Shaken

Hebrews 12: 26-27, “And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO HEAVEN.’ The expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”

Once again God seems to just have everything around me speak a lesson daily. It is so easy to get distracted by life. It is even easy to get complacent in relationship to Christ, even in the daily practice of His presence. It sounds ridiculous, but there is a complacency that creeps in even when access to that intimate relationship to the Savior is available 24/7.

Here lately I have selfishly resisted correction. Even correction given in love and ordained, if not orchestrated, by God was resisted. So yesterday I had the pleasure of sharing my frustration with the men’s group Iwo Jima. As I declared my wows, those dozen men in the circle laughed at me in unison. How awesome an expression of God’s love. Here Christ laughed at me through the men at the ridiculousness of my concerns.  In the laughter was the realization that everything within us that is not God must be shaken, it must be tested, it must be revealed so that ultimately it is removed in the purifying of my character.

God cannot be shaken and these challenges in life that frustrate are there revealing and sifting those shakable traits that are not God.

I also find this scripture particularly applicable to those who are in Christ. Who more than the occupants of Heaven know Christ in His glory? Who more than the occupants of Heaven have access, and yet they are shaken as well. Saved or not, we are all in for a lifetime, and perhaps beyond, of shaking. God never gives up, and perfection is never achieved here on earth. That distinction will forever be Christ's

I can’t remember who Jim quoted in our meeting, or what the exact quote even was, but in essence this shaking that God does FOR us is in that tension between living real life and complete spiritual devotion. Too much concern for life and the shaking gets violent. Too off the deep end in spiritual devotion without regard for obedience and living for God and again the shaking gets violent. Get the tension right and the shaking, I hope, becomes more like a harmonic vibration that continuously, painlessly, removes the dross from my soul. Perhaps this tension and this shaking can even be like the vibration of a properly tuned string on the instrument of life.