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To order an audio tape of the sermon: Please send $3.00 to Community of Grace
832 State Street Elkhorn, NE 68022
Questions about the sermon? Ask away.
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"View
From The Back Side of The Desert" |
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What is a "desert" for us?
- A place of dryness...
- A place of loneliness...
- A place we’re we’ve been taken to the edge, pressed down, stretched to the limit...
- A place where we are up against a brick wall... at a dead end...
- A place were we may feel like a failure...
- A place where our faith is being tested beyond what we think we can bear
- A place where you may feel hopeless and despairing
- A place where you may want to go back to the past
- A place were we will desperately see how much we need God and wonder if He is within miles of where we are
- A place where we’ll be tempted to believe the enemy’s lies about ourselves and about God
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- A place where we’ll feel pain inside or strange and there is no vocabulary for it
- A place where God is rearranging the furniture of our lives
- A place where we may feel useless to God... congratulations, that is exactly where He wants you to be!
- A place that is hard, very hard; in fact, it is impossible and He knows it. He engineered it so He can be everything to us!
- It’s a place where you will be tempted to simply "survive"- but, God wants you to do more than survive in the old way. He wants us to come through as newly refined gold- far more precious in His sight.
- It’s a place we don’t fully understand and others certainly don’t either
- It’s a place where we may experience paralyzing confusion and doubt whether we can hear from God, much less if He loves us
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What is the "desert" to us?
- A place where we will feel alone- and indeed we probably are- alone with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit... we will find out if He is enough for us
- A place where we will want to curl up and hide, and it’s o.k. Hide in the cleft of the Rock.
- It is a place where we will ask "why?" and "how long?"- that’s o.k. Because God our Father is not threatened by our questions. Like earthly fathers He does not always have to give an answer
- A place where we don’t know what's ahead, so we will be tempted to look back... and the quicker we loose our grip on the past, the quicker God can work
It is a place where we will get tired of the platitudes from those who haven’t a clue what the desert is all about!
| In the desert you will think God is being too hard, especially when you look around and others are not paying the same price and they are going "successfully" along. God can seem unfair to require this of us. |
Looking around in the desert is the worst thing we can do in a desert. Remember what Jesus said to Peter,
"If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me" (John 21:22) |
How do you endure it?
By fixing your eyes on Jesus!
At that
time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more
I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." The words
"once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken--that
is, created things--so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let
us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,
for our "God is a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:26-29 NIV |
God says that for a time everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so that He can be revealed in the purity of His consuming fire.
- The desert is one of God’s major destinations for those He wants to bring to faith and for those He wants to take deeper in the faith.
- He is deliberate in leading us into the desert to speak tenderly to us and to make our trouble a gateway of hope.
- God has purposes and blessing for you in the desert and afterward.
- After the desert you will know Him more deeply.
- In the desert he wants to sharpen your listening skills to His voice alone.
- He wants us to know that the only proper response when there is nothing we can control is to trust that He is in control.
- He wants to show us that there are only two places to go: down and out, or right up into His lap.
- In the heat of the desert, He burns up or blows away all of the wood, hay and stubble of our pride, confidence and striving.
- John the Baptist grew strong in spirit in the desert (Luke 1:80).
- Jesus came out of the desert in the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:14).
What does the desert teach?
- The desert experience gives us the opportunity to exchange our burnout (poor and needy, tongues parched with thirst, barren, wasteland), so that we may see and know the Holy One is working and that the had of the Lord has brought us out to revival, faith and renewal.
- We come out of the desert stronger- filled with more faith!
- In the desert, we learn lessons that we cannot learn in spiritual ease, success or business-as-usual.
- The desert is not a trial;but a test-not of God’s faithfulness, but of ours.
- It is a time of consolidation of God’s dealings in our lives- new levels of faith, new levels of death to self, new ways that He is working in us, new sensitivity to Him in our lives, new discernment of His ways.
- And new skills that will be vital in the time ahead.
Some interesting facts about the desert…
- The desert is scary, because often we come face-to-face with God alone.
- It seems to go on forever.
- Our human props are knocked out from under us.
- It hurts badly because God is crucifying our flesh and it hates to die.
- God is doing a new thing and our flesh does not like it!
- We are usually physically and emotionally drained in the desert.
What will happen to us in the desert?
- We will come closer to God.
- We will have something to ministry to others that we have not had before.
- We will have been tempered and steel and have learned patient endurance.
- We will learn how to preserve.
- We will be stripped of old performance habits.
- We will have more sympathy and empathy for others.
- We will learn that all we really need is the LORD!
How does God want us to respond?
“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire’”. Hebrews 12:28-29
God Loves You!