CAN YOU STAND THE SHAKE?

Is your personal relationship with the Lord one of those “things which cannot be shaken?”

Do you know some lukewarm, fence sitting Christians who don’t realize how shaky ground is where they’re standing?

We need to pray for opportunities to warn such people and point them to the solution to the crisis they may not realize they are in. Please do not hesitate to send them a link to ajl-heart.blogspot.com in hopes they will read these teachings and be strengthened in their love for and commitment to Jesus.

Talking about what the Lord did at Mt. Sinai, the writer of Hebrews says,

Heb 12:26   whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven."

27   Now this, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, … that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

One of Paul’s prayers for the Ephesians shows us how to get rock solid, unshakable. Let’s take a very close look at this prayer and see what the Lord may speak to our hearts.

Ephesians 3:16    that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,

17   that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18   may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height--

19   to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

To go through these verses starting with the Grek word for comprehend.

 Ephesians 3:16    that He would grant you

Paul asks God to give us a grant, not a loan. Both have specific accountability:

Ø Grant – must be used for intended purpose

Ø Loan – must be paid back with interest.

For example, the Baptism in the HG – a grant given for a purpose,

Acts 1: 8    But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Ephesians 3:16  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, 

We get a GRANT - It’s a gift given, “according to the riches of His glory.” Is there any limit to the riches of His Glory? Of course not! but are we using that grant for the specific purpose given?

Now let’s take a look at the things Paul prays God will grant us.

v to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man

Anyone who says that living as a disciple of Jesus is easy does not know what he is talking about. It is impossible to walk, “worthy of the calling with which you were called,” by mere human will power and intestinal fortitude. (see Eph 4:1-3). This picture describes the war going on for our soul. (Suggested reading, "The Release of the Spirit by Watchman Nee).

What does Paul mean by, “the inner man?” It's the soul, the seat of conscience, of will and emotions. It is that part of us that is being renewed, sanctified and saved.

Ø It is that battleground where the Holy Spirit within you and your old dying fleshly nature and the enemy of our souls wage war.

Ø What Jesus has conquered in you needs to be well fortified.

Ø As the Lord remakes us from the inside out, the stuff inside that has been made new should be expanding & the forces contrary to that staying in retreat.

Ø This renewed “inner man” needs the strength to withstand the counter offensives of the flesh and of the enemy.

Ø What happens when “your buttons get pushed?”

The list of things that Paul is asking God to grant us is progressive. Without this strength in the inner man, we couldn’t receive or maintain the rest.

v that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith

Not addressed to unbelievers, this statement is to Christians, to people who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There is a process going on the heart of every believer. Jesus will conquer all the ground we yield to Him. The portion of our hearts where He lives should be increasing all the time.

Isa 54:2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; (KJV)

Ø We don’t want to just maintain a nice little room for the Lord to hang out in, a tidy little corner of our lives reserved just for God.

Ø We don’t necessarily go get a big loan and add on to our house.

Ø Your heart is much bigger than that Sunday morning attitude some people adopt to fulfill their religious obligation.

Ø The Lord desires to fill it and make it bigger.

Ø Faith is something that grows.

Ø Our capacity for God, our ability to yield to His leading, the amount and quality of fruits of the Spirit in our lives, and our relationship with the Lord and His people, will grow.

v that you, being rooted and grounded in love

There is no doubt about who Paul is talking to. As we said in Brooklyn, “Hay you wid’da hair on ya head, an you too, baldy!”

Where are a tree’s roots? Hopefully, in the ground. We need to be sure our roots keep growing deeper and deeper in God. We also need to be sure they are in good ground, in a stable place. When bad storms, bad circumstances, come, many trees go down. Some trees are as deep and wide below ground as they are above, these stay put, like the giant sequoias on the west coast. The roots go deep and branch out in all directions. What’s the ground made of that He tells us to be rooted in? Love, who is love? God!

This phrase goes to the core of your being, to the deepest recesses of what motivates you.

Ø The love of God is what we want to fill that place.

Ø A test of how you are doing in this process is to look at your attitudes and actions compared to 1 Cor. 13, especially when under pressure.

