What if we realized that we don’t have to be controlled by external forces and could in fact reshape unfortunate events into significant spiritual wins?

  

Resolution 1: I will see the unfortunate events of my life as faith builders leading to the greatest accomplishments of my life.

  

Resolution 2: I will affirm that God will often require me to do something that seems unreasonable.

  

Resolution 3: I will live with the resolution God will always lead me to do that which brings Him the most glory.

  

Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh. The Lord said to Gideon, ‘You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, My own strength has saved me.’

-Judges 7:1-2

Glory: Adoration. Honor. Distinction. Renown. Praise.

  

You can’t fill an eternal void with temporary means!

  

Having given their greatest efforts and energies to all the things they thought would deliver the Shalom life, they come to the end, worn out, exhausted and frustrated, awakened to the reality that they have wasted their lives.

-Jeff Vines, 'UnPossible'

   

Why were you and I created?

“Let us make man in our own image.”

God did not create us because he “needed” to love but because he “wanted” to love.

The Father greatly desires to be glorified, honored, and held in high regard by the Son.

If God truly loves you, He will not let you glorify things that never deliver without a fight!

Aim at Heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

-C.S. Lewis

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

-Mark 8:36

The Lord said to Gideon, ‘You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, My own strength has saved me.’

-Judges 7:2

Departure from God’s love is the common nature of all sin; and when the departure from this love is associated with a desire to progress in the direction of a selfishly appointed end, rather than of the end divinely appointed, this is the common nature of the primal sin of the world-spirit and of humanity.

-Oswald Chambers

At first, we experience a need, then we hunt for the satisfaction of the need; when the need is met, we turn our whole nature in the direction of the thing that met the need. We then discover that the need is only temporality met and in fact creates more insatiable lusts.

The ultimate fulfillment of every desire is God, but we will never find Him until we are driven to the last limit.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

-2 Corinthians 12:8-10

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in my flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.

-2 Corinthians 12: 7

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’

-2 Corinthians 12:8-9

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

-2 Corinthians 12:8-9c

  

God releases His power and strength into your life to the degree that you are hopelessly, helplessly, dependent on Him.

  

Tears are the telescope by which men see far into heaven.

-Henry Ward Beecher

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

-Romans 8:28

Work Together: Sunergeo [Greek]:Synergism: working together of various elements to produce an effect greater than, and often completely different from, the sum of each element acting separately.

If you look at the early picoseconds of this universe and analyze just one contingent, the expansion in relation to the contraction, do you know how precise that had to be? It would be like taking aim at a one-square-inch object at the other end of the universe twenty billion light-years away and hitting the bull’s eye. The expansion and contraction of the universe had to be so precise, not to the minute or the second, but to the picosecond. A picosecond is the time it takes to cross the width of a hair while traveling the speed of light.

-John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics, Cambridge University

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

-1 Peter 1:6-7

Hineni [Hebrew]: a reply given when there is total surrender in the mind of the one who speaks it. It means “Here I am.” It means: ”I am fully attentive to you God and am aware that what you are asking me to do or endure will require suffering.

Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ they asked. ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.’ And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

-Matthew 13:54-58

Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

-Matthew 53:13

A person seeking to glorify God in every circumstance is a person God marks for His purposes and into whom He releases His divine energy.

-Jeff Vines, 'UnPossible'

There is one young boy growing up in America who believes he was carried in the arms of God.

-Article, August 1988 Reader’s Digest

Until you realize you serve a God who wants to be magnified and glorified in your life, you will enter each day believing the material world is the totality of your existence and you will never look for His supernatural intervention in the details and unfortunate events of your life. Furthermore, in those seasons when you overcome insurmountable odds, you will boast of your own courage and good fortune. Why, then, would God release His divine energy into a life that is bent on self-glorification?

-Jeff Vines, 'UnPossible'

  

  

  

  

What are you main takeaways from this message?

Make a Decision