Chapter 7 Happy Terror

* A tremor seizes our limbs; our nerves are struck, quiver like strings; our whole being bursts into shudders. But then a cry, wrestled from our very core, fills the world around us, as if a mountain were suddenly about to place itself in front of us. It is one word: GOD. Not an emotion, a stir within us, but a power, a marvel beyond us, tearing the world apart. - Abraham Heschel

* I want to know what happened to the bone-chilling, earth-shattering, gut-wrenching, knee-knocking, heart-stopping, life-altering fear that leaves us speechless, paralyzed, helpless, and glad. The terror I am speaking of is a mix of wonder, awe, fear, and worship, all happening at the same time.
I am beginning to wonder if we modern followers of Christ are capable of being terrified of God. No fear of God. No fear of Jesus. No fear of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we have ended up with a feel-good gospel that attracts thousands ... but transforms no one.
It is time for Christianity to become a place of terror again; a place where God continually has to tell us, "Fear not"; a place where our relationship with God is not a simple belief or doctrine or theology, but the constant awareness of God's terrifying presence in our lives. The nice, nonthreatening God needs to be replaced by the God whose very presence smashes our egos into dust, burns our sin into ashes, and strips us naked to reveal the real person within. A healthy, childlike fear should make us more in awe of God than we are of our government, our problems, our beliefs about abortion, our doctrines and agendas, or any of our other earthly concerns. Our God is perfectly capable of both calming the storm and putting us in the middle of one. Either way, if it's God, we will be speechless and trembling ... and smiling, too. It's time to become people whose God is big and holy and frightening and gentle and tender and ours; a God whose love frightens us into His strong and powerful arms where He dares to hold us in His terrifying, loving presence.

* If Jesus is the son of God, we should be terrified of what He will do when He gets His hands on our lives; if the Bible is the Word of God, we should be quaking every time we read its soul-piercing words; if the church is the body of Christ, our culture should be threatened by our intimidating presence. But our culture is not threatened by our presence; it's not terrified of the Jesus in our lives; and it's not quaking at the Word of God. Why? Because we have familiarized the gospel, sanitized it, flattened it, taken the sting and the terror out of it. We've been intimidated by those who claim to be familiar with Jesus.

* When you and I are in the presence of the mysterious Son of God, the mystery becomes more mysterious. God does not shrink when we know Him, He expands. God does not become smaller, He becomes bigger.

* The mysterious, marvelous fear we feel in the presence of God is a sign of maturity; it's a sign of intimacy, of a deep and abiding faith. It is the moment when we understand the "ghost" (the monster) is really our daddy.

* Darkness is a breeding ground of fear. When we are in the dark, we can't see anyone or anything. We feel panicky, helpless, isolated, vulnerable, lost, confused, frightened. Most of all, what we feel is alone. Darkness isolates us; it disorients us and causes us to exaggerate and distort reality.

* God does not always rid us of the darkness; He joins us in the darkness.

* They understood now, but only now, that when life gets dark, when we are alone, we aren't alone. Jesus Christ is Lord, even in the darkness.

* Attributing all good things to God and all bad things to the Devil appears to make life much easier to understand. No complications here. No mystery to unravel, no difficult issues to resolve. God is easy to understand and easy to decipher. There's nothing to be afraid of when you're around a God who is easy to understand.
But ... God made the bee, and He made the stinger! We are living in a world where bee stings can kill us, and that is scary. Reality is complicated, life is complicated, God is complicated. His footprints are not easy to see in the dust and dirt of the real world's trail. And when we are lost in the forest, we want to find God's tracks. When it's dark and we're stuck in a boat during a gale, we don't want dark, indistinguishable shapes roaming around on the water. We get frightened when we lose track of God. We get terrified when we are not sure what God is doing.

* One of the glorious complications of God is His ability to reveal Himself in the unrevealable. God is not lost when we are. God is waiting for us even in the darkness!

* The one terrifying truth - the Jesus who can rescue you is the One you can trust even when you're not rescued.

* Jesus said, "John, you have staked your life on the Truth. You can trust Me, John. You can know now deep in your soul that I will be here in life, and I will be with you in death! Death is only the second to the last word, it is not the last word. Yes, John, your upside-down life may be coming to an end, but even death is not the end."

* "Watching her (the turtle) swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noticed that sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down." - Barbara Taylor
All the turtle could do was hang on, and hanging on was pretty darn miserable. She could easily have died, but she lived. It must have been a terrifying ride through the dunes. If turtles can experience fear, this turtle must have done so, but it was life-giving fear, it was life-saving fear, it was the upside-down fear that always comes when we put ourselves in the hands of Jesus.