Vision Logo Circle
Vision Logo Circle

Resetting Your Connection with God

by | Wed, Dec 2 2020

Text size: A- A+
[addthis tool="addthis_inline_share_toolbox_q56i"]

In his latest message, Resetting Your Connection, Pastor Jeff Vines reminds that in order to reset our connection with others, we first have to reset with God. Our goal should be to live a life completely devoted to God and trusting Him.

Using the example of Jacob and Esau, Jeff demonstrates how we are in a constant wrestle with God. We need to have our eyes opened to what the real problem is in our lives is; we don’t trust God.

Jeff begins, “We need to push the reset button, start again and recognise what is really wrong. You have to leave where you are and go to where God shows you. We have to stop trying to take God’s plans into our own hands.”

If we want to get what God has promised us, we are going to have to wrestle for it. Just like Jacob and Esau did. God is communicating to us through this story that His sovereign choice will be upheld.

Jeff says, “Because Jacob took his life into his own hands it’s all disintegrating and he is isolated from everything. He runs away and God meets Him in the desert. God wants Jacob to realise that his life is not about the promise, it’s about Him.”

Jacob has the audacity to tell God that ‘I will make you Lord if you give me what I want.’ We do the same thing all the time. The events that come into our lives are clouded by the reality that we have not yet reached the pinnacle. We don’t trust that the pinnacle exists, that the road leads us to anything of value. God will use all the events in our lives to bring us to the most captivating picture.

Jeff continues, “We leave God because in our minds He doesn’t deliver. We forget His precepts. God says to us, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. He has promised us something, and He will deliver one way or the other.
Can you admit for just a moment that your real problem is you don’t trust God? Maybe you’ve been angry at God, and everything blew up in your face when you tried to take control. But God can bless us in and through any circumstance.”
Jeff advises us to stop struggling with God and start to struggle for God. We blame God for everything that goes wrong but the biggest mistake we make is trying to manipulate our lives to turn out the way we want. We don’t like Gods plans or his ways or his timing. Is our love and service to God contingent on Him behaving the way we want him to behave?

Jeff says, “We think we know better than God, and that He is too small, and we don’t really trust that He will lead us to the pinnacle and the greatest view. We wrestle with perceived enemies, but it’s really God. We are always trying to use our own means to receive what God has already committed to giving us.”

We need a new perspective. We need to stop manipulating others and start manipulating ourselves to experience the presence of God. Jeff believes we have to be brave enough to ask God to take do whatever He needs to do in our lives to wake us up.

Jeff challenges us to say I trust you God. “Can you do that? Can you ask God to touch you with a wound of grace if it means you will recognise His face? Sit in his presence, read his word. Don’t let go until you receive a blessing. Don’t give up. Keed reading, keep praying even when you don’t feel like it until he blesses you with his name and his presence.”

Listen to the rest of Jeff’s message below.

Listen to ‘Today’ with Pastor Jeff Vines weekdays on Vision Christian Radio.  Find your local times and more messages here.

More from Pastor Jeff Vines

Christianity is Not a Political Movement: A Conversation with Pastor Jeff Vines

Jeff Vines joined Phil Edwards at Vision to discuss how we can’t win souls by forcing people to comply with Biblical principles through politics and changes in legislation.

Saving Souls Through Love in Action: A Conversation with Pastor Jeff Vines

Jeff Vines joined Phil Edwards at Vision to discuss how love in action is more likely to save souls than condemning those struggling with unbiblical and controversial issues our society is currently facing.