Interrupted by a Rekindled Passion

We’re starting a new series today called “Interrupted.” To tell you the truth, I was looking at my notes this week on this series and when I took out my paper towel from my folder where I was having some serious inspirations and sparks of creativity seven or eight months ago when I put this on the calendar, I appeared to have had been seriously interrupted because whatever I was writing, I stopped writing and before that though, it looked like I was writing sideways. And I sat this week looking at my notes, chicken scratch rather, and said, “God, you need to interrupt me and give me some inspiration because I have no idea what I was talking about.” So what is an interruption. The reason I want to define it is because some of us interrupt people like it’s nobody’s business and you think, for some strange, unknown reason, your interruptions are welcomed. Let’s be really honest about some things here—we all hate being interrupted. To be interrupted is to be stopped or hindered against your will and/or intention. You don’t want to be interrupted when you are doing something. So we have these sayings: – It’s not polite to interrupt. – you hear this all the time right, this is a conversation between A and B, C your way out. – His sleep was interrupted by a phone call. – you all know I don’t sleep a whole lot, like between the hours of midnight and four am and so when somebody calls me at 2AM just to talk and there isn’t blood spilling out of your sides, you’re interrupting me and it’s annoying. – We interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement. The announcement is almost never special, don’t interrupt my program! Here’s the truth. WE all hate being interrupted. But a fact of life is that we will be interrupted and we will be interrupted often and we will be interrupted when it’s least convenient. We will be interrupted by tragedy, we will be interrupted by joy, by relationships, by children, by friends, by family, by people who hit our cars and run, by the police and most especially, we will be interrupted by God. And so to prep for this series, I put in a quiet time entry this past Friday to get us started on thinking about what it looks like when our lives are interrupted by God. I know very few of you are actually going to read it so I need to give you a quick recap so that you can actually follow where we have to go today with this idea of interruption. I say that because we have to not only identify good interruptions from wastes of times, but we have to hone in on the purposes for those good interruptions and adapt a new way of living. If this is a review for some of you, bear with me, and pay closer attention and correct me if I contradict myself. There are two types of interruptions, by type I don’t mean circumstances, but categories. The two categories of interruptions are: wastes of time and divine interventions. Wastes of time can be recognized by two criteria (I’m really loving the number two today): first, the interruption distracts you from pursuing your current obligations and duties—that is, it has no purpose; second, the interruption adds nothing to your life as it eats into your life. An interruption isn’t a waste of time if it doesn’t add to your life, so long as there was a purpose to the interruption, whether we liked it or not. I’m talking about mourning and loss as an interruption. The second category is divine intervention and it looks something like this: A clear sign, if you think that’s just a worthless abstraction, is ALWAYS finding the duties and pursuits you have been chasing coming to fruition without you—this is a sign. You know an interruption is from God when your current obligations and duties are not shirked by your interrupted circumstance. In fact, you know that an interruption is a distraction when whatever you were doing is still left undone. When we are interrupted by God, and this is generally how God works, He gives us a sign to make sure we know that He is the one interrupting us. He did this with Moses when Moses was interrupted from his peaceful life as a shepherd, God ignited a bush on fire that wasn’t consumed. Likewise, Saul, when he was anointed king of Israel, was told to stop and eat because the thing he was looking for was found. The Apostle Paul was interrupted by God by going blind on his way to persecute Christians on the road to Damascus. Then we have Jesus, who is the interruption for all of human history. He came to interrupt the course of history and gave us salvation from the worthless life we were once pursuing. What we have to understand is that we don’t expect to be interrupted, but it happens and more importantly, we have to embrace God’s interruptions of our lives otherwise we might miss out. This brings me to the topic at hand for today: how do divine interruptions kindle a passion within us? I am simply asking the question for all of us, if life was meant to be interrupted by God because He is the God of interruptions, then how can we leverage or embrace God’s interruption to find a passion or a calling on our lives to take us on a path only God could ordain. Let’s open our Bibles to 1st Samuel 11. 1 Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead, and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.” 2 But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make a treaty with you, that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus bring disgrace on all Israel.” 