Unshakable

In Walking to Macon, Louie Giglio reminds us that it is imperative that you know WHO you are. God wants to remind you that you are chosen, you are Holy, you are God’s. You have to know who you are in order to know WHY you are.

Here’s what is true: we are all going to go in the fire at one point or another. We will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles and immovable mountains. Life will not go according to our plans, and we will find ourselves in a furnace, wondering how long we can stand the fire. That is until we remember that we are not standing on the flames themselves. We are fixed upon that sure foundation, the cornerstone of Jesus. He is our rock, our living stone. This is good news because standing on a living rock means we are never alone. He is in the fire with us. And while Jesus is with us in the trials, guess who is watching Him work… the whole world.

In this message, Louie Giglio walks with us through one of the important ideas in scripture: all of us who call ourselves Christians are on display, living among the lost, and most of us are the only representation of the Gospel that the people in our worlds will ever see. So, how are we living that out? What are we actually putting on display with our lives?

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, Positioned for Powerful Influence. Let that sink in.  Among your co-workers, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  In your neighborhood, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  With your in-laws, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  And in your relationships, God has positioned you for powerful influence. Louie and Shelley Giglio remind us that God has intentionally placed each of us in other people’s lives so they can watch Him transform our lives—because when God changes a life, people see it. Put simply, our witness is strongest when the quality of our lives is more powerful than the quantity of our words. Said another way, pretty is as pretty does. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! Matthew 6:21-23 What is inside of us will indeed make its way out of us. The light within us shines out of us, and darkness within us reveals itself. That’s why it’s such a great folly that most of us spend all day worrying about our outward appearance rather than the condition of our hearts. It is the condition of our hearts that most effectively displays Jesus to the world around us.  For the Christian, this is where our perspective has to shift. We have to spend more time considering what our actions and attitudes are putting on display. We have to consider often if we are living according to the commands of 1 Peter 3 or not; if we are treating our spouses the way God has called us to or not; if we are eager to do good and turn from evil or not. Paul says it this way in his letter to the Philippians: In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God,     did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing     by taking the very nature of a servant,     being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,     he humbled himself     by becoming obedient to death—         even death on a cross! Philippians 2:5-8 We are co-heirs with Christ, a title that comes with celebration and calling. Jesus is making us new; it’s time to act like it.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, The Anxiety Exchange. His peers balked at the claim and offered a wager where Hemingway would reap the profits if he could make good on his claim. Undaunted, the man who would go on to write A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea scribbled six words on a napkin and handed it over. “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” Words matter, and often, it’s not the number of them but the quality of them. Take 1 Peter 5:7 as an example. 11 words that can change the entire direction and quality of your days: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Said another way: Release what you are concerned about so that you can receive that God is concerned about you. Of course, this falls securely into the easier said than done category. How? How do we actually do this? How do we take those fears and anxieties that occupy our minds and turn them over to God so that we can live in the peace He has for us? Looking at the context in which 1 Peter was written, we can see that while the sources of anxiety may have changed (for those of us in places where our faith will not lead to our death), the promise has not. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your Anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 5:6-11 This text wasn’t written to belittle our anxieties today; instead, we have to read it and understand that God is powerful enough to carry His people through all circumstances, even ones of life and death. 1 Peter is calling us to cast our anxiety not on some weak or incapable God but upon the chief shepherd (5:4), the one who is leading us to green pastures and who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and who laid down His life for his flock, for us. You see, unloading our anxiety isn’t about us at all; it’s about the chief shepherd, it’s about Jesus. It’s not pushing your anxieties to the side and trying as hard as you can to ignore them; it’s depositing them with Jesus once and for all because while we are concerned about any number of things, Jesus is concerned about us. So then, if we believe that, how do we go about this anxiety exchange? What is the key to releasing those concerns into the hands of Jesus? The key is humility.  Notice that Peter starts this with an observation about our anxieties: In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud     but shows favor to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5 Our anxieties, for the most part, revolve around our pride.  They spring up out of our haughtiness inside of relationships. Friendships and family connections give way to anxieties when we feel tension because we’ve forgone extending grace. In the same way, the areas of our lives where we have placed our dreams and desires above the will of Almighty God give birth to, honestly, terrible worries and anxieties as we wrestle for control where we have no rightful claim to it. And in these exact places, humility is the key. Humility among one another and humility beneath God is not devaluing yourself; it’s elevating your confidence in God. It’s not listening to the enemy when he tells you you’re a worm. Knowing that you are the prize of a great shepherd, of God, and seeing God as king. Humility is a matter of the heart. It springs up when we spend time with God, reminding us that we are a work in progress. We have ground to cover and mountains to climb.  “Anxiety is a self-contradiction to true humility. Un-belief is, in a sense, an exalting of self against God in that one is depending on self and failing to trust God. Why worry, therefore, if we are His concern? He is more concerned about our welfare than we could possibly be. In it all, He is concerned about us, therefore again, why worry?” – Kenneth Wuest  God’s mighty hand is open for you today. It’s not the closed fist of a tyrannical ruler. The Chief Shepherd calls for you with hands that bear the scars of nails driven on your behalf. This great anxiety exchange is possible because of a great exchange of grace, and if He was willing to bear all of your sin and shame to rescue you from death itself, surely He is willing to carry through on the promise to restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. Put another way, in 11 incredible words: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Peter knew it, do you? Do you know that we are all living in the end times? Do you see that now, more than ever, the world is looking at Christians to see how we will respond to the pressures and pains of these days? If so, it has to change the way you act in four distinct ways: Act with patience.Act with urgency.Act with confidence.Act with Congruency.