Disturbed…

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

 

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

 

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

 

We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

 

attributed – sir francis drake -1577

 

I have often wondered what life would be like if we dared to allow ourselves to be truly disturbed by God. To allow Him to come in and overturn the tables in our lives and create something truly new…To blow our minds with the unimaginable.

I know I’m different.  However, the beauty I have seen more often in the past few years is that I am not the only one. More and more I see that I am one of many in a generation who are hoping, aching, longing for, and seeking something more…We’ve begun to dream of an eternity again. Adventure is at our core and more and more we push back the boundaries and have begun to speak of, “What if that is possible”. We muse over the impossible with God, and in faith have begun to see that God is who He has always been. He is a God who is impossible. I  mean think about it…In all our humanity we do not have the capacity to love the way he does. He loves us when we are in the depths of the darkest sin and is fighting to draw us out of that. My pastor a few Sundays ago said, “Yeah, He is a loving God, but if there is sin in your life ,in His zealous Love for you, He is not afraid to overturn the tables in your life”.

I keep thinking about that…Do I invite Him in to do that? Do I want Him to do that?

A close friend of mine sent the prayer above to me last night. Truly it struck one of the deepest chords in me. The chord that resonates with a desire for change and to remember what we’ve forgotten…things we forgot the moment man fell…to remember that when there are troubles in this world, failing economies, corrupt governments, wars, etc., to not be afraid because we have a God, a Father who has already conquered it…

He covers, protects, provides for, woos us…

He is not a luke-warm God.

He is I Am.

Not I Suppose.

Or I’m Maybe.

Or I’m Not.

He.is. I Am.

So what if I was apart of a generation who moved into a place where we allowed God to disturb us? What if we were so disturbed by human trafficking that we did something? What if we were so disturbed by politics that rather than hiding or just talking, that we became politicians who changed things? What if we were so disturbed by Hollywood that we became producers, writers, and artists that made  epic films and wrote songs that changed our culture.

I really wonder most days, “What am I waiting for? What are we (the church) waiting for?”

My new found prayer will be that God disturbs me…that I will not find myself in a stupor, or place of complacency…that daily He comes along and disturbs me. Dangerous, I know, but truly I desire for that myself and this generation to know what it is to live dangerously close to God. To be swept up in the Furious Storm of His Love and To dwell in the Wild Places of His heart….To be “disturbed”.