Ellis
Anne Cetas wrote, “Kevin walked into the nursing facility after his dad passed away to pick up his belongings. The staff handed him two small boxes. He said he realized that day that it really didn’t take an abundance of possessions to be happy. His dad, Larry, had been carefree and always ready with a smile and an encouraging word for others.”
The reason for his happiness was another “possession” that didn’t fit into a box: an unshakable faith in his redeemer, Jesus.
Community, hear me when I say we all can have unshakable faith. It just depends on where your faith is. Unshakable means just what it says, unshakable. Who doesn’t want unshakable faith? When you have unshakable faith, you don’t worry even when ordinarily you have every reason to be. Unshakable in that you hold firm to your belief no matter what.
Unshakable means that it can’t be moved, can’t be washed away, can’t be burned, can’t be crushed, can’t be beaten down and it can’t be destroyed. Anything that is unshakable means that it is solid, and it can be that way when your faith is in the right thing. Now friends, this morning, I am talking to all of us when I say that if your faith is shakeable, then we need to examine what it is that our faith is in. Because the truth of the matter is, if our faith is in anything other than Jesus Christ, our faith is on shaky ground, which brings us to another point. This should cause us all to take a serious look at what we value in life. What are the most precious things to you and me?
Because what we love determines where our faith is, it’s time for all of us to sit down and take a spiritual assessment and see what we value in life. “Do I value things, possessions, education, money, houses, being likable or social status?” “What are the most important things to me, and where do I place my faith?” Let’s be honest because this message will help us to have Unshakable faith! Because we are going to need it.
My friends, in anything we do in our Christian life, we are to model Jesus Christ as our example. If we say we are followers of him, then we are to model after him (1 John 2:6), and that means getting our priorities in line with the will and word of God. Let me establish in this brand new year that true happiness does not depend on things. Some people act like they think that it does. They live like they think that it does, that if you have a whole lot of material things like money, prestige, education, and the finer things of life, that it will somehow make you complete and fulfilled. And so they spend their lives pursuing the material, and they place their faith in the material, but this is a false sense of faith. Understand me this morning, there is nothing wrong with possessing things and enjoying them, for the bible tells us that “God gives us all things to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17).” There is nothing wrong with education; we need it to advance in life and to better ourselves. There is nothing wrong with money; we need it to survive, for money does make the world go around, but the bible says, “It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10).”
And being a homeowner myself, there is nothing wrong with owning a home. That’s what we work for, for the one thing we all need is to have a roof over our heads. Having a social standing in the community is a good thing when the service that we give calls for it. These things are a part of life but were never meant to bring us true happiness. True happiness, community, is not what you have externally, but true happiness is what you have internally. And it’s not just a good feeling. It’s in a person, the person Jesus Christ.
In the pursuit of happiness, folk are disappointed, discouraged, depressed and suicidal all because they discover that things and possessions don’t bring true happiness. In that regard, they have a shakable faith. In these days and times we’re living in now, we had better have unshakable faith. Friends, as a preacher prophet, let me say that some people put all of their faith in the government. They look entirely to the government, but the government is shakable. Some put all, and I mean all, of their faith in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but you’d better change that. The CDC is shakable. Others put all their faith in their 401k, but if the stock market crashes, so can your 401k. Jesus said, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses (Luke 12:15).”
Community, it grieves my spirit to see how some families fall apart, get mad and take one another to court over money and material things after a loved one dies. Some stop speaking to one another for years because they fail to see that life is not about the things that we have. Community friends, don’t build your faith on things and jobs and money and people. Be rich where it counts. Build your faith in Christ and Christ alone. Make him your faith. If you do, he’ll give you an unshakable faith!