Inspired Word - March 12, 2008

INSPIRED WORD

March 12, 2008

PRAYER

….and to bring us back to You, our loving Abba, our Father, to bring us into Your very Presence that we might know Your great love poured out for us. We thank You for Jesus, our Savior, our Redeemer, the One Who laid down His life for us and we thank You, Lord, that You sent Him to bring us home to You. Even now, here in this place, You send Him again to bring us into Your very Presence.

SCRIPTURE / SENSE

We often don't quote from Tobit, we also don't quote often from the story of Lot . But this is what the Lord would have His people hear tonight. When Lot was told to flee from Sodom and Gomorrah before the destruction fell, God sent him on his way. Then Lot said, “You have already thought enough of Your servant to do me the great kindness of intervening to save my life, but I cannot flee to the hills as You command to keep the disaster from overtaking me. So I shall die. Look, Lord, this town ahead is near enough to escape to, it is only a small place; let me flee there. It is a small place, isn't it? Then my life will be spared.” “Well then”, replied God, “I will also grant you this favor that you now ask. I will not overthrow the town you speak of. Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” That is why the town is called Zoar, meaning a little thing, or a small place. (Genesis 19: 18 – 22) The sense of the Scripture is: God had already done an amazing kindness to Lot in allowing him to escape from Sodom and yet, he needed one more favor. How many times do we need one more favor from God? And yet God loves us so much that He is willing to grant that favor; to give us that small place, that small escape that we need, at exactly the level of strength that we have to run with.

PRAYER

Lord, we thank You for the grace that You pour forth; nothing is too small, Jesus, to bring to You.

SCRIPTURE

From the prophet Ezekiel: 43: 1- 2, 4 – 5: Then he brought me to the gate, the gate facing east. And there, the glory of God of Israel was coming from the east; the sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with His glory. As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

EXHORTATION

Dan told us tonight that we have to work on getting it from our heads to our hearts. We need to think about that. If we don't get the message from our heads to our hearts, it is only words. The actions then become meaningless. God wants us to spend the time to take His Word that He implants in our minds and put it into our hearts, so that we can carry it into the world. We do that with excitement! If we go back to Scripture in Isaiah 6 which Dan referred to, it says: “Holy, holy, holy! The Lord Almighty is holy! His glory fills the world. The sound of their voices made the foundations of the Temple shake…” (Verses 3 – 4) That is what God wants us to do as we go into Holy Week. He wants us to cry: “Holy, holy, holy” from our hearts , not from our head, and then we will make the Temple shake! And, as Dan said, that takes work! For Isaiah it took work. But when this vision happened to Isaiah, he must have been scared to death. He didn't know if this word was in his head, or in his heart. Can you imagine being in that situation? But that is what God calls us to be. He, Isaiah, said, “Then I heard the Lord say, “Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?” And Isaiah said, “I will go! Send me!” (Verse 8) That is how we get the message of tonight from our heads to our hearts. We listen! Earlier in Dan's talk, he said that God speaks to each and every one of us. We have to listen to hear what God says. If we take the time to listen, then we can respond, “Send me, Lord! Send me to pray for my neighbor, send me to pray for my friend, send me to go listen to the problems which my neighbor has, send me to pray for that person in Prayer Group, that when I look into their eyes, I then know that they need prayers”. We take the message from our heads to our hearts and the more that we can respond to the Lord by saying, “Yes, Lord, send me!”, the more our hearts are going to be opened and filled with His love. That is the beginning of our journey into Holy Week. That is where we start and we start it tonight! Amen.

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