Having “This is weird, but …” moments.
Oct 7th by JonGod is weird.
Prayer is weird.
Faith is weird.
When you stop to think about it, being a born again Christian is a weird thing.
I believe that I have the power of the God who created the solar system inside me. I believe that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead flows in me and lives in me. I believe that at any given point in any given day, I can reach out to a holy Lord who set the entire universe in motion and have a conversation.
That is weird, but it’s also surprisingly easy to forget …
It’s easy to get lost in the knick knacks of Christianity, in the day to day grind of church life and community building and practicalities of faith. It’s easy to get so used to prayer or worship that you forget there’s an all powerful being we’re singing to. You forget that the hilarious mind behind the platypus and the beautiful mind behind the sunset is listening and watching and interacting with us.
It’s easy to have a sterile, boring faith.
But sometimes, God reminds us how weird and wonderful a relationship with Him really is. Sometimes, He reminds us that He is supernatural. Sometimes our ears and hearts are open wide enough to remember that He is deep and mystical and mysterious.
Sometimes we have a moment that forces us to say, “This is weird, but …”
Have you ever had one of those? It’s a moment where something so crazy happens to you that you can’t deny God’s existence but at the same time you can’t think of a way to logically explained what just happened to your friends. Ration and logic have been thrown out the window and as you start to share the story of what occurred, you can do nothing else but simply admit, “This is weird, but …”
That happened to my wife a few weeks ago.
Her cousin Camden was ill. Since he was a child, Camden had struggled with a condition similar to Muscular Dystrophy. When he was 10, what was at first just a tendency to be off balance and a little awkward was diagnosed as a serious, fatal illness. Slowly, over two decades, he lost control of his body. A running, smiling little boy ended up in a wheel chair. A young man in a wheel chair who loved to talk about Michael Jordan ended up blind and deaf. One by one, the functions of his body shut down while the strength of his mind remained.
On the morning of Sunday, September 20th before church my wife was praying and reading her Bible study. Suddenly she had a picture of Camden in her heart. An image of him dancing with his grandparents in heaven. He was singing and my wife was overwhelmed with how tall he was, having not seen him out of a wheelchair for a decade. He was happy and he was laughing and everything was OK.
An hour later, as we waited for church to start, my mother in-law called and let us know that Camden had died.
When I saw the call and said to my wife, “That’s weird, your mom is calling us,” she instantly knew what it was about. She knew that Camden was gone. She knew that he was dancing.
It’s tempting to try to explain away the weirdness of moments like that, to rationalize why my wife had a vision of the once crippled Camden dancing while hundreds of miles away in Florida he was leaving this earth at the very same moment. To pretend that wasn’t a tremendous gift from a Creator who knows and loves us, and maybe assume it was just a random passing thought.
But I can’t.
Our God is wonderful
Our God is unfathomable.
Our God is uncontainable.
Our God is weird.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had a moment where something happened where you couldn’t do anything but say, “This is weird, but…?”
Let’s talk about that today, finish this sentence:
“This is weird, but __________”
Comments
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This is weird but…I have a friend who's mum is housebound because of a stroke and other various illnesses, meaning that this friend is a young carer(18) and pretty much housebound too. Anyway I had a dream the other week that I saw the two of them out shopping together, and her mum was walking…something that they can't do together. I told the friend this, because I'd had such a vivid picture of her mum (who I've never met, or seen a photo of etc..) and it was a perfect description, right down to the purple shade she dyes her hair with! Weird! We've since prayed for her mum's recovery (the friend is not a Christian..yet
) and whilst I don't have a happy ending to tell you all at the moment, I felt like God was giving her some hope for the future! God uses our dreams to speak to us, it's amazing!
I want to adopt kids but I don't have the finances right now. I'm still waiting to see how God plans on providing them, but now I'm sure He will. Here's why.
See, I had planned on naming my future son Kylo-Jacob Seth. I wasn't re-thinking names, to me it was set in stone. I had written letters to my future children in that name. I had posted on the internet about the name etc. But one day I was praying and I asked God "Will you help me adopt Kylo-Jacob Seth?" and instead of answering yes or no, He said "Not Seth, Lazarus." Not a name I would have ordinarly chosen but since God insisted I changed everything Kylo-Jacob Lazarus. Then I got to wondering what the name meant. I mean, it must mean something if it's that important I choose it right? So I looked it up and it said "God will Help."
here's one more. I like to walk to work and the one day it was raining hard. Really hard. I had to leave for work in a couple of hours, and I didn't feel like driving so I prayed the rain would stop.
The rain continued until I had to leave but I decided God was probably testing my faith so I put on my running shoes and headed out the front door, without an umbrella. By the time I reach the end of the driveway it stopped. I arrived dry. Yet, I still had that little nagging doubt in my mind that "it was probably just a coincidence." I knew it wasn't, but that little thought kept trying to surface and convince me that it was so. So I prayed again and said "Thanks,now can you help me get rid of this doubt that keeps creeping up. I still have to get home after shift. Maybe it could start raining again until I have to leave." During my shift it rained, thundered and lightning-ed. 1 minute before my shift ended the rain stopped and i got home dry once again. To put the finishing touches on his miracle, it started to pour as I shut my front door behind me and stepped inside.
This is weird but…I’m 17 and spiritually pregnant. (No, dear, not another virgin birth) one day I was deep in prayer. I was standing up because I don’t usually kneel to pray. The presence of the Holy Spirit was so heavy I HAD to kneel. As I got on my knees, it felt as if the Spirit literally ascended on me. I felt the pressure move from my shoulders, arms, and chest to my lower abdomen. Directly over my womb….the pressure swelled. It’s a pressure that lasted for about a week or so…it comes back when I’m being spiritually fed…it comes back when I am starving spiritually and subsequently starving my purpose. I knew this wasn’t just a food baby. I’d been having visions of my future. Ministering to crowds and multitudes of people accepting Christ…the musical birth that is destined to be pushed out of me is beyond what I can imagine… I know it sounds weird and crazy and borderline impossible, but I do believe it was God. I am not crazy. God will use my music laced into my soul to change this world. One heart at a time.
My name is Raven. Please pray for me and the gift God has placed inside of me.
This is wierd but…
When i was pregnant with my first child, and newly married and moved to Central Florida, I was on the way to the bank one afternoon. While at an apparently empty intersection waiting for the light to change, I was getting impatient. When the light finally changed, I 'heard' a voice telling me to wait a moment. I am so happy I listened! Just a few seconds later, a fully loaded 18-wheeler barrelled through the red light at upwards of 50 mph!
I wasn't a believer then. I didn't come home to Christ for another 10 years, but it is such a comfort and a blessing to me to know that even when I did not believe in Him, He believed in me.
Thank you so much for your article on CNN.com. If I had not read it, I would not have found your blog.