NEXT STEPS
Preached 26 September 2004
Naylor UMC
Preached 26 September 2004
Naylor UMC
I. Tired
Turn in Bibles to Psalm 46 -- verse 10: "Be still and know that I am God"
I am tired. It has been a busy few weeks. First preparing for Charge Conference and getting together all the forms and having all the meetings and trying to get everything entered into the computer.
And then we had homecoming and revival, and it took a lot of time to prepare for that. I made flyers and called people and spent a lot of time getting prepared.
To top it all off, we are at the end of our fiscal year at Moody AFB, and we are being inundated with a lot of projects because of the end of the year and because of delays associated with the hurricanes. And I've spent several days working in Kim's new business trying to help her build fences and sink fenceposts and create barriers and do any number of other things. So, it has finally just caught up with me.
When I got home yesterday evening, Kim started preparing supper while all I could do was just sit down. I told her I had "heart dropsy" -- I had dropped and didn't have the heart to get back up. I am tired.
So, when God led me to this verse, I just knew it was a blessing from God. Yes, God, I thought, that is just what I need. Be still. Enter into my rest. Take some time and refresh your body and your mind. God, you are so good. You knew I needed to rest and to be still.
But God said, that's not what I'm talking about. You need to look at what I'm telling you in the context of the whole passage. So I went back and looked up Psalm 46 and read it and studied it in context, and I think God was giving me a different meaning for verse 10. Yes, it does mean to be still, to enter God's rest, to just seek refuge in His presence, but it also has a different meaning that you can see if you read the whole passage. Look now with me at verse 1 in Psalm 46 and we will go through this together as I show you what God showed me. As we go through this, keep in mind verse 10, because it is the key verse, the climax verse, of the passage.
Turn in Bibles to Psalm 46 -- verse 10: "Be still and know that I am God"
I am tired. It has been a busy few weeks. First preparing for Charge Conference and getting together all the forms and having all the meetings and trying to get everything entered into the computer.
And then we had homecoming and revival, and it took a lot of time to prepare for that. I made flyers and called people and spent a lot of time getting prepared.
To top it all off, we are at the end of our fiscal year at Moody AFB, and we are being inundated with a lot of projects because of the end of the year and because of delays associated with the hurricanes. And I've spent several days working in Kim's new business trying to help her build fences and sink fenceposts and create barriers and do any number of other things. So, it has finally just caught up with me.
When I got home yesterday evening, Kim started preparing supper while all I could do was just sit down. I told her I had "heart dropsy" -- I had dropped and didn't have the heart to get back up. I am tired.
So, when God led me to this verse, I just knew it was a blessing from God. Yes, God, I thought, that is just what I need. Be still. Enter into my rest. Take some time and refresh your body and your mind. God, you are so good. You knew I needed to rest and to be still.
But God said, that's not what I'm talking about. You need to look at what I'm telling you in the context of the whole passage. So I went back and looked up Psalm 46 and read it and studied it in context, and I think God was giving me a different meaning for verse 10. Yes, it does mean to be still, to enter God's rest, to just seek refuge in His presence, but it also has a different meaning that you can see if you read the whole passage. Look now with me at verse 1 in Psalm 46 and we will go through this together as I show you what God showed me. As we go through this, keep in mind verse 10, because it is the key verse, the climax verse, of the passage.
II. Scripture
Psalm 46
1. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. [This verse fits with our normal understanding of "be still." It means that we can seek refuge in God, rest in His presence. He is our strength and our help in times of trouble, and we can seek sanctuary with Him. Think of all the hurricane evacuees that have been coming into our area. What do we call them? Refugees. People seeking refuge from the storm. God is telling us here to seek refuge in Him. Be still -- seek refuge -- and know that I am God.]
2. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3. though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah
[When we seek refuge in God, when we trust in His strength, when we know that God is always there to help us, no matter what our trouble is, then we do not have to fear. The hurricane can come. The storms can come. We can have problems at home or at school or at work and we don't have to fear if we only are still and trust in God and His help in times of trouble.]
4. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
6. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
[There is not a river in Jerusalem. There are rivers in all the other major cities that we read about in the Bible -- Babylon, Damascus -- but there is no river in Jerusalem. Here God is referring to His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is a river of living water that wells up within us and restores our soul. Jesus said that if we drank from this river, from this living water, that we would never thirst. If we are still before God, if we trust in Him, then we will be refreshed with the living water that flows from Jesus.]
7. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
8. Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
10. "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
[Here we see the second meaning of "Be still, and know that I am God." When I read this verse in context, verse 8 just leaped out at me. "Come and see the works of the Lord." God was telling me that I should be still, I should quit striving, I should quit trying to do things in my own strength, and know that He is God through the works that He would do. Too often, we try to do too much in our own strength. We wear ourselves out, not just at our secular jobs, but in our spiritual lives, trying to do God's work for Him.
Think about the revival we had this week. I spent more time preparing for this revival than any other. I prepared flyers and mailed them to all the Methodist churches in Lowndes County and in Homerville. I called several pastors and talked to others personally inviting them and their members to the revival. I made a lot of personal contacts, inviting people to church. I prayed and prayed that a lot of people would come. But on Monday night, I was seriously disappointed. We had a total turnout of 11 people, counting the revival preacher, his wife, and his guest.
But let me ask you a question. Let's say this sanctuary had been filled with people Monday night. Let's say there would have been standing room only. Who would have gotten the glory? I might have given God the glory with my lips, but in my heart I would have been lying. I would have claimed credit for the people coming. After all, it was I who made up and mailed the flyers and invited the people. I was trying to make a revival happen in my own strength.
God showing me that I was trying to make a revival on my own without Him. We can call them revivals but we cannot make it happen until we are still and know and trust that God is going to bring it about. This is what God was trying to show me in Psalm 46.
A lot of times in our lives and in our churches, we try to give God instructions. We come up with our plans and then say, "God bless it." We try to come up with ministry ideas on our own and implement them in our own strength. That's not the way God works. God wants us to be still and let Him work through us. He doesn't need us to work on our own. He wants us to surrender ourselves and trust in His strength.
As I was studying this, God showed me how others had done this. He pointed out to me that the Apostle Paul never saved a single person -- John Wesley never saved a single person -- Billy Graham has never saved a single person. God did it through the. Only God can save a person. Only God can accomplish ministry. We cannot do it on our own. God just wants us to be still and let Him do it through us.
In the Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren starts out, line number one, with the phrase: "It's not about us." And that's true in a couple of senses. Everything in the world should focus on God and not us. But it's also true when we consider ministry and God's work here on earth. It's not about us and what we are going to do for God. It's about God and what He is going to do through us. As it says in the Bible, "not by power nor by might but by My Spirit."
Psalm 46
1. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. [This verse fits with our normal understanding of "be still." It means that we can seek refuge in God, rest in His presence. He is our strength and our help in times of trouble, and we can seek sanctuary with Him. Think of all the hurricane evacuees that have been coming into our area. What do we call them? Refugees. People seeking refuge from the storm. God is telling us here to seek refuge in Him. Be still -- seek refuge -- and know that I am God.]
2. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3. though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah
[When we seek refuge in God, when we trust in His strength, when we know that God is always there to help us, no matter what our trouble is, then we do not have to fear. The hurricane can come. The storms can come. We can have problems at home or at school or at work and we don't have to fear if we only are still and trust in God and His help in times of trouble.]
4. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
6. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
[There is not a river in Jerusalem. There are rivers in all the other major cities that we read about in the Bible -- Babylon, Damascus -- but there is no river in Jerusalem. Here God is referring to His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is a river of living water that wells up within us and restores our soul. Jesus said that if we drank from this river, from this living water, that we would never thirst. If we are still before God, if we trust in Him, then we will be refreshed with the living water that flows from Jesus.]
7. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
8. Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
10. "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
[Here we see the second meaning of "Be still, and know that I am God." When I read this verse in context, verse 8 just leaped out at me. "Come and see the works of the Lord." God was telling me that I should be still, I should quit striving, I should quit trying to do things in my own strength, and know that He is God through the works that He would do. Too often, we try to do too much in our own strength. We wear ourselves out, not just at our secular jobs, but in our spiritual lives, trying to do God's work for Him.