Ø Allow the Spirit of the Lord to dig down and reveal what you are capable of dealing with.

Ø Life has plenty of storms and we shake in the wind.

Ø The Lord does a work in your life and tests it (shakes things up a bit).

Ø There are also the wonderful winds of the Spirit that refill us with His love and reveal His character to our inner man.

We must be strengthened in the inner man; we must be rooted and grounded in love before we …

Verse 18, may be able to comprehend…

This is a get ready phrase. We poured the foundation. We need it solid to receive this 1^st thing Paul prayed for us to have.

Webster’s definition of comprehend is just to understand. This is much less than what the Greek says: katalambano; which means to take eagerly, to seize, possess, to apprehend, attain, come upon, find, obtain, perceive, overtake. Strong action verbs, not just a passive intellectual understanding.

Paul is praying that we really get a hold of something. The ability to grasp spiritual things requires Grace. This isn’t something we can do with our own human capabilities. If it was Paul wouldn’t have to ask the Lord to grant it to us. Grace is not just unmerited favor; it is also Divine enablement.

God’s Grace is available for us to seize this comprehension down deep in our gut. And what is it that we need to comprehend?

  

v Comprehend the width and length and depth and height

Our limited brain power cannot grasp the two abstract concepts crucial to knowing God: eternity and infinity.

Ø It is only by faith that we understand that God is Eternal, that we were created in His image and therefore also have an eternal soul.

Ø By faith we understand that history has an infinite length, as does the future.

Ø Now, to really short circuit the brain, God’s love, God’s Grace, God’s power, God is bigger than the infinite dimensions of the ever-expanding universe He created.

David prayed,

Ps 139:17   How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

18   If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;

So how do we put a box around this and measure it? YOU CAN’T PUT GOD IN A BOX.

Ø The spiritual truth behind the natural analogy is this: to stand the shake, we must comprehend that this love we are rooted and grounded in is

ü infinitely long,

ü infinitely wide,

ü infinitely deep and infinitely high –

ü It extends beyond creation.

Ø God gives us, His kids, the Grace, the supernatural ability, to “katalambano, “to grasp this eagerly.

This knowing, this understanding of His love is not just the ability to memorize a definition, its katalambano. Rooted and grounded in that you can stand some shaking.  The following verses from an old hymn best sum up our response:

v EPH 3:19    to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge

This stirs up the old chorus, Such Love; it leaves us in wonder and a life quest to grasp the simplicity of God’s love for mankind.

Psalm 8:4   What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?

5   For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor.

6   You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet,

This verse is a paradox. How can you know something that is beyond knowing? I love it when God short circuits our finite human brain power. Thus, the verb “to know” must be on a level beyond an intellectual understanding.

Such Love, such love, such wondrous love

Such Love, such love, such wondrous love

That God should love, a sinner such as I

How wonderful is love like this

v that you may be filled with all the fullness of God

Everything else in these 4 verses builds to this statement.

Ø Every believer in Jesus goes through the process of death to self.

Ø As the old nature decreases, there is more of a filling with God.

Ø There are 3 choices as to what we are filled with:        self, God or demons.

Ø The shaking the Lord allows to happen in our lives shows us what we are filled with.

Just being a Spirit Filled believer is not the same as what this phrase refers to. There are many wonderful Christian people who have not received the Baptism of the Holy Ghost yet their lives testify that God fills them. Paul went through a lengthy and difficult sanctification process before he could pen this phrase. I thank God we are not all called to shakings like Paul’s, but we do have to go through the process.

Col 2:9   For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;

10   and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

Look again at these 4 verses. (Go back to them and re read) See the progression; see the process. If we understand (katalambano) everything up to the last phrase we can handle such a filling, we can stand any shaking.

May the Lord Jesus grant us and those lukewarm folks we know and love, all this prayer asks for. Reception of the grant is to repent and let Him have the junk in your life He’s bringing to your attention.

SINGING A NEW SONG – EVERYDAY TIMES FOR WORSHIP

PSALM 96   Sing A New Song of Praise to God 

This Psalm is so uplifting. And when we follow through with things said for us to do it lifts our spirits and highly motivates us to look for opportunities to “Tell somebody about Jesus.” When you look at how you spend your downtime you'll find so many opportunities to express your heart to the Lord.

