Coronavirus Bible Study Series May 27, 2020
Recalibrate Part 2
Realignment
Synopsis of Bible Study May 27, 2020
By Pastor Lee Bynum, MDiv.
2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? — unless indeed you are disqualified.
Introduction:
1. Realignment is the act of restoring something to its former or original state. To become intimately connected and engaged with God.
2. Getting out alignment with God, does not happen overnight. For example, when you bought your car and drove it off the lot, it was not out of alignment. After hitting potholes and bumps, over time, the car inevitably gets out of alignment. As a result, you must take the car somewhere where they will jack the car up and realign it. After the realignment, car will not be as difficult to steer.
A. Maybe the bumps, potholes, hills, and valleys you’ve gone through in life, have thrown you out of alignment. God is trying to get everything in your life, back into alignment.
3. Alignment is the ultimate balance. Spiritual alignment centers around 3 fundamental laws of attraction. They are thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
4. Your thoughts involve feelings that lead to certain actions. So as a man thinketh, so is he. When you are out of alignment with God, it hampers your ability to effectively do the work that God has called you to do.
I. PRACTICAL SIGNS THAT YOU ARE OUT OF ALIGNMENT
Most of us do not know how to identify the symptoms of misalignment. Some symptoms of misalignment are:
1. You feel like something is off. -This is a hint that you could be out of alignment. Something is nagging you when you wake up. Something just isn’t right, and you can’t put your figure on it.
2. You are still disconnected. – This often happens to a lot of people. You do not hear or recognize God’s voice anymore. You do not have the passion for Christ you used to have or maybe you don’t recognize God speaking anymore.
3. External reality does not match what you desire. – What things in your life do not look like you expect? For example, you desire one thing, but you are getting another thing. How you view this could be an indication of your misalignment.
A. If you are not getting what you want repeatedly, it could be you.
4. You feel stuck. – You are connected to the One that has the blueprint and instructions for your life, but you still feel stuck. For example, we cannot produce, we cannot create, and can’t fulfill our tasks. You cannot produce if you are out of alignment!
5. Tired and uninspired. Being tired is a point of life. Just because you are tired, doesn’t mean that you are out of alignment with God. You can have an overwhelming sense of weariness that hits your life or it could be that you are ignoring the desires of God to fill you up, build you up, or fill you up.
A. Holding back part of your true self, is draining.
B. Most people will stumble through their lives without noticing that they are out of alignment with God.
C. It is time to recalibrate. We can no longer just go through the motion where our worship is weak, and our praise is poor.
D. Our relationship with God is one who is living and breathing. One that is growing.
II. HOW THE ENEMY SEEKS TO KEEP YOU OUT OF ALIGNMENT
A. War Between Flesh and Spirit
1. Its spiritual warfare. – The only connection your spirit has to the world is your mind, your will, and your emotions. You may start your will at the beginning of the day wanting to invite Jesus into your every moment, but the distractions of our day to day, pull us away. We are drawn to the desires of the world; therefore, Jesus has no space in your life.
2. The enemy puts conflict against the Will of God vs the Will of Satan. You could be going through spiritual warfare and have no idea that you are dealing with that.
3. It’s warfare.
A. The desires of the enemy are trying to overtake the desires of your spirit.
4. Not Sensitive to God’s Presence
5. God could be moving, and you do not even notice. You are in worship service and you just cannot feel anything. You do not notice when God’s presence is around.
A. In the beginning, Satan hated worship, because worship went back to God.
B. Satan does not want you to acknowledge the presence of God.
6. We have got to get to point where we recognize what God is doing and not what Satan is trying to do.
7. Your Words
8. Watch your mouth. You must invite God over the enemy into the conversation. The power of life and death is in the power of the tongue. If you are not careful, your soul will throw a temper tantrum.
A. Just like a small child, you tell them what to do and they rebel against it. Our flesh does the same thing. When God tells it what we should do, we rebel against it.
i. Your flesh will have a fit when you bring your flesh into alignment with God.