Think about the revival we had this week. I spent more time preparing for this revival than any other. I prepared flyers and mailed them to all the Methodist churches in Lowndes County and in Homerville. I called several pastors and talked to others personally inviting them and their members to the revival. I made a lot of personal contacts, inviting people to church. I prayed and prayed that a lot of people would come. But on Monday night, I was seriously disappointed. We had a total turnout of 11 people, counting the revival preacher, his wife, and his guest.
But let me ask you a question. Let's say this sanctuary had been filled with people Monday night. Let's say there would have been standing room only. Who would have gotten the glory? I might have given God the glory with my lips, but in my heart I would have been lying. I would have claimed credit for the people coming. After all, it was I who made up and mailed the flyers and invited the people. I was trying to make a revival happen in my own strength.
God showing me that I was trying to make a revival on my own without Him. We can call them revivals but we cannot make it happen until we are still and know and trust that God is going to bring it about. This is what God was trying to show me in Psalm 46.
A lot of times in our lives and in our churches, we try to give God instructions. We come up with our plans and then say, "God bless it." We try to come up with ministry ideas on our own and implement them in our own strength. That's not the way God works. God wants us to be still and let Him work through us. He doesn't need us to work on our own. He wants us to surrender ourselves and trust in His strength.
As I was studying this, God showed me how others had done this. He pointed out to me that the Apostle Paul never saved a single person -- John Wesley never saved a single person -- Billy Graham has never saved a single person. God did it through the. Only God can save a person. Only God can accomplish ministry. We cannot do it on our own. God just wants us to be still and let Him do it through us.
In the Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren starts out, line number one, with the phrase: "It's not about us." And that's true in a couple of senses. Everything in the world should focus on God and not us. But it's also true when we consider ministry and God's work here on earth. It's not about us and what we are going to do for God. It's about God and what He is going to do through us. As it says in the Bible, "not by power nor by might but by My Spirit."
III. Closing
It's time for us to grow in Christ. It's time for us to be weaned -- to move from milk to meat.
This means we stop trying to do things on our own and let God work through us. Immature Christians think they have to do it all. Mature Christians surrender themselves and let God work through them.
Corrie Ten Boom relates story of paratrooper instructor in one of her books. After he got his men trained and ready for their mission, after he had his men in the plane and they were over the battlefield, he gave four commands. Our Lord gives us the same commands today.
First -- Attention! -- Lift up your eyes (John 4:35)
Second -- Stand in the door! -- Look upon the fields, for they are white already to harvest (John 4:35)
Third -- Hook up! -- Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit (John 20:22)
Fourth -- Follow me! -- I will make you fishers of men (Mark 1:17)
Corrie said in her book that it is not our task to give God instructions. We are to simply report for duty.
Someone once said, "you are not called to convince anyone -- you are simply called to be a channel for the Spirit of God to flow through -- you can never be anything else, even though you may think so at times -- follow the pathway of obedience, let the Word of God do its own work, and you will be used by God far beyond your powers"
Do you want to see God use you and use this church far beyond your powers? Then be still and know that He is God.
Let us pray
It's time for us to grow in Christ. It's time for us to be weaned -- to move from milk to meat.
This means we stop trying to do things on our own and let God work through us. Immature Christians think they have to do it all. Mature Christians surrender themselves and let God work through them.
Corrie Ten Boom relates story of paratrooper instructor in one of her books. After he got his men trained and ready for their mission, after he had his men in the plane and they were over the battlefield, he gave four commands. Our Lord gives us the same commands today.
First -- Attention! -- Lift up your eyes (John 4:35)
Second -- Stand in the door! -- Look upon the fields, for they are white already to harvest (John 4:35)
Third -- Hook up! -- Be ye filled with the Holy Spirit (John 20:22)
Fourth -- Follow me! -- I will make you fishers of men (Mark 1:17)
Corrie said in her book that it is not our task to give God instructions. We are to simply report for duty.
Someone once said, "you are not called to convince anyone -- you are simply called to be a channel for the Spirit of God to flow through -- you can never be anything else, even though you may think so at times -- follow the pathway of obedience, let the Word of God do its own work, and you will be used by God far beyond your powers"
Do you want to see God use you and use this church far beyond your powers? Then be still and know that He is God.
Let us pray
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