This morning, we’re beginning a new message series entitled, “Align.”
A lot of our lives are impacted by positional alignment.
Perhaps your back or hips were out of alignment. Headaches, migraines, or other persistent body aches and pains have a hugely negative impact on life. It can pinch nerves causing pain or numbness. You have to compensate for this misalignment in the way that you move, sit, or lay. You are constantly thinking about it even when you don’t realize it. Eventually, you begin to stop doing things that you love because you just can’t physically do it any longer.
Positional Alignment.
Perhaps your vehicle’s suspension has fallen out of alignment thanks to the wonderfully pot-hole filled roads that we drive on here in rural PA? Your car pulls to one side or the other, the steering wheel jerks and shakes, your tires start to quickly wear down in odd ways all putting your safety at risk. All because one or more tires decided to try and go a very slightly different direction than the others.
Positional Alignment.
Perhaps you have a door that is no longer aligned with its frame. Maybe it jams and you have to shove it open or closed. Maybe it won’t close and stay closed and you have to get creative with ways to force it closed.
How about having that one step or sidewalk block that is just a little bit taller or shorter than the rest? How many times do you trip on that?
Positional Alignment.
Maybe it’s more personal with a relationship or career or just your own personal life goals. You feel like you are getting dragged in a different direction than you want to head. You find yourself wore out spending time and money and emotional energy and thoughts on things that just aren’t going the right way. Something just isn’t fitting into place.
Sometimes we just float through our days letting life happen to us like some type of Jenga game as the pieces of our life are moved around until it finally gets so out of alignment that it all comes crashing down.
Positional Alignment.
Throughout this series, we’re going to learn how to position ourselves to get back into alignment with God. This enables us to live our lives to their fullest potential and not to miss out on anything that God has for us. We will learn how to position ourselves to receive from God, to grow in our faith, and to become more effective at ministering to others.
Positioning ourselves back into alignment with God will also save us from so much hurt and pain and suffering that we experience when we try to live our lives misaligned with His plans and purposes and design for our us.
Now bear with me for a minute because this is going to sound heretical for a minute.
Consider the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
The Bible cannot give me peace.
Living out the principles that it teaches can help us to live more at peace with others.
However, the Bible, itself cannot give me peace.
Knowledge and wisdom? Sure, but not peace.
The Bible is a collection of books written by people under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, it is God-breathed and the true author of all of the books is God, Himself.
It is incredibly important for us to read and study and memorize God’s word. His word reveals information about who God is, who we are, what God’s Kingdom is like, how to practically live these lives that He has given us, and so much more.
However, the Bible, like signs, wonders, and miracles, are given to guide and direct and lead us to God.
The fruits of the Spirit, salvation, and everything else that the Bible promises us, can come only from God.
I can know all about something without ever having it, myself. I know that mansions exist, but I’ve never received one. I can become really knowledgeable about mansions and be able to win arguments and debates with people about them. My passion for them would lead people to assume that I live in one and yet never actually possess one, myself.
That is not where we want to be as Christians.
We don’t want to just know about God and His word.
We want to receive everything that He desires us to have!
We want to possess every one of His promises!
We want to become all that we were created to be!
We want to do all that God has prepared for us to do!
We don’t want to just be passionate about God.
We want to be passionate toward God; together with Him!
The Bible and miracles and signs and wonders are given to us so that we hunger and thirst for God. They are to lead us and guide us to Him and into His Presence. This is where we receive anything and everything from God!
One of the keys to position ourselves correctly to receive from God is: humility.
In fact, the primary Hebrew word for Worship (šāḥâ) means to bow down.
Life transformation that results from us positioning ourselves into alignment with God begins when we surrender. Surrender to God means that I am wrong and God is right. Period.
Romans 3:4
Let God be true, and every human being a liar.
I surrender my opinions, my will, my thoughts, my entire life to God.
Unless we humble ourselves in surrender, change is impossible, learning will not take place, revelation cannot be received.
Proverbs 15:33 (TPT)
The source of revelation-knowledge is found as you fall down in surrender before the Lord. Don’t expect to see Shekinah glory until the Lord sees your sincere humility.
Proverbs 15:33 (KJV)
The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.
The word for honor is the Hebrew word kāḇôḏ. The Passion Translation correctly interpreted this verse as this word is used 200 times to describe specifically the glory of the Lord; the Shekinah glory. The same cloud of glory that filled the tabernacle of Moses and lead God’s people through the desert. The same glory cloud that filled the temple so that the priests could not stand and were unable to continue ministering before the Lord.
Humility positions us to be filled.
Humility empties ourselves of our pride and arrogance and rebellion toward God.
Less of us and much more of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God!
2 Corinthians 3:7-18
7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 9 If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! 10 For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. 11 And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!
12 Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Freedom, boldness, ministry, revelation, glory, transformation; all resulting from simple surrender in humility.
Humbling ourselves in surrender to the Lord enables Him to remove the veil over our perspectives that prevents us from seeing and perceiving and understanding correctly. Only by the Holy Spirit can our eyes be opened to see from God’s point of view, hearts softened to understand from His perspective, and to lives transformed to become more like Him in an ever-increasing measure!
