Photo Credit: Washington Post

I was in my living room by myself one evening, minding my own business, when God’s spirit ushered into my life and shook me. Wake up, He seemed to be saying. There is more.

It reminds me a bit of Asbury, Kentucky. If you haven’t been following the news, a bunch of regular kids attended a church service. It was an uneventful day. But God‘s spirit rushed in and grabbed them, gently shaking them with a deeper awareness of Him. There is more, He seemed to be saying. The kids stayed and worshiped.

We know someone who attended that event. She said that the sense of God‘s presence was palpable as soon as you entered the building.

I guess others felt it too.

Over 50,000 people came to the sleepy 6,000-person town over a period of two weeks because God‘s presence was felt in a more tangible way.

In the sermon that was preached just before this outbreak at Asbury, the speaker said, “Make sure you experience God‘s love. Don’t leave this building. Don’t graduate until you have experienced God‘s love.”

The time when God touched me, powerfully, exactly like what is happening in Asbury, I also experienced a deeper understanding of God‘s love just prior. I had listened to a sermon by Rolland Baker. He said that many of us are seeking outpouring, seeking even what is happening in places like Asbury, but what we need to seek is simply God.

God himself. We don’t seek the experience of God, we simply seek God.

And so this touch of God that is shaking the world at Asbury, that is waking us up to say, there is more, is possible within each of our hearts and in our homes. Many of us have experienced something similar.

And so how do we escape the judgment of God, and help to usher in His Kingdom instead?

1. Thirst. We become thirsty for more of God, for more of what God wants to say, for more of God’s love.

2. Honesty. We confess our sins. The outpouring of God‘s love at Asbury has been characterized by a deep confession.

There are many marriages on the brink of break up that easily confess the sin of the partner. My partner did this wrong. My partner is a jerk. This is not the kind of confession that brings healing to a marriage.

The confession that brings healing to the marriage is the humble confession that admits that I have done wrong. I have failed.

In the same way, the kind of Christianity that brings cultural healing is the Christianity that says I have done wrong. Not pointing fingers at others and saying they have done wrong.

3. Surrender. We need to obey what Holy Spirit is saying to us, as He whispers when we draw near to Him. That’s it. It’s not complicated.

Christianity is not God plus our agenda. Fill in the blank for what that agenda could be.

God asks rhetorically, “Who among us can survive this firestorm?” Are you ready for the next few lines?

The answer’s simple: Live right, speak the truth, despise exploitation, refuse bribes, reject violence, avoid evil amusements. This is how you raise your standard of living! A safe and stable way to live. A nourishing, satisfying way to live. The Message

God help us to put down our metaphorical guns, our finger-pointing. May we focus instead on the mess within our own hearts. We lay down our agendas for what Your Kingdom looks like. May we instead follow Your love, giving away the extra love we cannot hold as we journey.

Like the three-year-old, cutting, pasting, and gluing pieces of paper, we make things. We mold the clay. The stubborn clay doesn’t bend when we ask it to. We add more water, pushing, and pulling. The clay will be shaped into our own image. Clay squeezes out in the wrong places and between our fingers. The clay does not obey us.

It is impossible to mold God into our own image.

And yet we try.

Our sweat is visible. We push and pull the clay. “You must obey us!” we yell to the clay. Finally, we give up in despair and sit beside our clay. Finally, we ask for help. When we remember our humanity, we are ready, finally, to hear from God.

We have forgotten who God is because He doesn’t look like us.

We don’t point the finger at one another and judge.

And so we try to create God into our own image, as One who does not judge.

“Don’t Judge Me!” we yell indignantly.

Then we remember sheepishly that we’ve been talking to God, the potter, not God the clay.

What if we set aside our expectations about how God should act and listen to what God is saying about Himself? God describes Himself as fire.

God is . . . actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire! The Message

Is God as a fire a good thing or a bad thing?

Sometimes God uses fire to judge His People when they are stubborn. His fire is sent to clean up the place, mostly our hearts.

And yet, we can’t read God like a child’s picture book either. His ways can’t be distilled down to an essential oil, a fragrance that allows us to say with certainty – cause and effect – “When this happens, God will do that.”

Sometimes fire is evidence of God’s favor. Sometimes His fire is sent to guide us. And so, we can’t figure out God or create a checklist to foreshadow how God will react.

All we can do is examine our own hearts, and ask Him, humbly, to show us the charred regions. Lord, are the wildfires, so rampant in Canada, California, Australia, and many other places, the seeds, or evidence, of your judgment of us, as a culture? What do you think He is saying?

Now I’m glad—not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss.

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.

And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. The Message

Dolly Parton recently had a dream about God on a mountaintop speaking to us, as a Father speaking sternly to his children, saying, “Don’t make me have to come down there.” She wrote a song about it. What are your thoughts?

And so, if you search your pockets and find only a bit of change there, and you don’t find enough wisdom in your pockets to know how to live with a holy God, a God who may be judging us even now, then read on to the next post, which outlines three ways to live with a clear conscience before a holy God.

It’s hard seeing anything get older. My sweet little golden doodle, so full of excitement to be a part of the family fun only a few years ago, could barely raise his little head when I came close this morning. And he is not THAT old, but he is older. His energy dial is turned down, way down. Sometimes he still gets frenzied like a puppy, but less often. He is limited by his little, tired body. But maybe this is a strength, I realized this morning. I had a light bulb moment. Let me explain.

“Moses . . . did exactly what God commanded. Moses was eighty . . . when [he] spoke to Pharaoh.” The Message

Moses was eighty years old! That’s kind of old, to be stepping out in faith, starting the new thing that God is calling someone to. And God used Moses so powerfully that the world still reverberates with the impacts of His obedience. We all at least recognize his name, over 3,000 years later.

God used an old, decrepit guy to lead an entire people group out of slavery and into freedom. The full story can be read HERE.

The point? Maybe the age of Moses wasn’t a liability to him, but a strength, through God’s eyes. I mean, God is God, right? He could have told Moses to start his God journey when he was young, strong, and energetic. But instead, he chose the old guy sitting on the couch. The guy who can barely stand without a few groans.

Being that old, Moses would have known that he desperately needed God to accomplish the tasks that God was asking him to do. And there lies his strength. So maybe the handicaps that we think we have – age (too old or too young), physical hardships, emotional wounds – are exactly the strengths that God will use to shine His power through. Knowing that we need to lean on God is our super strength power.

And so my golden doodle was used by God. He taught me a lesson about strength in weakness, even as he lay there on the couch. His infirmities smacked me awake. Will I step out, in faith, as Moses did, holding desperately to the hand of Jesus? Will I turn my worldview upside down? It’s not the bodybuilders who are strong in God’s eyes, but those with metaphorical flabby muscles, knowing they need to lean on God.

“My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that . . . I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.” The Message

Consider listening to the song, Where the Light Shines Through by Switchfoot, and notice the lyrics “. . . your scars shine like dark stars. Your wounds are where the light shines through.” Consider asking God, “What scars do I have that are not a hindrance, but a strength in Your eyes, as I join my life to Yours? “