We live at time of high alert when anxiety seems to be running at a fever pitch and yet God gives us a great assurance in our passage today

Even though war and destruction are all around us as seen daily on TV the Lord will ultimately be victorious.

God is telling us that despite the seeming instability of the times all we have to do is be stand quietly and watch how the Almighty displays His glorious power.

The early church leader Augustine was once accosted by a heathen who showed him his idol and said, "Here is my god; where is thine?"

Augustine replied, "I cannot show you my God; not because there is no God to show but because you have no eyes to see Him."

: Be still my soul. The Lord is on your side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to your God to order and provide. In every change He faithful will remain

. Be still my soul. Your best, your heavenly Friend. Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

David wrote this 46th Psalm at a time of the Assyrian invasion of Judah, so it gave the people of Israel needed assurance of God’s deliverance

"The Lord Almighty is here among us; the God of Israel is our fortress. come see the glorious works of the Lord See how he brings destruction upon the world and causes wars to end throughout the earth. He breaks the bow and snaps the spear in two; he burns the shields with fire.
Be still and know that I am God! I will be exalted in the nations. I will be honored through the earth." (Psa 46:8-11)

In light of the assurance of our Almighty God’s triumphs we should take time throughout the day to be still and reverently honor him as the God of power, love and sovereign control of all things.

A young boy traveling by airplane to visit his grandparents sat beside a man who happened to be a seminary professor. The boy was reading a Sunday school take-home paper when the professor thought he would have some fun with the lad. "Young man," said the professor, "If you can tell me something God can do, I'll give you a big, shiny apple." The boy thought for a moment and then replied, "Mister, if you can tell me something God can’t do, I'll give you a whole barrel of apples!"

The following are several characteristics of God that we can honor if we will take time to be still and know Him as God:

We can praise God that He constantly offers reassurance during troubled times.

David gives us declaration of God’s Almighty power to overcome any calamity that may befall us.

Perhaps the most famous verse in Psalm 46 is "God is our refuge and strength a very present help in the time of trouble."

A refuge is a shelter that provides protection from all kinds of danger.

When we seek refuge in God we are trusting Him to deliver us from danger and trouble.

Too many people are seek refuge in their homes, possessions or in their abilities. Let us take the attitude of the song writer:

We can praise God that He constantly reassures us with His mighty power, presence and promise.

Take time to thank God for the fact that He reassures you with rock solid guarantees regarding your security.

People who do not get reassurance or think they do not need it are setting themselves up for deep distress

God alone is able to make wars cease. He alone is able to give us the confidence to move ahead with His will for our lives despite the outward circumstances or our personal feelings of fear.

We can ensure the fact that He will bring to pass His will and way for our life if we take Abraham’s attitude toward our challenge,

He staggered not through unbelief but grew strong in faith, being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform."

If you Want to Walk on Water, you’ve got to Get Out of the Boat

We can be still and praise God that He has the power to resolve any conflict we may be experiencing.

Not only does He have the power to resolve major conflicts between nations, but also in all our relationships.

Nothing is too difficult for God. (Jer 32:17) God converts discord into concord.

He repairs broken relationships and causes them to be stronger as a result of His reconciliations.

Only the Lord is able to bring resonance where there is disharmony. Allow the Lord to bring resolution to the conflicts in your mind. Be still and take time to praise God for His characteristics.

Jesus said to the howling winds and waves, "Peace, be still and the winds died down and they became perfectly calm."

God may not take you out of the storm, but He will give you peace in the storms of life.

God is infinitely above all of the enemies who seek to steal, slaughter, kill and destroy those who are His own.

God resets the order in His favor when we call upon Him for deliverance.

In spite of the malice of God’s opponents He is never rattled by their threats.

"Nations are in an uproar, kingdoms falls, he lifts us voice and the earth melts." (Psa 46:6)

God’s voice resets all things in their proper position, place and perspective.

People will try to set themselves in positions of power, prestige or popularity but let them know that God alone will be exalted above all and He alone will receive glory.

We can praise God that He tells us ahead of time what will happen in the future.