There are some quotes from Matthew Henry's commentary laced in this lesson. Anything in italics is from https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/psalms/96.html

Psalm 96:1   Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth.

Matthew Henry said concerning this new song,

“Sing a new song, an excellent song, the product of new affections, clothed with new expressions… the newness of a song recommends it; for there we expect something surprising. A new song is a song for new favors, for those compassions which are new every morning… A new song is a song that shall be ever new, and shall never wax old nor vanish away; it is an everlasting song that shall never be antiquated or out of date.”

Lamentations 3:22    Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”

Me with my old Martin 12 named Eva

 Good music is not mechanical, not intellectual, not just ones’ ability to play the right note at the right time. Rather it emanates from the heart, it flows with emotion. When was the last time you turned the radio off in the car and just talked with Jesus while going down the road? Do you break out into a song in the shower, or while walking? Do you let your thoughts drift to praising the Lord from your heart? If you’re a musician, do you forget about written music and just play from your heart and maybe make up some words to go with whatever your fingers are doing? Sometimes an old song wells up inside and you worship with it with a freshness like eating Grandma’s Apple Pie while still hot. Sometimes church worship leaders are moved way off script and a new song comes out, a Holy Spirit led, spontaneous new song. I’ve been in services where people with little to no vocal talent will sing a new song prophetically. 

Take a minute right now, to sing praises to the Lord. You can praise in tongues or your native language. You can be very quiet and private if you must, or as loud as you like, just let the Spirit flow through your lips in praise to the Father and Son. Don’t worry what it sounds like. If you're a musician it's such a blessing to let it flow from your heart through your instrument.

 Psalm 96:2   Sing to the Lord, bless His name; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.

Let all the earth sing this song, … all that are redeemed from the earth, learn and sing this new song. This is a prophecy of the calling of the Gentiles; all the earth shall have this new song put into their mouths, shall have both cause and call to sing it.

The 2^nd phrase of this verse, "bless His name;" has particular meaning that we so often overlook. The Hebrew word used in this verse is barak, which is translated to kneel down, to praise, to salute, to thank. Kneeling is sign of submission to whoever you kneel before. It could be said that blessing God is to submit to or placing ourselves at His service. When we bless other people we are either giving them some gift or asking, “How can I be of service to you?”

The second part of the verse, "Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day," and the next verse, take these concepts to another context. We are admonished to speak the good news of salvation daily. May the Lord open up the doors of people’s hearts to receive this good news as we speak it.

3   Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.

Let the subject-matter of this song be his salvation, the great salvation which was to be wrought out by the Lord Jesus; that must be shown forth as the cause of this joy and praise.

Are we as excited about getting saved as we were when that 1^st happened? I was so excited that on the night I got saved (Dec. 17,1971) I walked up the hill, on middle of the main road full of nice homes, that went up to the college, in knee deep snow, jumping and shouting praise to God in the middle of the night. For the rest of my time in college, along with other students, we did all kinds of crazy stuff to tell people about Jesus. Think about what this verse says to do, and the next verses tell us why.

Psalm 96:4   For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.

The Lord is great, and therefore greatly to be praised  and to be feared, great and honorable to his attendants, great and terrible to his adversaries. Even the new song proclaims God great as well as good; for his goodness is his glory … He is great in his sovereignty over all that pretend to be deities; none dare vie with him: He is to be feared above all gods —all princes, who were the nations.

 Proverbs 1:7   The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

 Deut. 10:12   “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

13   and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

Think of who we consider great in American society? Are they made into idols. Are Music stars, sports stars, some politicians, some preachers and those who do good things for society idolized? Do we use the word “great” too flippantly? Of course we should do whatever we do striving for excellence but who gets the glory for the good things we do?

We need to be careful not to take compliments too personally, all glory goes to God who enabled us to do whatever was worthy of the compliment.