It is up to us to replace pride with humility. The Bible warns us many times to avoid pride and arrogance. These puff us up to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. Unfortunately, they always lead us to think so highly of ourselves that we begin to separate ourselves from God unknowingly and unintentionally. Haughtiness always lead to rebellion against God whilst thinking that we are right and doing no wrong.
The biggest challenge with pride is that we rarely ever see it in ourselves. When we are prideful, we are wise in our own eyes. We think we are right. We have blinded ourselves from our own fall. The cliff is nearing, but we’re arrogantly going our own way thinking that it is right.
If you find yourself more often correcting others than receiving correction from the Lord for your own self, then there is no doubt that you have become full of pride. If things should always go your way, there is pride. If you despise anyone, there is pride. If you are easily offended, there is pride. If you can’t receive criticism from others, there is pride. If you rarely celebrate the good or the victories in other people’s lives, there is pride. And I could go on…
Whether being full of it or just having a little of pride, it’s critically important that we empty ourselves of it, which can ONLY be done through humility.
Most all of us have a verse memorized, though we may not realize it. Pride comes before a great fall or destruction. This is Proverbs 16:18. However, this only provides the problem and not the solution. There is another proverb that does.
Proverbs 18:12
Before a downfall the heart is haughty,
but humility comes before honor.
Humility is the solution to pride.
They cannot coexist.
We cannot simultaneously lower ourselves and exalt ourselves.
God is looking for something; searching the earth for it; wanting to pour out His manifest glory and Presence and honor in the place of it! Humility.
Humility is the first step in positioning ourselves to receive anything from God.
James 4:5-7;10
5 Do you think Scripture says without reason that He jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
7a Submit yourselves, then, to God. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.
God is looking for the humble.
Proverbs 15:33 (TPT)
The source of revelation-knowledge is found as you fall down in surrender before the Lord.
Don’t expect to see Shekinah glory until the Lord sees your sincere humility.
If we don’t become sincerely humble, things will not go well for us. It may for a season, but that season will have a limit.
Proverbs 11:2 (TPT)
When you act with presumption, convinced that you’re right, don’t be surprised if you fall flat on your face! But humility leads to wisdom.
For King Nebuchadnezzar, it was a period of seven times from the time that God humbled him until he chose to humble himself. He lost his sanity, was driven away from people and living with wild animals, eating grass like an ox, growing out his hair like eagle’s feathers and nails like talons. Seven times passed until finally, he admitted that Heaven rules; until he admitted that he was only king and richly blessed because of God and not himself.
King Nebuchadnezzar’s final statement in that season was, “those who walk in pride, God is able to humble.”
We absolutely do not want to position ourselves in a place where God has to humble us!
Instead, we want to position ourselves in humility so that we can live a life able to be blessed that glorifies God at all times!
We want to have a positionally correct life in alignment with God’s perfect will.
It is there that we truly live and are blessed and our souls at rest and peace no matter what is happening all around us.
It is there that we are positioned to receive all that God has promised to give us!
Psalms 37:7-11 (TPT)
7 Quiet your heart in His presence and wait patiently for Yahweh.
And don’t think for a moment that the wicked, in their prosperity, are better off than you.
8 Stay away from anger and revenge. Keep envy far from you, for it only leads you into lies.
9 For one day the wicked will be destroyed, but those who trust in the Lord will inherit the land.
10 Just a little while longer and the ungodly will vanish; you will look for them in vain.
11 But the humble of heart will inherit every promise and enjoy abundant peace.
What is sincere humility?
How do we possess it?
What must we do to remain in it?
I believe that the key to humility is a simple truth.
All God, not me.
All God, not me.
Anything good in my life is a result of God.
It is a result of God’s mercy and grace and goodness and provision and Presence.
Every decision that I make is made in agreement with God’s word and guided by God’s wisdom and directed by God’s Holy Spirit within.
I am but clay in the Potter’s hands.
Who I become is who He envisions and purposes and creates me to be.
What I have is whatever He decides to entrust into my stewardship.
Clay in the hands of the Potter.
Isaiah 29:13-16
13 The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
14 Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”
15 Woe to those who go to great depths
to hide their plans from the Lord,
who do their work in darkness and think,
“Who sees us? Who will know?”
16 You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,
“You did not make me”?
Can the pot say to the potter,
“You know nothing”?
Romans 9:20-21
20 Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
Isaiah 64:8
Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 45:11-12;18
11 “This is what the Lord says—
the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:
Concerning things to come,
do you question me about my children,
or give me orders about the work of my hands?
12 It is I who made the earth
and created mankind on it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
18 He who created the heavens,
He is God;
He who fashioned and made the earth,
He founded it;
He did not create it to be empty,
but formed it to be inhabited
Jeremiah 18:1-6
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.”
Humility is us throwing off our pride and arrogance and opinions and self-righteousness and surrendering into the hands of the Potter. All God, not me. It is positioning ourselves to allow God to realign our lives in every aspect to conform to His will and not ours; His design and not ours; His purposes and not ours.
In the end, however, we will have no regrets! We will be richly blessed! We will live our lives to their fullest! We will have all that we need and more in an overflowing abundance! And the best part is that it will all give glory in an undeniable way to God.
All God, not me!
As we begin to live a positionally correct life, God can perfectly align us!