Our Dangerous God

This word was shared in October of 07 by Joe Spann at Believers Church in Tulsa. For your prayerful consideration:


The Specific Prophetic Sense for RIGHT NOW:
- First, this part is for those of you that are not believers – God is a loving God, do not be mistaken about that. His love however is unlike any human love, its chief concern is not to make you comfortable, but to make you free and to be free is dangerous and the act of making us free is dangerous. So for those of us who profess to be followers of God, here goes:
- There seems to be a growing feeling that God is ok with making us uncomfortable. In fact, I think He plans to. To seek God as our shelter will cost us something – perhaps enough that some of us would rather face the tornado.
- I am sensing specifically the danger of the nearness of God. He is waiting in places you do not expect to approach you in ways that you think God shouldn’t and wouldn’t approach you.
- He is about to move in a way that WILL NOT allow Him to be a household idol on your mantel that you cherish and pass down to your children. Your “here and now” will be changed by His presence.
- We worship a DANGEROUS GOD and He is coming to threaten every area of your life.
- If you want safety, then go back to your idols. They get their name from you, they don’t change your name, they don’t move without your leave, and they will never threaten your comfort. If you want safety, then go back to your idols but do not profess to worship the Creator of the Universe, because He WILL NOT be counted among your idols.
- He is about to become dangerous to your everyday trappings, dangerous to your comfort, dangerous to your retirement plan, dangerous to your schedule, dangerous to your social standing, dangerous to your secrets, and dangerous to your religion.
- The good news is, He is also dangerous to your limits, dangerous to your fear, dangerous to your addictions, dangerous to your sickness, dangerous to your unforgiveness, dangerous to the chains that bind you – chains that you have become way too comfortable with.
- The end result of this is that He wants to make YOU dangerous again; dangerous to your neighbors’ bondage, dangerous to the pain in the people around you, dangerous to the generations of abuse and pain in your family and the families you know, dangerous to the culture you are in every single day.
- Finally, He wants to make us dangerous again. Dangerous to our neighborhoods, dangerous to our friends, dangerous to our culture, dangerous to the kingdom of darkness.
- God is about to overtake us, to leap from the shadows and subdue us, to wrestle us to the ground and change our names, and in the process to injure us forever. We will never be the same.

Finally, I grieve. I grieve because I am a rich young ruler and I am not so sure that I want this. I want it from a distance, but to actually be in the Presence of the un-nameable God seems increasingly dangerous. So many of us are rich young rulers. We have our problems solved, our needs met. If they aren’t met at any given moment, an alternative other than God is there to meet them.

It will truly cost us everything to follow Him. The fact that we have to “lose our lives to find them” has been relegated to a cliché and sapped of its power for most of us. God is about to move in a way that will no longer allow that to be a cliché for you. That means that both the losing and the finding will be at a much deeper and more meaningful level.

So what should be our response to this?
- Brutal honesty – you may find yourself in situations in the future where you are not sure if it is God dealing with you or not because He has never dealt with you like this before. The best response is an honest one. Don’t pretend that you know exactly what to say to God – just be honest. But be prepared to wrestle all-night if you must.
- If you respond honestly, then God’s work in you will be completed.
- Recognize that He is a dangerous God. Look for the God-boxes that you have built and tear them down.
- Commit today to NEVER pray another superstitious or insincere prayer. Your pretense dishonors Him and He doesn’t want it from you anymore.
- He wants you to have a dangerous relationship with Him. Tell Him all the things you’ve always been afraid to say to God. Meet Him where you are and reveal yourself to Him in ways that you never have.

This seems severe, and I want so badly to say something to make it more palatable. Something that will make it set more nicely over lunch after the Sunday service. But I can’t. He comes now, and He comes in force, and He comes to threaten us, His followers, in every way.