Beth Moore- Earthquake Excerpt

I absolutely adore Beth Moore for so many reasons but for the short of it, she is knowledgeable, knows how to explain complex things in down-to-earth terms and situational scenarios... anyway, the following is from an excerpt from Travis Cottrell's CD (which I will make a copy of if anyone would like)... everything in brackets is her words and with my emphasis.

Text comes from Acts 16:19

[The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully and upon receiving such orders he put them in the inner cells and fastened their feet in the stocks, and about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them and suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken and AT ONCE all the prison doors flew open and every body’s chains came loose- their skin torn apart by severe flogging –and when the Word of God uses the word severe for a flogging, they had been beaten half to death- I would suggest to you they did not feel like worshiping -they MADE a choice, and in that moment, they overcame every power of darkness … I thought to myself there is so much purification in persecution- you see, when we don’t have a negative force coming against us, to unspoil us, and to unify us, then we can just decide we’re not going to worship because we don’t like that song the worship leader chose- or we’re distracted by somebody’s outfit, or maybe we couldn’t find a parking place at church and we’re just like- we’re ticked off! So, we’re just not going to sing because we are just not in the mood to sing- and then we are reminded of a couple of guys, torn to shreds, who lifted up their voices in the midst of so much pain. Sometimes, you praise first, and you feel it later! Anybody get that with me? You just praise first, and feel it later! Earthquakes at times can be the very best things that happen to us… and, earthquakes do happen. It always means something surprising, a violent earthquake, scripture says. Something we were not looking for, something we did not want… nobody ever wants an earthquake in their life- something in our personal lives, something in our marriages, something with our kids, something in our homes, something with our businesses- a violent earthquake. And our first reaction is to be ashamed by it, and we might even drop out of the worship experience because of it, hide from people, feel like we can never show our faces, when we don’t realize that sometimes, it takes a violent earthquake to bring change to our status quo. And, sometimes we find that even in that, God works all things together for good, and He used that earthquake in our lives, that unexpected, violence that came to us to cause the ground beneath us to shake, everything to shake that could be shaken so we could see, as Hebrews tells us, what cannot be shaken.  And, somehow in the midst of the biggest earthquake of our lives, that’s what happened to me, those bonds that have held us every moment we have lived begin to drop loose. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are looking for until we find it… People are not looking for you to have it together- people are looking at what happens to you when you don’t! What happens to you after an earthquake comes and your bonds fall loose – and somebody that has been a captive for 35 years is suddenly set free and the jailers around you go “I don’t know who that is, but I want him” because you found it! What happens in worship does not stay in worship, we live it out, and somebody catches it- and they are saved!]