Gtcotr/ss051610
John 2 NLT
13 It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem.
14 In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.
15 Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables.
16 Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
17 Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Passion for God’s house will consume me.”
What are you passionate about?
For Jesus it was the House of God. Jesus was consumed with passion for God’s House. And this passion drove Jesus to action, gave Him strength, boldness, courage and confidence. Our passions will do the same for us.
Passion is where we find our strength, our confidence, our courage.
Jesus always, in all situations and circumstances of life, continually submitted Himself and His strengths to God’s will.
Hebrews 10:7 “… I have come to do Your will O God.”
John 8:29 “… I always do those things which please My Father.”
Luke 22:42 “… not My will, but Your will be done.”
Matthew 26:53 “Don’t you realize that I could pray right now for thousands of angels and My Father would send them instantly? But if I did, how would the scriptures ever be fulfilled?”
Jesus had a passion, a purpose and a power for life but He always submitted His strengths to God’s will. He was strong, but submitted.
So many times we ask God to help us cover our weaknesses without realizing that most often our greatest weaknesses come from our greatest strengths, our greatest passions, areas in which we have great confidence.
Our greatest tests may not be what to do when we don’t know what to do, but what to do when we do know what to do and when we could fix it ourselves or when we could muscle it through to get our way. Sometimes the greatest tests we face is the test of deciding if what we want, and can make happen, is really God’s will or just our own.
Just because you can make it happen, does not mean you should make it happen.
Even when we are strong, we must still humble ourselves and submit our strength and our passions to God.
About 2000 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when Israel was known as the land of Canaan and was used as a highway, a trade route between the Assyrian and Northern Mesopotamian, and the Egyptian empires, there was a man born in Ur of the Chaldees named Abraham. Abraham had a covenant with God.
He married and eventually moved his family to the Land of Canaan where he had a son with his wife Sarah. Their son’s name was Isaac. Like Abraham, Isaac lived in the Land of Canaan as a stranger but with the promise of God that his descendants would one day possess that land.
When Isaac was 60 years old, he and his wife Rebekah had twin sons and named the firstborn Esau and the second, Jacob. The boys did not get along very well and struggled with each other even before they came from their mother’s womb. These two boys were just different …
Esau was a rough man, a man of the field and a hunter by trade, while Jacob was a mild mannered boy, staying close to his mother and the tents, even cooking meals on occasion. Suffice it to say that these two boys had different approaches to life and this served to foster even more struggles between them.
According to a prophecy given to their mother before they were born, the older brother, Esau, was destined to end up serving the younger, Jacob. These boys were not only different in nature and approach to life but also held very different destinies as determined by God. Jacob was the one chosen by God to become the inheritor of the covenant blessing God had first given to Abraham and then to Isaac. And for this, God had equipped Jacob with certain passions, strengths and character qualities of life.
All throughout Jacob’s life we see him as a man of passion, a man of strength, a man of decisiveness, aggressive, determined, bold, a risk taker, a man who finds it easy to commit and resolves himself to keep his commitments. This guy has the capacity to stay focused and let time work for him. God equipped Jacob to inherit the covenant and birth the nation of Israel.
One of Jacob’s greatest strengths was his evident capacity to deeply, passionately, and completely commit himself. This was also where Jacob most often failed in life and where he caused the most trouble for others.
It’s not our weaknesses that cause us to fail, but rather our unbridled strengths.
Jacob was a lover, not a fighter. He had great capacity to commit and to focus his love and attention. He would need this strength to become one of the three founding patriarchs of the covenant between God and man. But, this strength also gave him the ability to so focus his love and attention on one thing or person so much, that he completely abandoned other people and other things which were just as important. For example:
• Jacob had a favorite parent – his mother Rebekah whom he loved and was focused on and to whom he was solely committed and submitted to without question. (This caused problems)
• Jacob had a favorite wife – Rachel for whom he worked, at hard labor for 14 years, for no pay other than the promise of her hand, (which turned out to be a lie after the first 7 years), but that did not stop his pursuits, change his focus or detour his passion nor his commitment to her, even to the exclusion of his wife, Leah.
• Jacob had a favorite child – Joseph, called the son of his old age, (but he had a younger son whom he fathered with the same woman at an older age). This too caused problems …
Genesis 37
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a coat of many colors.
4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
Jacob’s greatest strength was also his greatest weakness. His ability to commit to his passion no doubt caused him to struggle in the womb; manipulate the purchase of Esau’s birthright for himself; lie, cheat and steal the firstborn blessing from his father Isaac.
You know, just because you can do something, does not mean you should do it.
In fact, the things we are most able to do for ourselves, may be the things we most need to submit to God.
Your strength, insubordinate to God, is your greatest potential weakness.
So, what have we learned today?
1. We are given strengths commensurate with God’s chosen destiny for our life.
2. Our greatest strengths are connected to the passions God placed within us. This is designed to meld our deepest feelings with our greatest work.
3. Confidence in our own strength, fueled by our own passion, cannot always be trusted.
4. We must submit ourselves, especially our strengths, to the will of God.
2 Corinthians 12:10 For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Our greatest strength will always be found in doing God’s will.
