by doing all these things and God gets the glory.