Without a doubt, God will be exalted in all the nations and He will be exalted in the whole earth.

Therefore, we should not fear but work to bring every people group and nation to a saving faith relationship with Jesus Christ

Jesus said it best. "He who has my commands and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by My Father and I will love them and will reveal myself

Let us learn to trust and obey God in all things and at all times so we can gain a greater intimate knowledge of God.

- We can praise God that He can reprogram our mind so that we do not react with fear, anger or panic when adversity strikes

We can set our hearts securely on Jehovah and know that He will fight the battles for us.

Paul wrote, "If God is for us who can be against us." (Rom. 8:31)

We can be assured that we do not have to be overcome by evil, but can overcome evil with good." (Rom. 12:21)

We can program our mind, emotions and will to know that "He who spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all will He not freely give us all things."

We can give God greater praise as we program our minds with His promises that He is able to help us with whatever challenge we are facing.

He is greater than all our problems, predicaments or people who oppose us.

We can praise God that He has limitless resources available to win every good fight we fight

Many people hesitate to move forward until they believe they have all the resources in place, but we can trust God to provide all we need according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus.

The Sovereign God not only controls all things, He owns everything.

When an army is at war, they need to constantly resupply the troups, machinery and armaments to continue the advance on the enemy.

We can praise God that He will build His church so that His name will be known throughout the whole earth.

The Lord reorders everything for the fulfillment of His will to be exalted in all the nations on the earth.

Everything else, takes a lower priority in His mind.

Let us ask the Lord to help us do whatever we can to be workers of declaring His glory throughout all the nations, tribes and people groups on the earth.

GOD DID NOT SAY, “STOP!
Philippians 3:13-3:13

Php 3:13 Brothers and sisters, I can't consider myself a winner yet. This is what I do: I don't look back, I lengthen my stride, and

Php 3:14 I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God's heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus.

There was once a man who loved to fish. As a matter of fact, he fished so much that he became an expert at fishing.

It was not long before other people began asking him to teach them to fish also, which he did.

he word spread and pretty soon a sporting goods company hired him to teach their customers how to fish.

He was a huge success and many people learned to fish.

But the downside to all this was that the more time he spent teaching other people how to fish, the less time he had to go fish.

he bottom line was he taught others how to do something, but he ended up doing none of it himself.

Many churches are following the same pattern today.

We sit inside our walls and satisfy ourselves that we are teaching others in the church how to be fishermen, but we are not going out into the community to do any fishing ourselves.

There is a saying explains what we do. We are “all talk and no action.”

A lot of Christians go to church and expect the church to do everything for them.

They believe if they go to church once a week, they have fulfilled their duty as Christians.

They need to realize that they have the same job duties to reach others as the church does.

All of us need to back up and reassess what we are doing for the Lord.

In GENESIS 17:1, did God tell Abraham, ‘Stay where you are and be blameless?’

No, God told Abraham to ‘walk before me and be blameless.’ God knew that, for Abraham to receive His promised blessings, he had to go forth for the Lord to do the Lord’s work.

In GENESIS 26:3, God tells Isaac: ‘Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.’

Isaac stayed in Gerar and God blessed him 100-fold. But notice that God told him to stay in that land ‘for a while.’

Reading on in GENESIS 26, we see where Isaac moved on from there and ended up in Beersheba, where God blessed him mightily. We see that when Isaac moved on for God, God blessed Isaac.

You want to blessed by God, you’d better try working to bless Him first.

He has given us a set of instructions but too many of us ignore them to the point where we are not even aware of what those instructions are.

And if we are unaware of what they are, or that they even exist in the first place, we cannot obey God by following them.

Paul knew this very well. in PHILIPPIANS 3:13 he said,

‘Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me Heavenward in Christ Jesus.’

Paul knew that the only way to get closer to the Lord was by walking toward him.

Walking away from Jesus was no option, and neither was staying where he was.

Remember when the Israelites left Egypt and were being pursued by the Pharaoh and his army?

Where were they? They were standing on the shore, with the army in front of them and the sea in back of them.

They seemed to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

So what did they do? They started crying out to God to save them. What did God do?

