Our
sermon theme for the month of June has been:Greater and the key thought of the
series has been: God wants to do something greater in your life.
It
really doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done.
If you’ve made a mess of your life, or
if you think you’re the best; God wants to do something greater in your life;
something far beyond your imagination.
As
we seek to live into the Greater life that God has for us, some people—some
really good people—will try to convince us that we’re nuts for wanting to
peruse God’s plan for our lives, and they will try to tell us not to go
overboard with this God thing.
Other
times spiritual forces will be at work trying to prevent you from living into
God’s greater plan.
Peter
reminds us that: “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for
someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8,
NIV)
The
devil does not want you, under any circumstances, to live into God’s greater
plan, and he will do whatever he can to mess you up; he will do whatever he can
to keep you from pursuing God’s greater plan for your life.
The
word enemy in this verse actually means “prosecuting attorney”.
Satan is doing all that he can do to
accuse us, to remind us that we are good for nothing sinners who are not worthy
of living the greater life.
(He
is partially correct; we are good for nothing sinners, but Jesus said if the son sets you free you are truly free...)
So
what are we to do when the enemy is attacking us? In the very next verse, Peter
tells us to: “Resist
him, standing firm in the faith…” (1 Peter 5:9, NIV)
To
defeat the attacks of our enemy, we are to stand firm in the faith and remember
that: “the one
who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John
4:4, NIV)
Let’s
look at a time that this was true in the life of Elisha. If you have a bible,
flip over to 2nd Kings Chapter 6.
Once
again, we have 2 kings at odds with each other. This time it happens to be the
King of Aram who is at odds with the king of Israel.
Look
at verse 8 of 2 kings 6: “When the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he would confer
with his officers and say, “We will mobilize our forces at such and such a
place.”
9 But immediately
Elisha, the man of God, would warn the king of Israel, “Do not go near that
place, for the Arameans are planning to mobilize their troops there.”
10 So the king of
Israel would send word to the place indicated by the man of God.
Time and again
Elisha warned the king, so that he would be on the alert there. (2
Kings 6:8-10, NLT2)
Let’s
pause here and make sure we understand what’s going on.
The
king of Aram wanted to attack the King of Israel, but each time he mobilized
his troops, Elisha tweeted the King of Israel to tell him not to go to a
particular place, because they would be attacked.
This
seemed to be a regular occurrence; whenever the King of Aram prepared to attack
the King of Israel, Elisha would find out about it, and provide the King of
Israel with the information and they would evade an attack from Aram.
As you can
imagine, the King of Aram is none too happy.
He
suspects that someone in his company is posting status updates on their
Facebook page for the King of Israel to see, so he demands his officials tell
him who the informant is.
The
king is informed that no one in his company is the informant, but:
“Elisha, the prophet
in Israel, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of
your bedroom!” (2 Kings 6:12, NLT2)
At this news, the king of Aram is
furious and demands to know where Elisha is and after a search party reports
back to the king, he is informed that “Elisha is at Dothan.” (2
Kings 6:13, NLT2)
“So one night the king of Aram sent a great army
with many chariots and horses to surround the city.” (2 Kings 6:14,
NLT2)
The next morning, Elisha’s servant
gets up early and opens up his iPad to the Dothan daily news app, when all of a
sudden he looks up and noticed that: “there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere.” (2 Kings 6:15, NLT2)
After Elisha’s servant picks his jaw
up off the floor, he turns to Elisha and said: “Oh, sir, what will we do now?” (2
Kings 6:15, NLT2)
Ever had one of those moments? Ever
been so paralyzed by fear that you didn’t know what to do?
ILLUSTRATION-
When I was attending Youth group at my home church, 4 or 5 of us went on a work
weekend trip to Bar None Christian camp with our youth intern, Pastor Tim
Johnson.
On the way back home from Bar None
camp, we stopped in Penniac to go swimming.
More specifically, we stopped in
Penniac to jump off the bridge and go swimming.
As we approached our destination, I was
excited to give it a try, but when I arrived and saw how far down it was, I was
frightened beyond words.
Somehow I managed to climb up on the
top rail of the bridge, and stood there, looking at the water below.
I was scared to death—“what if I broke my leg?”
I thought? Or worse than that: “What If I died?”
As I was contemplating all of that,
my friends had jumped off the bridge at least 5 times… and here I was standing
on the rail holding on for dear life.