3 The elders of Jabesh said to him, “Give us seven days’ respite that we may send messengers through all the territory of Israel. Then, if there is no one to save us, we will give ourselves up to you.” 4 When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul, they reported the matter in the ears of the people, and all the people wept aloud. Here is injustice: I just read to you injustice. Surrender is not the point in this paragraph here. It definitely isn’t. Check out how barbarous their terms of surrender are: cut out your right eye then we’ll accept surrender? The Ammonite was not content to have them for their servants, but, he must torment them, and put them to pain, exquisite pain, for so the thrusting out of an eye would do. Then, here’s the power game and the reason for injustice, he must disable them for war, and render them incapable, though not of servitude. There’s a reason for why the right eye was chosen, it was because back then you’d hold your sword with your right hand and your shield with your left and if you took out the right eye, you wouldn’t be effectively be able to see in theory. This is the last injustice, they would humiliate an entire nation for peaceable surrendering. What we must know about life is that in our realms of life, there is serious injustice going on. I know you know this. The problem isn’t whether or not we know the existence of it. The problem is we’re often times at a loss at what we should do about it. Let’s keep reading. 5 Now, behold, Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. And Saul said, “What is wrong with the people, that they are weeping?” So they told him the news of the men of Jabesh. 6 And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. I want you to notice something here. What was Saul doing? Yes, he was farming. He was living his life. He was doing what he had always done, what he knew how to do. If you don’t know what’s going on, it’s because Saul, until this point in his life, was a farmer who worked for his dad. He had only been anointed a king, and laughed at by the people of Israel who had no king until this point in history, in the last chapter of 1st Samuel. I can’t tell you how much time has passed, but I can tell you that not enough time has passed in his life for anything drastic to change. So Saul is farming and recognizes, just like you and I recognize, there is some type of injustice going on. This is the divine interruption! He was stopped from his farming duties by an interruption and immediately we know, because we’re reading the story as opposed to living the story, that God is the one who authors this interruption for a purpose! We need to know that God provides us with interruptions that catch our attention, that wrench our hearts, that stop us in our tracks to ignite a passion within us. Verse 6, let’s read what happens, “The Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled.” I want you highlight, circle, underline the first half of that sentence because that’s important. We can’t know an interruption is from God unless we HEAR what and why we’re being interrupted from our lives. We get too caught up too fast with ignoring interruptions that we don’t hear it out. We listen hap hazardously, but we don’t hear what’s being said. Jesus said this, let he who have ears hear. We need to hear out the interruption to take an assessment of it. Also, we know an interruption is from God when the Spirit of God rushes on us. That’s an abstraction in the Bible codified with Biblical meanings. Let me break it down to you. When the Spirit of God rushes on us, you get a feeling that is not naturally your own. You can compare it to Spidey senses if you were spiderman, but it is a feeling, it is a power that transforms who you are into a whole other person. When the Bible uses the phrase the Spirit of God rushed upon so and so, what we see is a transformation. Simply put, God’s interruptions change our perceptions and alter our actions. It is most evident that a situation is God’s interruption when we experience salvation for the very first time, our perception of who we are changes immediately and our actions begin to alter and we attribute it to the Holy Spirit rushing upon us. God’s interruption causes us to become angry. This is not the type of angry you’re probably thinking about it. This is not the, I’m angry because you didn’t save me the last French fry type of angry. This is the angry where you were wronged. This anger is in response to not a perceived wrong, but a real wrong that went directly against you. I’m going to wrap us soon, but we have to know this because on all our lives right now there is a need for God’s people to be interrupted by God. Let’s keep reading. 7 He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of the messengers, saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen!” Then the dread of the LORD fell upon the people, and they came out as one man. 8 When he mustered them at Bezek, the people of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand. 9 And they said to the messengers who had come, “Thus shall you say to the men of Jabesh-gilead: ‘Tomorrow, by the time the sun is hot, you shall have salvation.’” When the messengers came and told the men of Jabesh, they were glad. Here’s where I wrap up. When God interrupts our lives, we have to do something. WE have to do something boldly. Saul cuts up his cows. I don’t recommend cutting up your cows now and here in NY, but I do recommend you making a statement that lets people know that God has interrupted your life through the blood of Jesus Christ and rushed upon you with His Spirit to interrupt the world as we know it because God knows it and ordained an interruption into our lives to pervade it. If you have been interrupted by God, we cannot continue to live on with Luke-warm affections. WE have to go headstrong pursuing God’s interruption into our lives. I don’t mean that we should be dumb about it by not planning and not strategizing, but I am advocating that after praying, planning and protesting, we need to stop talking about the interruption as it didn’t happen, we can’t pretend we didn’t hear it clearly enough, we have to take this as our calling and act on it and do something. Saul makes a guarantee—he says, you shall have your salvation. I want you to write this down, “God promises us salvation in our interruptions when we act in faith toward them.” There are so many repercussions for that, but today, let’s pray.