Unshakeable

We are a people shaken.  Do you realize that?  We are a people trembling at the feet of our world, responding as best we can to what happens here, holding half-heartedly onto hope as our only chance of something better maybe one day.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of shaking.  I’m ready to stand firm.  I want to see us, as a people, as God’s people, standing firm.

Hebrews 12:12 says, “So take a new grip with your tired hands.  Stand firm on your shaky legs.”

It’s the time of resolutions, of good intentions, of promises for change.  It’s the time of making a new plan, blazing a new path, and pursuing anew the promise laid out in our lives.  Let’s take hold of that with our tired hands and become a people who stand, shaky legs and all.

So that we don’t have to be a people shaken.

Standing firm doesn’t mean standing defiant.  We’ve all had enough of that.  We’ve tried by sheer willpower to stand against the things that would come in our lives, the troubles and trials.  The turbulence and turmoil.  It doesn’t take long before the wind beats us down and will just isn’t enough to keep us standing there any more.  All the defiance in the world will not help us weather the storm.  No, it is not about standing defiant.

It’s about standing defined. 

It’s about planting our feet on the solid ground of Christ as our foundation.  It’s about knowing who we are because we know who God is and refusing to move from that.  It’s about stopping trying to find the faith to answer the world and starting to make this world answer to our faith.

What?  You thought you were created for this world?  Wrong.  This world was created for you.  It’s time to start living like a people who refuse to be shaken and start making this world do some trembling of its own, at the feet of the God who created it and His people who aren’t going to take it any more.  Who are going to take a stand, put their feet down, stand on the Rock, and refuse to be shaken.

There are a lot of messed-up, crazy things going on around here.  Gunshots pierce our simple pleasures.  Unemployment and uncertainty threaten our securities.  Death takes love before its time.  Cancer won’t let go.  And it seems like every new thing takes a reworking of our faith to make sense of God in a broken world.

It can’t be like that, friends.  We cannot bend our God to our brokenness; we have to bend our brokenness to our God.  We have to rework our broken world to be senseless in light of our God.

Coach Pagano (Indianapolis Colts, for you non-football fans) is now famous for saying, “Hey, I got circumstances.  We all got circumstances.”

Well, I’m tired of circumstances.   It’s about time that we, as God’s people, move beyond our circumstances.  It’s time we get a grip.

Get a grip with our weary hands.  Because it’s ok to be weary here.  Stand firm on our shaky legs.  Because it’s ok to be shaky.  It’s just not ok to be shaken.

We were created to be unshakeable.