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Growing In God with Gary Hargrave


May 8, 2024

Web Description: The God who shook the powers of Egypt and delivered His people with signs and wonders is the same God who will shake all things in the latter days. The fact that we may not have seen God move that way in our lifetime is not the issue. The issue is whether or not we will be the prepared people whose faith hastens His coming in this day.

 

Show Notes: Read Deuteronomy chapter 4. Before they entered Canaan to possess the land, Moses reminded the children of Israel about their wanderings in the wilderness, their time in Egypt, and how God delivered them with signs and wonders. In the retelling of their story, Moses began with the statement: “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire.” This was true for them then, but it is also prophetic of the days to come. It needs to be real to us that God is going to move again as He did in Egypt.

 

In many ways we are just like the children of Israel who were so conditioned by their bondage in Egypt for four hundred years that they had great difficulty believing that God would deliver them. As Christians we have two thousand years of history, much of which has been under the oppression of the world’s systems. We know we should believe that Christ can come at any moment with the power of God in signs and wonders and establish His Kingdom on this earth. But we struggle having the intense faith that we need because we have never seen the Lord move in that way.

 

We tend to see Him just like the Israelites did in Egypt—He was the God of their fathers, a God who moved in the past. But we cannot let the passage of time cause us to lose faith. Our God is and always has been a consuming fire, and He will again shake all things. He is the same God who delivered His people when their preparation was complete. And just as He came down when they cried out to Him, He will respond to us when we seek Him with all our heart, knowing that He will move in the earth when we are the prepared people He is waiting for.

 

Key Verses:

 

       Deuteronomy 4:24. “The LORD your God is a consuming fire.”

       Deuteronomy 4:25–30. “From there you will seek the LORD your God.”

       Deuteronomy 4:31–40. “You shall keep His statutes and His commandments.”

       2 Peter 3:3–14. “The Lord is not slow about His promise … but is patient toward you.”

       Romans 12:1–2. “Do not be conformed to this world.”

       Hebrews 12:18–27. “ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.”

       Hebrews 12:28–29. “Our God is a consuming fire.”

 

Quotes:

 

       “He will see every promise that He has given us fulfilled. And our job is to be believers. We must believe. We must not doubt because time has passed.”

       “We are living in the delusion of the material world that surrounded us and convinced us of something other than the living God who has the power to move in our lives.”

       “He is waiting for the natural world to have its total preparation for what transpires in the day of His return. More than that, He may just be waiting for you. He may be waiting for your growth and maturity, for you to come to the place where you are ready.”

 

Takeaways:

 

1.    We are not to lose our faith because of the passing of time. We are to grow in our gratitude and offer up worship to God in reverence and awe. We should remember what Moses said: “Our God is a consuming fire.” And He is not slow to fulfill His promises.

2.    Let us remember those promises. Let us remember the Words of God. And let us look back to our fathers—not to grow weak in faith but to be strengthened by their experience of watching and beholding the power of God moving in their midst on this earth.

3.    We know that God will move to establish His Kingdom and bring Yeshua the Messiah to rule on the earth. That is what we believe and that is what we wait for. As a result, we do not grow weak in faith but grow bolder and have more anticipation to see God move on this earth.