Richard Roberts – First of Three Parts
Some years ago, our family was staying on the seventeenth floor of a hotel in California when at 4:57 in the morning we were suddenly jolted out of our beds by a massive earthquake. Lamps crashed to the floor, and the walls shook violently. The windows rattled, and the floor rolled back and forth as the building swayed and shuddered uncontrollably. I could hear people screaming in the hallways. As Lindsay and I rushed to our children, the devil spoke to my mind and said, “The top floors are going to come crashing down on you, and you’re all going to die.”
But the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and reminded me that I was called to preach in forty nations. At that time, I’d only preached in seven, and He assured me, “You’re not going to die now in an earthquake.” I spoke that word out loud to Lindsay, and all of a sudden the room stopped shaking. Everything stopped rattling and rolling, and there was a calm. We went back to sleep, and the next morning we went to church and preached.
Out of that experience I learned about overcoming the shake, rattle, and roll of life. First, when things come to shake you, they come to cause doubt. Doubt tries to creep into everyone’s life—it’s no respecter of persons. Satan is always going to try to shake something in our lives because he has an assignment against us. John 10:10 says, The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I [Jesus] am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
We don’t have to be shaken! We can stand strong in our faith in our times of shaking, because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world! (I John 4:4.)