B. We must watch complaining about our situation. When we speak negatively about things into the atmosphere, we receive negative results.
James 4:13-16 NIV – “13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”- Let God have lordship over your lips. When we do this, what comes out of your mouth is God’s will for your life.
2. You’ve got to get yourself out of the way.
Luke 9:23-24 NIV – “23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
Luke 22:31-34 NIV – “31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” 33 But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” – Satan is always trying to get you out of alignment. Satan is trying to pursue people that have purpose on their lives.
III. HOW TO ACHIEVE SPIRITUAL REALIGNMENT
A. Spiritual Meditation
1. The best way to clear you mind is to discover your vision.
A. In prayer our desire gradually become God’s desire and our will aligns with God’s will.
1 John 5:14-15 NIV – “14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
Hebrews 4:16 NIV – “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” – The necessity of prayer is powerful. We must go to God and ask for what we need.
2. You have to get to a place where you are willing to just talk to the Lord.
A. Just talking to God is where the reconnect happens.
3. Prayer changes our attitude to thankfulness.
Romans 8:26 NIV – “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
B. Practice Gratitude
1. After everything you became and all that God has done for you, we have to pause and thank God for everything He has ever done for us. This is realignment.
A. Philippians 1:3-11 NIV – “3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”- Paul said he was thankful for God and all he had done in his life.
2. What God started in you, the year 2020 is not going to cancel.
3. You must have gratitude.
Philippians 1:6 NIV – “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”- By grace I will be confident of this word. Remember, in the 7th month things will turn around.
C. Diet and Exercise
1. Take care of your mind, spirit, and body. You have got to be in spiritual shape in order to receive what God has for you.
2. You cannot operate in what God has for you if you are not healthy enough to work in it.
D. Be Committed To The Best Version Of Yourself
1. You have got to use your God given gifts. You must be committed to be the best version of yourself.
2. Let’s stop talking about it and start being about it.
1. THREE NECESSARY EXAMINATIONS FOR PROPER ALIGNMENT
2. The Signs -Learn how to examine the signs. Sometimes we get in routines that have nothing to do with our passion and our true love for God.
3. When we come back in our churches, you will not ever be a spectator again. You will come back being a participator of what God has for your life. Examine the signs.
4. Are we so busy that we do not have time for God anymore? It’s to realign ourselves.
A. We must get up and pray, rather than getting up checking our timeline.
5. Is the only time we pray during the prayer over the food?
6. How You Got Out of Alignment – Us being out of alignment has nothing to do with what is current.
7. It is important for us to get back to the root issue. We must ask where did we get off track? Where did we go wrong?
8. Find out why you are open to be pulled away from God? Remember Jesus at the cemetery after getting off the boat. The man says, “Lord have mercy on me.” The man was hanging out in the cemetery. The demon possessed man was hanging around things that were dead. Jesus asks what his name is. He says, “Legion” which means many.
A. The man had an issue. It was not just his mental wellbeing. The root of his issue was he had demons inside of him.
9. Your Technique Vs. Timing
10. As you grow in your walk with Christ, you will discover that there may be a different route that God uses, that will be far better than what you set out to use.
11. Better does not always mean faster. Check the timeline that you create for yourself, and you will begin to realize that you do not want anything outside of his timing.
A. In this season, we want to make sure we are operating in God’ timing. You don’t want to rush the process.
B. We want to be sure that every aspect of our life is a part of His timing.
12. When a thing is in alignment, the blood flows properly. When your arm is pushed out of alignment, your whole body feels it. Though it is just your arm out of alignment, your body feels the pain from it. In like manner, when you are out of alignment, the Church Body feels it.
A. When your arm is out of realignment, your doctor must reset your arm. They must stabilize it and keep it still, so it can heal.
i. God is resetting you so that He can realign you. It is painful, just like the arm, but it is necessary. God is putting you where you need to be, though it is painful.
B. God is trying to get you into realignment. When you seek God first and get into alignment, all things will be added unto you.
