By Shannon Marshall

I attended the McNeill 4th of July Celebration Saturday night. The fireworks show was a great one. One of my grandsons had never experienced something like that. We were very close to the fireworks. He was obviously overwhelmed. He really was trying to figure out what was happening. When we don’t understand what is really happening it is hard to give an explanation. We really can’t explain what was happening last year, although we knew the world was in a pandemic crisis.

When I was younger, we turned off the TV when it was bad weather. I once asked why  we have to turn off the TV whenever it thunders. My grandmother answered, “because God is talking and when God speaks, we need to listen.”

The book of Hebrews is a book full of Christians surviving crises. The theme of every chapter is don’t give up.   The writer of Hebrews wrote, “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.” (Hebrews 12: 25).  Whenever God was tired of his people settling for the ordinary, the routine, or the missing the point of His purpose, God crafted a crisis that was contrary to the ordinary. God spoke to Moses though the burning bush, but contrary to the normal the bush wasn’t consumed.

What if God was saying something to us during the past crisis. What do we do when God speaks?

First, do not refuse Him. Don’t ignore God. If God wants to do something extraordinary don’t try and go back to ordinary. We are seeing shake ups, spiritually, politically, physically, and socially.

Second, do not remove Him. “Yet once more, denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” (vs. 27). May we be stronger because of the shake ups and may we be ready to live extraordinary and not just ordinary.