As I sat at the manicure table in my nail salon dozing while getting my neck massaged, I could feel a very content feeling in the room. Women were relaxed and still as they were being pampered and pretty much keeping to themselves. When my massage was over (which, by the way, is always the worst part... they could never massage long enough) I was sitting there soaking my hands in some warm water getting prepared for my nail lady to come work her magic. All of a sudden the chair and desk shook quickly. It was so quick that I thought it must have been a semi driving by. Within seconds the room jumped out of its stillness; and what started as whispers about a possible quake soon became bold reactions thanks to a confirmed news report on the tv.
At first I joined the other women in the "excitement" but I quickly felt a stirring to just sit back and listen. The women talked about how big they thought this quake was and asked each what was the biggest quake they had ever experienced. One lady shared about how a 7.6 quake she experienced really changed her life and caused her to stop smoking. Another shared about her child being involved in relief work in other countries that had experienced major earth quakes. All of a sudden the ground shaking became a common ground and the popular topic of the room... It brought people together.
After 5 minutes or so, and honestly after a little snooze on my part, my nail lady came over and started working on my nails. I looked around and everyone had gone right back to their own content spaces. It was quiet again in the room. My heart started to stir, and I even got a little emotional as I felt the Lord say, "this is the nature of man... that the earth will shake with my glory but when things settle man just returns to the contentment he knows."
"Wow Lord, I was just trying to relax and get my nails done", is what my flesh thought, but my spirit was stirred up.
I then thought of all the amazing revivals and moves of the Lord I had experienced in my life and heard about and studied in college. Why did these moves end? What causes us to return to the comfortable and become content with it? Jesus even had to deal with this with His disciples in Matthew 26 as He called them to pray, but they slept instead. He warned them:
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
We desire for the Lord to move, we desire to be connected to Him, but our flesh wants the opposite... wants the "easy". So why even try then, right? Why try to make ourselves something we're not? Why not just find a hole and sit in it? Because He, the One who sacrificed everything for our salvation, freedom and healing is so beyond worth it! And, He has made a way for us to overcome our flesh... we don't even have to figure it out on our own, He gave us directions! The Bible tells us in Luke 9:23 to deny ourselves (flesh) and pick up our cross (sacrifice) daily. In doing this we make the conscious decision to see His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). And that is the kind of decisions I want my life to count for.
When the Kingdom of heaven shakes this earth and when His glory surrounds us it is so much more powerful and life changing than any earth quake could ever be. So as His church, as His bride let us not grow content in the mundane of this world. Let us not find solace in the flesh. But let us run the race set before us (Hebrews 12) shining His light and bringing glory to His name. Because if the earth shaking in the natural can cause a woman to change her life, cause a young man to give of himself to help others and can stir a group of women to unite and care about each other within seconds, imagine the transformation our world would embrace from the Spirit of God shaking everything that can be shaken.
Will you join me in praying for a mighty earth shake?
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