GIG241 Will You Be Aware?

Web Description: The Scriptures warn us that just as we are unaware of a thief at night, we could be unaware of the Lord’s appearing. Perhaps the greatest problem we face is not the circumstances in the world but our own unawareness of God. It is imperative that we seek the Lord for a greater awareness and understanding of what He is saying and doing today.

 

Show Notes: A characteristic of the end-time is the unawareness on people. We see this in the flood of anti-Semitism that is moving through the world today and even sweeping through many churches. What enables the anti-Semitism is a tremendous unawareness of what God has spoken in the Scriptures, which is that He has never abandoned His people Israel, and He will fulfill every Word He has given them. The unawareness of what God is saying is where deceptions take root and where we miss the purposes of God in the earth.

 

God spoke through Isaiah, “Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?” We have to be aware of what God is going to do today and not depend on our understanding of what God did in the past. Again we read in Isaiah, “I proclaim to you new things; … before today you have not heard them.” We may be confident that we know what to do today because we have heard what God did yesterday. But what if God proclaims something we have never heard before?

 

God is speaking today to our generation. But will we hear Him and will we understand what He is saying? Samuel at first did not understand what God was saying to Him. He had to learn the voice of the Lord. Samuel grew and became a prophet who knew and taught what God was speaking to Israel during his time. And Christians today need to seek the Lord until we like Samuel can hear the voice of God, understand what He is saying, and be those to show this generation the new thing God is doing now.

 

Key Verses:

 

•       Isaiah 43:18–21. “Behold, I will do something new; … will you not be aware of it?”

•       Isaiah 42:8–10. “Now I declare new things; before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.”

•       1 Samuel 3:2–11. “Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening.”

•       Isaiah 48:3–9. “I proclaim to you new things from this time.”

•       1 Thessalonians 5:1–9. “So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.”

•       Luke 21:29–36. “Keep on the alert at all times.”

•       2 Peter 3:10. “The day of the Lord will come like a thief.”

•       Revelation 3:3. “If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief.”

•       Mark 13:31–33. “Take heed, keep on the alert.”

•       Matthew 24:37–39. “They did not understand until the flood came and took them all away.”

•       1 Corinthians 2:1–16. “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; … he cannot understand them.”

 

Quotes:

 

•       “If we want to be fearful of something, we should be fearful of our unawareness.”

•       “What Christ represented in the earth was One who knew the Father, One who heard the voice of the Father, One who saw the Father and had the exact understanding of what God was doing. So He was able to manifest it before people.”

•       “Recognize that what seems to be playing itself out in great wisdom and understanding and taking over the earth is actually functioning out of an unawareness and an inability to understand what God is doing.”

•       “We're not learning about the things of this world, the things outside. We're learning the things of the Spirit so that we hear the voice of the Spirit; we hear the voice of the Lord.”

 

Takeaways:

 

1.    Being fearful and concerned about world events means our focus is wrong. Our focus should be on what God is doing inside of us and not on what is happening outside of us. What matters to God is that we understand the wisdom and mysteries that He is unfolding to enable us to walk through these days.

2.    God is going to do something new. And the concern is that we His people could miss what He is doing because of our unawareness. Within the Church today there must come a greater awareness of what God is speaking.

3.    The challenge is not to become biblical scholars but to hear the voice of the Lord. Not only do we need to hear the voice of the Lord, but we also need to understand what He is saying to us right now. We need to be His prophets through whom He can move in this age.