I was driving home recently from a friend’s baby shower
when a great worship song came on the radio.
That day had already been such a wonderful Sunday. I went to church, spent my drive to the baby shower
in prayer, caught up with some great friends, and I was filled with joy. The song “Great I AM” came on the radio and I
was just like, oh man this is such a great praise song describing the glory,
power, and love of God. I couldn’t help but
sing…horribly, but I started to sing like never before….loud, proud and off key!
Then, the station started fading out,
first with a little static blotting out a few words here and there. Then, it started completely covering up the
entire song. At first, I was disappointed,
but I thought, “you know what, I’m gonna keep singing.” So I did.
And I immediately felt God throw in a little teaching moment as He
reminded me of what I’d been struggling all week to do. I could hear Him telling me in my soul that,
“No matter how loud life gets with cultural noise, drama, craziness, busyness, sinfulness…..all
the static that tries to quench His spirit within me, I need to rise above that
and push upward to hear Him, praise Him, be bolder and louder than the noise. No matter how much I think my voice may not be
perfect or my day may not be how I think it should be, I still need to surpass
the hectic noise and sing out in praise, being completely mindful of that fact
that there is always more at work than what I can see in the world.
I was never more reminded of this when one day at work I
was super busy and super stressed. I
couldn’t keep up, I was running behind, I was taking on hard cases and knew
that it was all adding up to a 14 hour work day. I got
crabby and upset and focused on the hectic scene. Somehow in that whole day I had missed a
truly beautiful scene of the staff comforting, crying with, and sharing stories
with a really wonderful client who had suddenly just lost her son. I was drowning in myself as they were lifting
her up. I don’t want to be so caught up
in the noise of the day that doesn’t really matter in the long run, and miss
out on the beauty of what we are here to do…to love one another. To look beyond the rush of the day and let
God’s spirit show me what to be concerned about and what to be fired up
about. To be spent on the eternal and
not consumed by the temporal.
I was reminded on this subject in my Bible readings this week. Praise God for never growing tired of trying
to get me to listen to Him! Over and over God was drawing me to places in
scripture where He made the earth shake, and to where the temple veil was
torn. Of course the obvious one that
puts the two together is Matthew 27:51 right after Jesus died: “At that moment
the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the
tombs broke open.” Then there is Acts
4:29-31 after Peter and some disciples had been released from jail and
persecution from the priests and scribes, “’Now, Lord, consider their threats and
enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform
signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’ After they
prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” And one more: Hebrews 10:19 “Therefore,
brothers, since through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into
the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that
is, his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us
approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust.”
In the first 2 verses, God shook the earth with His mighty
power only after there had been suffering.
He used the craziness, the brokenness, and what the “world” considered to
be a loss, to glorify His name with all boldness shortly after. What I’m trying to say is that there is a lot
going on behind the scenes on your bad days.
I don’t want to be too busy being caught up in my own pity and sorrows to
miss the earth quake shortly after. I
don’t want to miss that learning opportunity to break through the darkness to
visualize and learn from the light. I
don’t want to miss the training on how to be fearless and bold in my
faith. Hebrews says that now, “let us
approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust.” Now that Christ’s sacrifice had torn the veil
between us and God in two, we are able to approach God and see beyond the
ordinary bad day. We are able to rise
above the daily noise and see what God is up to. We don’t have to recap our days by just
saying, “yep, it was another bad, hard day. “.
Instead we can say, “yeah, today was hard, but God showed me this!”. Every opportunity to learn more about God and
grow closer to him, grow more mature in the faith, is a blowing force at the
gates of Hell. I believe it is powerful
enough to cause a quake in the spiritual realms. “See that you do not reject the one who
speaks…..His voice shook the earth at that time, but now He has promised ‘I
will once more shake not only earth but heaven.’”. My
prayer is this, that God shows us all to become “movers and shakers”….to move
beyond what is seen and make waves in the unseen.
From the song, “Great I AM”:
“The Mountains shake before Him, the demons run and flee
At the mention of the name King of Majesty.
There is no power and Hell
Or any who can stand
Before the power and the presence of the Great I AM.”
