I remember those words being spoken by a dear friend of mine and I felt the same way as I was listening to my ipod a bit ago while cleaning house. I'm about to post a "talk" off of a CD by Travis Cottrell. Its Beth Moore speaking and wow! Every time I hear it, I just want to shout!
Enjoy:
"The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas. And the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders he put them in the inner cells and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prisons were shaken and at once all the prison doors flew open and every one's chains came lose. Their skin, torn apart by a severe flogging. And when the Word of God uses the word 'severe' for a flogging, they had been beaten half to death. I would suggest they did not feel like worshiping. They made a choice. And in that moment they overcame every power of darkness.
I thought to myself, 'there is so much purification in persecution'. You see when we do not have a negative force coming against us to unspoil us and to unify us then we can just decide we're not going to worship because we don't like that song the worship leader chose. Or we are distracted by some one's outfit. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Or maybe we could not find a parking place at church and we're just like, ticked off.
So we're just not going to sing, cause we're not in the mood to sing.
Then we're reminded of a couple of guys torn to shreds who lifted up their voices in the midst of so much pain. Sometimes you praise first, and you feel it later. Anybody get that with me? You just praise first, and then you feel it later.
I thought to myself looking at these passages, that earthquakes at times can be the very best things that ever happen to us. And earthquakes do happen. Always means something exciting. A violent earthquake Scripture says. Something we were not looking for. Something we did not want. No one ever wants an earthquake in their life. Something in our personal life. Something in our marriages. Something with our kids. Something in our homes. Something in our businesses. A violent earthquake.
And our first reaction is to feel shamed by it. We may even drop out of worship experience, corporately over it. Hide from people. Feel like we could never show our faces. When we don't realize that sometimes it takes a violent earthquake to bring change to our status quo. And sometimes we find that even in that God works all things together for good and He used that earthquake in your life and in my life. That unexpected violence that came to us to caused the ground beneath us to shake. Everything to shake that could be shaken so that we could see what Hebrews tells us that cannot be shaken.
And somehow in the midst of the biggest earthquake of our lives, that's what happened to me, those bonds that have held us every moment that we have lived begin to drop lose.
My grandson, Jackson, is almost 3 years old and when he was two and a half we were on a road trip with him. There he was in the car seat in the backseat and he kept looking out the window, we were in the middle of no where, on a country road getting to a retreat center. He kept saying 'I found it! I found it!'
'Well what did you find, darling?' and it would just be like a cow, it could be an old tractor, it could've been anything,..'I found it! I found it!' All his life he had been looking for it. Sometimes we don't even know what we're looking for until we find it.
People are not looking for you to have it together. People are looking at you to see what happens when you don't. What happens to you after an earthquake comes? And your bonds fall lose? And someone who has been a captive for 35 years is suddenly set free and the jailers around you go 'I don't know who that is, but i want it, because I found it! I found it! I didn't even know I was looking until I found it.'
What happens in worship does not stay in worship, we live it out and someone catches it. And they are saved!"
Has your world been shaken? I know so many folks that I can look to and see real faith in God lived out in their lives as they have lived through or are experiencing earthquakes in their lives. Oh what faith! In those times, when no one else can do anything for us, we find that He is all we truly need. I want that faith! That passion! That influence! The glory of God seen in my every day life...to live out worship, so others will see it and want it and be saved!!! (As my former pastor would say...."Glory!!!")
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