Unusual Assignments Bring Miraculous Results~ Are you taking your position?- Part 4

2 Chronicles Chapter 17  

We are lulled to sleep by our traditions. Let me say this carefully so we understand what I am trying to convey. It is good to look back at our history within the church. It is good to hear about the early pioneers of the faith. But for many, they are figures in history. There are others that are coming into this church now that these names have little or no significance to. So when we talk about what has gone before, but we don’t see the hero’s of today, you actually discourage those coming behind. How do we discourage them, because we hear about what was done in our past, about greatness, but we want to know what are we doing with our future, where is the greatness, the power NOW? We have been lulled to sleep resting on our history. Those in the Bible talked about their history but it was to rally them to stand up and take their positions for the time they were in. When Jehoshaphat talks about God’s goodness it is to remind the people about what they could lean on for today. We are here for such a time as this. The saints of yesterday have their rewards because they stood and refuse to be lulled to sleep by their history; instead they used it to build on. They took what had gone before and stood on the shoulders of those earlier pioneers of the faith and looked further into the future. They become reformers of their time. A reformer is one that has vision, for without it the people will die. However, many of us today are lulled to sleep in our pride of where we have come from as if the work is complete, not so.




Now let’s take a look at how hardening our hearts lulls us to sleep like Asa.



We are also lulled to sleep because things don’t go our way. When God wants us to do something one-way and we do it another, we have moved into disobedience. When God sends us the correction it is to our advance to heed it. We must not be like Asa and have a tantrum and get mad at the messenger. The messenger is just like the UPS or FEDEX person they just deliver the package and if you have problems with the package, go back to the sender. Asa just like Ahab both wanted to imprison or stop the messenger, but God won’t let you stop his move, so you better watch out what you try to do to those he has anointed to carry out his ways. It is foolish to try and stop what God wants to happen. I envision it is just like a person standing with a superman suit on in front of a cannon and thinking they can stop a cannonball, yet what comes out is a missile, and that thing will blow a hole right through them. That is truly under estimating the power of God, you don’t have enough power to stop even the slightest move of God. Like Asa, if we refuse to heed the correction God is giving to us even now, we risk dying in our diseases of disobedience looking to other things to remove it, when only God can do it. He says lulled to sleep, by disobedience and refusal to stand. And when we refuse to heed God’s correction, we set ourselves up for hell. Many don’t want to talk about it, but I’ve got to say this. If God is calling you to repent of something you are doing and you refuse, you are playing a foolish game. It is foolish to think you can refuse God and still receive his mercy and favor. Do you know why hell is a place of torment? If you die in your sins you go to stand before God and in that moment you will experience the fullness of God. See here we know something about love, both the saved and the unsaved. We love our husbands and wives, our children, our parents and we feel and receive love in return. But when you stand before God you will experience the fullness of his love, only to have it quickly snatched away. What is the torment? To have known what you could have had, to be in the fullness of God, to fill his fullness of love, yet not receive it and to realize what you have missed. You will be forever in torment because for an eternity you will never feel the love of God again, but your mind will always long for it, your heart will always long for it to never have it fulfilled. See the worst thing about hell, is you miss heaven. There is no joy there, no peace there, but to be forever aware of what you could have had, because just as the saved will know the Lord more fully, so will the unsaved know more fully what they have refused (return next week for the next installment).