SoulShift
The Measure of a Life Transformed
“From Seen to Unseen”
September 28-29, 2019
Communion:
Also share about our New Hope Spark convert from a country that you could be killed if you profess to be a Christian.
I’m glad to be back here! It’s a first time I can remember coming when Pastor Lori is here. We are in this 8 wk series entitled, Soulshift. We’ll cover seven shifts, changes, that God leads us through, in his power (that’s key) to make change in our life so that we become different, looking and acting more and more like Jesus. Last week PLori spoke about the Soulshift of going from a Slave to Child. Before that, From Me to You, and today, the Seen to the Unseen, Go from “what can see to what you no can see”. These shifts we are speaking about is not just a shift in our thinking, it’s a shift that happens deeply in our lives. It happens in our soul.
It’s like when my wife, Gayle was pregnant with our son, Clarke, it wasn’t until he was born, albeit 7 weeks early, a preme, and I held him in my arms, more like my hand cuz he was less than 4 lbs, smaller than one good size kumu, that something happened in me. It was my shift of “I’m a daddy now!” My life as a freediver, as a golfer, my spending all took on a radical shift. All the other stuff took da back seat to my being a father. I’m sure it was the same for many of you who became parents for the first time.
That’s the kind of deep shift we are contending for, hoping you’d catch and experience in this series. And these radical shifts only happen when we let God come in, clean house, and change us from the inside out.
You see, we can come to church, hear many good messages, and if we don’t allow what we hear (hold my head), affect something hear (hold my heart), by letting God in, we’ll only become heady Christians, know all the answers, but no mo life change. Why? Its’ because no soulshift happens. Our prayer is that each wk, you’ll be challenged to take what you hear and ask God to affect something here (hold the heart) so that we can truly transform and be more like Jesus in character all done by the power of God in our lives.
Today, the soulshift I’ll be contending for is a shift from the Seen to the Unseen.
It’s like this story about this Wahiawa wahine getting up one morning, when she looked in the mirror, she screamed and drove herself to Wahiawa General E.R. She told the E.R Dr frantically, “Doc, when I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled, my skin all wrinkled and pale, my eyes all bloodshot and bugging out, and I looked like a ghost! What’s WRONG with me, Doctor!?” The doctor looks her over for a couple of minutes, and then said: “Well, one things for sure, there is nothing wrong with your eyesight.”
Sometimes it’s not that we have problems seeing with our eyes. We have a perception problem. We may see correctly, but it’s that we don’t see from God’s eyes that’s the problem.
Or wee can be like this guy who went to an eye dr complaining about seeing spots. The receptionist asked him what kind of problems he was having. The man said, “I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes.” The receptionist asked, “Have you ever seen a doctor?” and the man replied, “No, doctor, I just see spots.” Others have an eye problem!
And today, I’m gonna talk about the shift of going from Seeing to the and believing the Unseen. It’s not gonna be about our seeing with our eyes. A story is told about a time in history of Israel when Kings ruled the land, when a foreign army, the Arameans were attacking Israel in 2 Kings and how God opened the eyes of the people to see what couldn’t be seen.
“Then Elisha prayed, ‘O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!’ The LORD opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire” (2 Kings 6:17 NLT).
It’s the power of having God open our eyes to see what we can’t see in the natural. Elisha wasn’t surrounded, the Arameans were by the his very own army and God protected Elisha.
Sometimes we gotta ask God to open our eyes to see things that we can’t see in the natural.
We didn’t see New Hope Wahiawa existing. It started out with God opening doors in Wahiawa for NHM years ago and The Shimabukuros came to church. And when we moved to Mililani, many of those original people came, but that gave The Shimabukuros a vision to go back to Wahiawa. And look what is happening today. It’s asking God to open our eyes to see what we can’t see in the natural!
Did I ever imagine seeing my parents come to know Jesus. Yes, I prayed for that, but I God made that happen, albeit in my dad’s dying of cancer, with his facing in own death, he gave his life to Jesus!.
This message is about having a shift to seeing from God’s eyes, seeing from his heart, not ours. And much of what God sees is what we can touch, taste, and see. Just because we can’t see something, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Jesus even said, look at the wind, it blows, but you can’t see it, but you surely see it’s affects.
1. ENGAGE THE UNSEEN WORLD.
When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied (Exodus 3:4 NLT).
הנני
HINENY (Hebrew): I am here with my whole heart to do whatever you want.
How many of you have ever found yourself awake in the wee hours of the night and you can’t go back to sleep? Maybe you need to go bathroom, or maybe God is calling you to stay with Him for a while to pray! (Or both.)
If this happens, your response is, “Hineny, I am here.”
This is potentially a HUGE invitation from the Father who’s about to give you a download, speak deeply to you.
This is how
- Jacob became Israel
- Moses became the Deliverer of Israel
- Isaiah and Ezekiel became prophets
- Jesus fulfilled His assignment as Messiah of all mankind.
They all started with “HINENY.”
It starts with GOD catching our attention. Then you STOP and stare at this amazing God Thing. Then God calls your name. Then you respond, “God I’m here, I’ll do whatever you want, just say the word”
Did you see last week amazing miracle story of Danette’s and how she overcame suffering, disease, fear, being mauled by pitbulls only to love Jesus more than ever. Danette is a burning bush!