I was paralyzed with fear and
couldn’t jump off the bridge from that location, so I climbed over the rail on
to the lower rail—AKA the wossie bar—and stood there, again, scared to death.
As I was watching my friends jump
off the bridge, I saw out of the corner of my eye that a TV crew had shown up
and had begun filming the bridge jumpers.
Now I had to jump! I couldn’t look
like a fool for the TV camera, so I plugged my nose, prayed to Jesus and
stepped off the rail out into thin air…
For some reason, instead of hitting
the water straight on like this; I actually hit the water in a seated position.
When I came up out of the water, I
let out a blood curdling scream and vowed never to do that again.
In that moment I was overcome with
fear. All I could think about was the worst case scenario.
Elisha’s servant felt the same way. They
were about to become lunch and he was scared out of his mind.
But Elisha wasn’t the least bit
afraid. It’s not that he had a death wish; he simply understood that: “the one who is in
you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4, NIV)
To use Elisha’s own words: “Don’t be
afraid!...For there are more on our side than on theirs!” (2 Kings
4:16, NLT2)
Elisha understood that God is
greater and that He wanted to do something greater in their lives, so: “Elisha prayed, “O
Lord, open his eyes and let him see!”
The
Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the
hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.” (2 Kings 6:17, NLT2)
Author and Pastor Steven Furtick
writes: “Elisha
doesn’t pray that God will send down fire as Elijah did on Mount Carmel. And he
doesn’t pray that God will send a larger army to their rescue.
He just prays that the servant will
see what God already has in place.” (Furtick, 2012, 168)
Elisha reminded his servant that
they were not alone. They never were alone, nor would they ever be alone. “Heaven’s army
surrounds the army that surrounds them.”
(Ibid)
I think we can take a lesson from
this story. When we feel like we’re about to throw in the towel, we need God to
open our eyes and help us see that we’re not alone.
When we’re being cornered by the
enemy’s attacks, we need God to open our eyes to help us see that we are not
alone.
When people are reminding us that
we’ve dropped the ball and are completely worthless, we need God to open our
eyes and help us see that: “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the
world.” (1 John 4:4, NIV)
We need to understand that the Holy
Spirit of God is living inside of us and we are His, regardless of what we—or
anyone else—might think.
ILLUSTRATION- A
week or so ago, I was working through some issues in my life, when God reminded
me of “Who I am in Christ.”
Allow me to share a few examples with you:
Ø I
am God’s Child (John 1:12)
Ø I
am Christ’s friend (John 15:15)
Ø I
am free from condemnation (Romans 8:1-2)
Ø I
have been redeemed and forgiven (Colossians 1:14)
Ø I
am God’s masterpiece (Eph. 2:10)
Ø I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Ph. 4:13)
As I allowed God’s word to open my
eyes, it was clear that I was focusing on the wrong things; what I needed was a
reminder of who I am in Christ.
Friends, as we seek to live into
God’s greater life, we need to understand that we are not alone; we need to
understand that God is with us every second of every day.
We need God to open our eyes to help
us see that: “We
are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are
perplexed, but not driven to despair.
9 We
are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are
not destroyed.” (2 Cor. 4:8-9, NLT2)
We need God to open our eyes and help us see that: “the one who is in
you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4, NIV)
So here’s what I’m praying will happen today:
Some of us, before we can live into the greater life God has for us,
need to know who we are in Christ.
We need to allow what God says about us to permeate our thinking; so
if you need God to show up in your life, I’m going to ask you to come up and
pick up the “Who
I am in Christ” list that I referenced a few moments ago.
I’m going to ask you to take this paper and put it on your fridge, put
it in your car, or strap it to a pound of bacon; wherever you will see it
often, that’s where I want you to put it.
I want you to allow these trusts to penetrate your heart, your mind,
and your life.
You are more than your past, and you are more than what--or who--the
prosecuting attorney says that you are.
God
wants to do something greater in your life, and it begins as you
understand your true identity in Christ...
The second thing I’m praying will happen is for some of us to pray “Open my
eyes Lord.”
As we ask God to open our eyes we will begin to see people as He
sees people, we will begin to see our situations as He sees them, we will live
as He wants us to live.
So, two things today: Some of us are going to come up and get the Who I am in
Christ paper off the alter, and the rest of us are going to Pray:
Lord Open our eyes.
Let’s remember that God wants to do something greater in your life,
and this begins as we ask God to open our eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment