So not long ago I joined an online Book Club called “BookBub”. BookBub is a service that alerts subscribers to limited-time, free & discounted ebooks matching your interests. It’s free to join, you can read the books on any number of devices, and the ebooks become yours to keep.
Grant it most of the books are freebies because… well… because… Then there are those which are basically teasers for multi-book series… but every once in a while you get a “real” book heavily discounted, or for free.
The other day Michael Brown’s Whatever Happened to the Power of God? caught my eye. I confess I’d never heard of Brown before but the title intrigued me.
See for the past several weeks I’ve been praying that God would “show up during our services and surprise us”. I’ve been praying that He might “knock our socks off”, that He would make us uncomfortable by showing up in such power and glory that we would be forced to alter the trajectory of our church.
I confess, I don’t even know what that might look like. I don’t even know if I really, really want it (Acts 5 scares me… what if we all end up dead). What I do know is that I’m tired of same-ol’-same-ol’. I’m tired of singing songs with nice melodies but with lyrics we don’t really mean… I’m tired of doing the same things over and over and over with no appreciable change… I’m tired of hearing (and preaching) sermons that have no lasting impact…
Understand, I’m not longing to see the power of God displayed… I want to see God Himself. I’m not stupid, I know this is dangerous. I know the end result of a face-to-face with God is the annihilation of self… I know it might mean a mass exodus of folks saying things like, “Do not have God speak to us lest we die!” (Exodus 20:18-19).
…but… well if I’m going to die, I’d rather it be because of the Glory of God rather than of boredom.
…just sayin’