Unshakeable

“UnShakeable”

Dr. Michael Ewert

The year our local church was officially formed as a Free Methodist congregation was not an easy time for most Americans.  Millions were yet without secure employment.  Many had lost their businesses, their homes and their livelihoods.  As a result many grown men and women lost hope and became fearful.  Who could blame them?

With our country still coming out of its economic depression and Europe in the midst of  a Second World War, our National President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went to St. John’s Episcopal Church to seek God’s guidance.  Stirred by a sermon he heard preached that morning, Roosevelt said something prophetic at a press conference convened shortly afterwards.  In words that were similar, yet distinctly different from his weekly “fireside chats,” President Roosevelt offered these public words to the nation, on a bright pre-spring day of March 5th, 1938,

“I ask that every newspaper in the country print the text of the Fifteenth Psalm… there could be no better lead for your story.”

So, in the midst of seismic economic hard times and tumultuous tremors of current world upheaval, our President intoned ancient words he felt necessary to speak to the souls of the American people.  Historians (and politicians) will quibble over the benevolence or malevolence of his social engineering in creating the “New Deal,” but few can take issue with his wisdom to call our nation to recall words as timely as these.

Now, some 74 plus years since President Roosevelt spoke those words, we find ourselves in the midst of an earthquake of larger epic proportions.  What we are experiencing today are not merely tremors of economic uncertainties, or  ground-breaking international ambiguities, but a shift in the tectonic plates that threatens the existence of our entire culture!  If ever there were a passage to consider for the days in which we live, it is David’s Psalm 15.  If ever there were a time for us to embrace such direction, it is now.

So, in the days ahead, we will strive to gain understanding of the relevance of David’s ancient words.  As we do so, I offer the following four promises to you and all who join us:

1. Answers to the two most important questions of human civilization.

2. Ten lifestyle attributes that yield a life of unshakeable inner character.

3. A personal challenge to memorize all of Psalm 15 together as a congregation.

4. Having applied God’s Word to our lives, firsthand experience of an unshakeable (although not pain-free) existence.

God bless you as you join us in taking to heart all that God is teaching us in these days. May revival happen here among us as we expose our “fault lines” to the scrutiny of God’s Spirit resulting in impact as never before.