The New Normal

Transcript:

Welcome to this new morning. I pray that today you will have a revelation of God, you will have an experience with God that will cause you to fall in love with Him, not run away, be scared or afraid of Him. Its very natural for somebody who is not familiar with God to be afraid of His presence. We know what happened in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned when God came to speak to them, they just wanted to run away from His presence, but this morning my prayer is that the more He draws near to you, the more you will draw nearer to Him. You will not draw away from Him, you need to trust His love for you. You need to trust His care, protection and provision for you even when you’re not worthy or ready. He is the one who makes you ready. He is the one who clothes you with grace, beauty and power to be in His presence.

There’s this amazing story in the new testament. Let’s read Mark 15:5. “A large crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons. He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid” There was something that had just happened here and the Bible says that they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, about 6000 that tortured him. These demons hurt him and tried their best to keep this man in bondage and because of this man, these demons made sure to keep the entire city in fear. The Bible says, “He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane.” This man, who was possessed by 6000 demons, never used to wear clothes properly and he used to hurt himself and hurt people coming his way, but all of a sudden they saw this man fully clothed and perfectly sane, this was a sight that they had not seen. All of a sudden they saw this man alright and the next verse says that “they were all afraid”; They were all scared.
God had just moved into this land and they were just terrified. The story goes on to say that they asked Jesus to go away and leave them alone. Now if they would have welcomed Jesus into their homes, towns and neighbourhood, I’m sure that these 6000 demons that have caused so much damage in that area, Jesus would have undone those damages. But somehow they let their fear get in the way of receiving from God. See, God is going to continue to make advances in our life. God will take a step to see if you will respond in faith or if you will respond in fear. Especially if there is something unexpected or unknown that happens, because of our sin, guilt or our fear, is to just say, I don’t want to put my hand into this, I don’t want to think about this or worry about this or do something that I have never tried before. But this morning, I’m inviting you into an experience of God. Wherever you are if you can just allow God to encounter you, to encounter your relationships, to encounter your business endeavours, your career choices, everything that you do because there is a kind of sanity that is coming.

For people, it looked very abnormal to see the demon-possessed man sitting all sane and fully clothed. It became very normal for people to see the demon-possessed man hurting people and the atmosphere of the city. The fact that this man had come back to the original way in which God wanted him to be, created him to be, was abnormal for the people of the city. These guys could not envision it or tolerate it. They were used to being around all the destruction, pain, hurt and abuse.

But this morning, the Lord is opening your eyes to what is really normal or good for you. The Lord is healing some of your hearts and the Lord is saying, I’m willing to clothe you today, to make things in your life perfectly sane. What is normal for you is actually not normal.

Allow the Lord to define that in your life. If we will yield to God without fear, without any restrictions or hesitations, the Lord will come and there will be so many areas of your life that will be touched when we allow the Lord to do the deep work in your spirit. So pray with me, if you have your family members that are struggling with this, get them along and pray with them and let us believe together that today the presence of the Lord will be celebrated in your house. The Lord will not just be tolerated but He will be welcomed and celebrated.

Prayer: Father, we thank you for your presence, for your voice. We thank you for your heartbeat. We thank you that when we trust in you, you do not put us to shame. When we don’t know the answers, even when stepping into the unknown looks scary to us, give us the grace to move in faith, knowing that you are the one who defines what is normal, perfect and beautiful for us.