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?
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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.
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
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 1st 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.
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