In GENESIS 14:15 God said,

‘Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the Israelites to move on!’

God told them to do something! Go! Stop talking and start walking!’

He had already delivered them from their evil oppressors and the plan was for them to go to the land He had promised them.

But when they came to the Red Sea, they stopped.

They could not go to the left or right because there was nothing but steep mountains.

They could not go back because the soldiers would kill them.

And they saw no way of going forward. But what we see is that as soon as they began to go, God made a way for them to do so.

Scripture does not say God made a way for them to escape later on, but He made the way right then - when they needed it.

And that is where many of us falter yet today.

We are willing to do things when we see a way to do them, but when we see no way to proceed, too often we just quit.

And then what do we do? We cry out to the Lord to help us out.

I think the answer we should hear back is this: “I quit only after you quit. If you start again, so will I.”

n JOSHUA 3, Israel came to another obstacle. They found themselves at the brink of the water on the Jordan river. What did God tell them to do?

Go forward! And once again, God divided the waters so they could obey His command to ‘GO.’

God allowed many obstacles to come before the Israelites, yet He continued to demand that they move forward.

And every time they stepped out in faith, to do the impossible, God provided the way for them to do it.

We can learn so much from them. As Christians, there are two things we will always find:

1) We will always find obstacles in our spiritual paths, and
2) We will always find resistance from the world in our Godly walk

But if we are diligent and keep focused on Jesus, we will find something else, too.

3) We will find that the Lord will always provide a way for us – as long as we are willing to step out in faith and move forward for His glory.

In 2 KINGS 7, we read about four men who had leprosy, and these men sat at the city gate.

These men would slowly die of starvation if they just kept sitting there because there was a terrible famine due to the city being under siege.

So, they decided to go to the camp of the Armenians and surrender.

They figured they might be killed, but they would die anyway where they were, and if they were not killed, at least they would be fed.

So they went into the enemy camp.

We have been talking about how we need to step out in faith and when we do, God will provide away.

Too many Christians do not get up and go, because the world scares them.

They are afraid they will upset someone if they are avid Christians, and they surely don’t want anyone saying awful things about them.

If those lepers had just been content to sit at the gates, they would have died.

But they got up and went to the camp of the enemy. Can you imagine how scary that would have been, to walk into an enemy’s camp, knowing that they might kill you?

These men walked in faith, and what did they find? The camp was empty!

The Lord let them hear the sounds of mighty chariots and the Armenians thought that several armies were on the attack.

This caused them to flee on foot, leaving everything they had behind, including their horses, their gold, and all their food.

These lepers could not change their situation, but they knew something had to change for them to survive, so they changed their location.

They moved forward. And when they did, they found themselves surrounded with an abundance of treasures and all the food they could eat.

And that is what God will do for us. When we stop being content with where we are, or with what we are doing, and get up and GO, stepping out in faith,

God will provide His abundance and peace in giving us the things we need to continue.

I have yet to find a place in the Bible where God let somebody down or failed to help them when they were dong all they could for Him.

We must move from having a religion about God to having a relationship with God.

We must move from having an obligation to God, to having a dedication to Him.

And it is time to move from having a membership in a church, to having a ministry for Christ.

As Christians, we have a special gift to offer, and God’s advice for us today is "Go and then you will then know what to do."

And why do we go for the Lord? 1 THESSALONIANS 5:2-3 explains it very well.

‘… for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape

And what is it you hear from the world around you? People are stepping all over everyone else, trying to find peace and safety.

But in all of their scrambling, you see very few people doing anything to find true peace or be safe in the Lord.

There is a story of how a high school janitor had many keys on the same key ring. He was a nice man who truly loved kids. It broke his heart when he had to turn a kid in to be punished, so when he noticed some high school kids doing something they shouldn’t be doing, he would make a point of jingling his keys loudly so they would hear him coming and straighten up before he got there.

Jesus loves us and it breaks His heart when we do things that will lead to our punishment.

So I believe he is jingling the keys to Heaven to get our attention.

He wants us to straighten up before He sees us. He wants us to stop going with the world and start going with Him.