A Stirring of the Spirit

Though we aren’t having service today, I wanted to come to you about a particular study I was doing this week in the book of Ezra. What I noticed is a pattern, a process that God uses in order to get people to move.

Have you ever been so motivated to do something that almost nothing in this world would be able to stop you from performing it? Have you ever been so determined to perform a certain task that it gives you a burning desire inside?

Sometimes you have to ask yourself where did I get this motivation from. Some people determine what they actually want to do in life as a child. They have a desire to be something when they are older and they began pursuing it at a very young age.

Well believe it or not brothers and sisters God uses that burning desire in people to ensure that his will be done on this earth. Everybody doesn't have the same desires, and they are not supposed to. In order for a society to work people have to have different skills sets. Everybody working at Ford motors can’t specialize in assembling a motor. Different people have to be assigned to all parts of assembling the car in order to make the building of a car process complete.

It’s the same in the body of Christ. Not only can’t everybody be the preacher, everybody can’t want to be the preacher. So God gives people different desires according to their gift in the church. But what I’ve also noticed in Scripture is that God has to give people a burning desire to do things in particular or else nobody may volunteer to do it, not under their own volition,

Because there are certain things that God has determined that will be done regardless of the obstacles that may be set before it.

Obstacles as a deterrent

Brothers and sisters, just because God calls you to do something according to his will doesn't mean that there won't be any obstacles.

When God called Moses to free the children from Israel

When Jesus himself was in the garden of Gethsemani,

In the same way in the text we are told that God himself had to motivate a select few to and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem (read).

Sometimes what seems to be a deterrent is actually a part of the plan.

In order that the will of God be done, a stirring had to take place in order to get people to move.

How does the bible describe the term stirring?

What this means is God had to awaken some people to the importance of this task. In some instances in Scripture this term can be described as a disturbance. For instance we need our City leaders to wake up to the crime that seems to be so prevalent throughout Dallas. They need not only to be awakened but also disturbed to the point where they’d have to do something about it.

Here in our text certain men were stirred in the spirit, awakened by God to the fact that they needed to return to their land in Israel in the city of Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple according to Gods will.

This same process is used to call people to salvation

Brothers and sisters God uses this same process of stirring people in their spirit,in order to waken them to the fact that Jesus, and only Jesus, saves.

John 5:21,25

Not everyone will be woken up to the fact that they need to be saved. Not everyone will be made aware that they are spiritually dead and need a stirring in the spirit by God.

God wants us to be as motivated to do his will as we are to do our own. God wants us to see that his providence is more important than our own pleasure.

We need to be like Jesus and be able to say Thine will be done and not mine.

But here is the kicker. No one comes to that conclusion in life unless God initiates a stirring in your spirit.

John 6:44 Jesus says “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

So what the stirring of the spirit amounts to is the giving of a new heart.