Friday, June 09, 2006

The God who ERUPTS!

I have been browsing the Crossway Books website and enjoying the fact that they allow you a taster of the new books that we have to look forward to. A book guaranteed to spark my interest was the fifth volume in Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones' series on the book of Acts. This series has been a truly remarkable one and I treasure the first four books that I have. I think the fifth volume is a must have also! Listen to this quote:

"God is concerned about you; He is interested in you and knows all about you. He is a God who intervenes in our lives. Let me use a stronger word: He erupts into them! Thank God He does. We like the foolish children of Israel dislike this; we try to shake God off as it were - we try to get rid of Him in various ways. But He keeps coming back. He will not let us go and He suddenly intervenes and comes to us. The whole message of the Bible is a record of the activity of God ... Here is the message. This God is outside us and He acts. He comes in and He does things ... God not only acts and intervenes in our affairs but He always does it in His own time ... And of course God not only acts in His own time but in His own way. He has His own method".

Who can forget the way God errupted into our lives through the saving power of the Gospel and drew us to Himself? Who was expected that?! Who can forget the way that God errupted into our lives through the power of His Holy Spirit? Who was expected that?! And as I type, the dawn is breaking - a powerful reminder that God can and may do it again. He may erupt again! Who will join me in longing desperately that an erruption of God will come again into our lives soon - in whatever way and in whatever means He chose?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who will join you? Look behind you, man! I'm already there. :-) One caveat: "eruption" looks and sounds an awful lot like "INTERruption".

It also sounds suspiciously like the Psalmist cry, "Let God arise!" May God interrupt me in mid-sentence - mid-stride - mid-life....ACK!

In the meantime, I will continue being faithful to the last order I was given...to "occupy till I COME."

Dan Bowen said...

Yes indeed, we mustn't make the mistake of thinking that God errupting into our lives will conform to our convinience. I was profoundly moved by the documentaries that have been shown about various erruptions of volcanoes around the globe - Etna, St Helens. When they go off - there is SERIOUS inconvinience and I don't mean that lightly.

Will God be any different? I suspect that if He does answer our prayers and hear us and come, that our lives will never ever be the same again.

Bring it on! I am so so sick of the status quo - the "mess we're in". We've been proved that we can't do it. Iain Murray wrote in his "Puritan Hope" that revivals are the hope of the world.

But yes ... until then, we get on with the job. Thanks Sheila!