Keion Henderson - Surviving the Shift

My word for you today is «survive the shift.» That 's what I want to talk about today. Touch three people and encourage them because they don’t know they can do it. Tell them that no matter what’s going on, survive the shift. Did you hear what I said? Survive the shift. I’m going to say it once again: survive the shift. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God!

So can I catch you up on what just happened? Moses-how many of you know who he is? Just about my namesake! Moses is the guy that God chose to lead the children of Israel from the precipice of the wilderness to what you read аbout: the land that He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham, being the father of the faithful, gives birth with his wife at an old age to a son named Isaac. Isaac gives birth to a son named Jacob. Jacob then has 12 sons, from which we derive what we call the 12 tribes of Israel. Years have passed, and Israel, because of their stiff-necked persona, is facing a challenge.

What God is really saying is that the reason He calls them stiff -necked is that He says, «I am your God. I delivered you from 400 years of slavery and then 40 years in the wilderness, and you’re still worshiping idols.» Your head is so " Xfinity» or stiffened; you haven’t turned to me. Does that make sense? You haven’t turned in the direction of your help. That 's why you never hear a guy called David as «stiff-necked.» Even though he was hard -headed, why don’t you hear him called " David stiff-necked»? Because no matter how hard David was, he still lifted his head to the hills.

This is a rebuke about a lack of worship, not a lack of perfection. He says, «I want to help you, and I’m going to help you, but I’m going to change the game because you have changed the rules.» Moses has fled Egypt, and I’m looking in the text: he has just killed a guy and buried him on the backside of the desert. So this Moses that we shout about, this Moses that we praise God for, I hate to tell you, is a convicted felon. I know you want to be like Moses and desire a double portion, but oftentimes God uses some of the worst people in Scripture to do some of the best things that have ever happened.

This is good because somebody in your life-some religious cohort, some traditionalist — has told you that there is no room for you, making you think that we’re just serving God and He only uses good people. I want you to look in your Bible and find a good person whom God used. He doesn’t call qualified people; He qualifies those whom He calls. Moses was not qualified, but God qualified him because Moses had something that the other guys didn’t have. Moses wasn’t caught up in cultural myths. Most of them care about the fact that all of his rooms had furniture in them. One day, Moses looked out and saw that they were doing someone he knew wrong and decided to give it all up.

Moses was more loyal to the people than to himself. He said, «I’m not going to sit up here in this high place and see you mistreat people who came from where I came from.» He is the Emancipator. He leaves comfort and goes to calling. Let me tell you something: every time God calls you, it’s away from your comfort. Comfort is not the proof of the call. Comfort is proof that God is about to call, as He never calls you to a comfortable place. He calls you from comfort to chaos to see if you will trust Him to be peace in the middle of the storm.

For peace, ladies and gentlemen, is not the absence of noise, but it is the presence of order. This means that real peace does not mean the storm stops; real peace means I’ve learned to be content no matter what state I’m in. Your peace is your responsibility. It is not your circumstances' responsibility; it is not your spouse’s responsibility; it’s just something you have to decide to absolutely have. It’s not going to come; you’ve got to manufacture it. It’s not going to appear; you’ve got to make it. You’ve got to learn to be content no matter what goes on in my life. I’ve learned therewith to be content.

Moses has left after seeing a fellow Israelite being beaten, and he has basically said, «I’m over it. I’m going down there; I’m getting ready to put it all on the line because they need my help.» Even though I am in Pharaoh’s house, I am willing to give all of that up, and he takes a job that Egyptians laugh at. He goes from being in Pharaoh’s house to taking a job as a shepherd. If you do the study, you’ll find that there was one job Egyptians thought was deplorable. The worst job that a man could ever have was to be a shepherd.

Now, it’s amazing that that’s the worst job, yet God has a history of picking them to do His work. David was tending sheep when God found him, and here Moses is shepherding Jethro’s sheep. As a matter of fact, he’s such a low sheep herder that he doesn’t even have his own sheep; he’s taking care of somebody else’s sheep, yet God picks him.