Psalm 96:5   For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the Lord made the heavens.

https://www.heartlight.org/gallery/5018.html

The Lord made the heavens and all their hosts; they are the work of his fingers (Ps. 8:3 )… The gods of the nations were…the creatures of men’s fancies; but our God is the Creator of the sun, moon, and stars, those lights of heaven,. He is great in the manifestation of his glory… among his angels in heaven and his saints on earth

My wife read a fascinating book called “The Improbable Planet.” by High Ross. With deep scientific analysis, his conclusion is that all of the universe was created and set in motion in such a way as to make life possible on this Earth. Any anomalies to the way God created it and Earth could not sustain life. Just think of it, all of creation exists because God spoke it into existence with such perfection because He loves us and wants a loving relationship with mankind.

Psalm 8:3   When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

4   What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?

Splendor and majesty are before him, in his immediate presence above, where the angels cover their faces, as unable to bear the dazzling luster of his glory. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary, both that above and this below. In God there is everything that is awful and yet everything that is amiable. If we attend Him in His sanctuary, we shall behold His beauty, for God is love, and experience His strength, for He is our rock. Let us therefore go forth in His strength, enamored with His beauty.

Webster defines majesty as sovereign power, authority, or dignity. It’s great for us to be servants of “GOOD KING JESUS.” And to honor Him as our Lord. King David must have had an experiential understanding of the 2^nd part of this verse when he also wrote,

Psalm 27:4   One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple.

Psalm 96:7   Give to the Lord, O families of the nations, give to the Lord the honor and strength that He should have.

8   Give to the Lord the honor of His name. Bring a gift and come into His holy place.

9   Worship the Lord in holy clothing. May all the earth shake in fear before Him.

The Hebrew word for give is also translated ascribe which isn’t a word we use every day. Webster defines it as to refer to a supposed cause, source, or author : to say or think that (something) is caused by, comes from, or is associated with a particular person or thing. The instructions in these verses are pretty specific. Simply stated, we are all to recognize that all glory and strength comes from God. The response to that recognition is to come to into the courts of the King with an offering and with worship. He cloths us in His Holiness, remember the gold plaque on the Priests turban that said Holiness to the Lord.

Matthew 28:19   Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Philippians 2:11   And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The message we are entrusted to share with all the earth is so simple even a young child can grasp it and respond. Yet it’s so profound that it goes over the heads of even very brilliant adults. People need to understand that whether they accept the truth or not, the Lord is God, He is the absolute ruler of the universe, and that His judgment will reflect the loving heart of Jesus who came to seek and to save the lost. This truth is established as unchangeable as that we are on this planet, that what goes up will come down. Even the folks up there in the ISS are under the sovereignty of God. Because we believe in Jesus we have a firm anchor for our lives, we should realize this be stable, unshakeable, standing in faith through all circumstances. Now that’s a freedom to shout about. Matthew Henry put it this way,

The natural world shall be established. The standing of the world, and its stability, are owing to the mediation of Christ. Sin had given it a shock, and still threatens it; but Christ, as Redeemer, upholds all things, and preserves the course of nature… Let them be told that Christ’s government will be incontestably just and righteous: He shall judge the people righteously, judge the world with righteousness, and with his truth,

The pictures below are all that needs to be said about verses 11 & 12

Psalm 96:13   before the Lord. For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with His truth.

https://ichallengeyouproject.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/he-is-coming-2/

That he shall rule in the hearts and consciences of men by the commanding power of truth and the Spirit of righteousness and sanctification. When Pilate asked our Savior, Art thou a king? he answered, ‘For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth’ (Jn. 18:37 ); for he rules by truth, commands men’s wills by informing their judgments aright. Let them be told that his coming draws nigh, that this King, this Judge, stands before the door; for HE comes, for HE comes.

The lyrics of this old song sum it all up, The Lord Reigns by Lindell Cooly . 

Listen to it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=H9PdovuZURg

The Lord reigns, The Lord reigns, The Lord reigns

Let the earth rejoice, Let the earth rejoice, Let the earth rejoice

Let the people be glad, That our God reigns

A fire goes before Him, And burns up all His enemies

The hills melt like wax, At the presence of the Lord, At the presence of the Lord

The heavens declare His righteousness

The people see His glory,

For You O Lord are exalted Over all the earth, Over all the earth

Our God reigns, Our God reigns

© 1980 Scripture In Song