Sunday Recap @ da Chapel
Pastor Joshua Goodin
2 Chronicles 7:14 (NRSV)
“Getting the House in Order: If You Gonna Stay Lit” Pt. 4
*If you do your part God will take care of his part. What happens when it takes God to the next chapter to respond to what you prayed for in the previous chapter? Sometimes God does not respond to your prayers immediately. He will make you live out the full chapter and answer in the next chapter. Do you wrestle with how long it takes God to respond to your prayers? The struggle is anticipating God’s response and not knowing what the answer is going to be. God makes you wait, and then he responds. It’s not about waiting, but it's about what you do while you wait. Have you maintained your faith, have you been patient, have you kept in your word in the wait? Or have you found yourself discouraged and throwing in the towel concluding that God will not respond to your request? God loves you so much that even when he wants to ignore you, he doesn’t. Even when you are in the wait God will send you some appetizers to keep you content.
God will sometimes give you a little bread and butter, while you wait for what you really want. A little something to say, here I have not forgotten about you. You can’t expect God to answer your prayers while you sit around and do nothing. You have to activate your work, even while you activate faith while you wait. The downside to being inactive while you wait, it takes more time to get you reacclimated to the work process the longer you have been down. Some of you have gotten so cold in the wait that God has to warm you back up, to change your temperature to get back to the work.
*Distractions and unnecessary voices make you cold while you wait on God. If you’re not careful you will begin to compare yourself to other people. Unnecessary voices talking in your ear. Be careful who you allow in your ear. Some people are only in your ear to discourage you and misdirect you from where God is trying to take you. Some people want the things you are pursuing and if they can distract you, you will miss out on what God has for you. You can love people and not tell them your business or hang with them. Some of the people that God is telling you to cut off have been more burdens than blessings.
*When it’s finished it’s time to move forward. Are you stuck in between chapters? Sometimes you need to take some notes, so you don’t keep reliving what you have already been through. You got the lesson you were supposed to learn from that chapter, and now you can transition to the next chapter, but you are stuck on how the chapter ended. Thank God and move beyond the ending of the previous chapter, because God is giving you another chapter. God has editorial preferences, but your biggest struggle is letting go of the pen to let God write your story. A good book has highs and lows.
Submit to God
Intercede
Pursue after God
Repent
The only way you can make right the sins of the past, you have to ask God for forgiveness.
Why is it that creation thinks that it can move without the creator?
How are you representing God?