The week before that you heard how God intervened in Marc and Becky’s lives to save their marriage! Their marriage is a burning bush!
Has God gotten your attention like this?
Take a moment and stop and reflect on what you are seeing and hearing. And listen for how God might call your name as you stop. And when He does, what do you say?
“Hineny.”
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16 – 18 NIV).
2. EXCEL IN LOVE FOR OUR UNSEEN GOD.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love” (1 John 4:8 NIV).
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NLT).
Show video on the Blind guy with two men: (We can see with spiritual eyes that people are gonna be walking off the cliff, what friend are you? Cuz we can see with spiritual eyes) We gotta dare love enough to speak out to those who can’t see what we can see in the spiritual realm. Everyone’s walking off the cliff and we have the chance to save others cuz we see the cliff, we see what’s awaiting those who don’t know Jesus!
Because the Spirit of the Lord dwells in every believer.
And the Spirit of the Lord DESIRES to be with every person.
Take your eyes off the temporary things of this world–money, power, status, etc.–and focus on the most eternal thing there is…LOVE. Because God is love. And he loves people and he wants to use us to share his love to people around us, cuz if not, they’ll walk off the cliff.
When we love each others that is NOT something from this world.
That comes from the UNSEEN world.
EXCEL in love for God and you will shift from what is SEEN to what is UNSEEN. And our love for other people will go to another level.
3. GROW IN YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THE UNSEEN.
“We walk by faith not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV).
How many of us were there when our kids took their first steps?
Get out the video camera! Do you all of a sudden start walking? No, you crawl first. But obviously he couldn’t stop there. Next he had to learn how to stand up, hold onto something. Establish equilibrium. At first we fall down…a LOT. But we no stop there.
But eventually he learned how to sacrifice equilibrium, regain it, sacrifice it again, regain. You and I don’t think twice about this. Den one step, turns into two, three, den you start walking. Walking by faith is just like that.
First, we learn to STAND in Christ.
Next, we learn to WALK by FAITH in Christ.
But spiritually speaking, some tell, “I no can walk, I stay crawling dass good enough. Yeah, you can crawl to get around, but there is something better!, and God designed you to walk, walk by faith! Yeah, you might fall down, but he promises to pick you up. So start walking, trusting God.
- What do you need to learn to trust God for that you don’t see right now?
- Becoming for healthy – gotta trust God and take steps
- Becoming healthy in your relationships – gotta trust God and join C.R
- Learn to take what you hear on Sunday and grow – gotta trust God and join one OG
- See you ohana come to know Jesus – gotta start praying for them and sharing with them what God is doing in your life
- Get a better job, gotta trust God and take steps to work hard now, study hard, pray, and apply to that job.
- Have a better marriage,
- Know more about the bible, start reading, and take steps to learn, come on Wed fo my class.
You don’t see it right now, but walking by faith, not by sight means, taking small steps of faith, trusting God, that’s our part, and God promises to do his!
Romans 4:20 – 21 “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he has promised”
Gotta be fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised! It starts with that! Write in your notes…
Faith is living in ADVANCE what you will only understand in REVERSE.
Do you know when God placed it on Pastor Lori and her husband Guy’s heart to open for New Hope Wahiawa? 10 years ago.
Did you know Pastor Lori, didn’t start out as Pastor Lori! She was Lori, the NHCO administrator. She’d tell you, God spoke it over her, but she’d struggle to receive that vision for herself. She started walking by faith, taking classes (I was in classes with her), she was already taking care of people, she just needed to start walking in giving weekend messages! She has developed into a great communicator today! I just to tell her, speak loudly, no mumble. Look now! Look how many of you have grown because Pastor Lori has stepped out in faith. It look living in ADVANCE what she would only understand in Reverse.
“TOO RISKY!” some might say.
But what you call risk, God calls FAITH.
Maybe some of us think that God will measure by how many sermons we listen to, how many church services we attend, or how much bible we know.
Faith is living in ADVANCE what you will only understand in REVERSE.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Show the Pidgin Bible scripture:
31 years ago, would I imagine the day when the Hawaii Pidgin Bible, Da Good an Specho book would be published when I first was futting around with this bible translator guy in college some verses here and there. At the end of this month, Da Jesus Book and Da Before Jesus Book, dass the O.T, will be send off to a publisher in Korea, and we gotta wait, and then Da Good an Specho book, da bible in Hawaii Pidgin going come. But dass not da end dass jus da start cuz peopo gotta hear God’s word in our language peopo can understand mo bettah.
People who dunno God will tell, I gotta see before I believe, but you know wat God tell, firs you gotta believe and then goin see.
Maybe you hear today, and God stay speak loud to you bout trus him first bout something you no see yet happening. Maybe today your chance fo change and ask God fo help you see, dass having trus, dass believing by faith, not sight! Going from Seeing to the Unseen.
I for shua dunno wat God stay putting on your heart, but let’s go respond to him and ask him for help us see that.
Pray: Close your eyes, put what you no see yet, in your hands, and tell God I believe you for this, and help me to take small kine steps fo obey you
