Chasing storms in the buff

Like many other people, I am fascinated with storms.  I remember back in the day when Hurricane Hugo was coming in from the coast and was forecast to cause extremely damaging winds in the middle of the state where I lived.  What I recall was being excited about the possibility of seeing trees bent sideways by the winds, and also being disappointed that I ended up sleeping right through it.  I did, though, get to experience the aftermath as I went without power and water for 11 days.  Yep, that wasn’t what I had in mind!

Ask most people what it is about storms that captivates them, and my guess is that all their varied answers could be boiled down to one word: power.  There is such massive strength in the winds of tornadoes, hurricanes, and gales that we will sit mesmerized for hours in front of videos shot by professional storm chasers just to get a few seconds of footage showing its fury. Storms are thrilling, amazing, and so hypnotizing that we forget what they can do.  We want to experience the power without really understanding it or respecting it.  We watch guys like Reed Timmer drive right into the path of the storms and come out with great footage, and suddenly we turn into a bunch of storm chasing yahoos holding $299 video cams we bought at Target.  Umm, not quite the same thing.

It reminds me of the 7 dudes who watched another guy who understood power when they didn’t.  Instead of trying to understand how the power worked, they just started mimicking what they’d seen.  It didn’t go well for them.  You can read all about it in Acts 19:13-16, but let’s just jump straight to the end and then we’ll see what we can learn from their mistake:

Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding. (v. 16)

Apparently, when dealing with power much greater than yourself, it pays to know as much as you can about it.  You and I, if we were to give storm chasing a shot, would quite possibly shoot the most intense video of the inner workings of a F5 tornado ever captured on film.  Of course, being that we’d be totally frozen by the immense power of the storm, we’d probably still be shooting the storm as it picked us up and destroyed us.  It’d be a pretty short-lived series on Discovery Channel.  I can see the promos now (feel free to read out loud in your best promo-guy voice:

Don’t miss the special 5 minute mini-mini-mini-short this Friday.  Actual footage of the inside of a F5 monster, captured by a man who is no longer with us, tragically wiped off the face of the earth in the shooting of the series.  Storm Erasers.  This Friday only.  Go to the bathroom and you’ll miss it.  Hold it and you won’t.

Sometimes I fear that our churches have grown full of people who chase after the next great thing.  Once, back when they first got saved from darkness into the wonderful light of Jesus, He was enough.  But over time, that started to feel like a F1 storm, and so the chase began.  Sometimes they’d stumble onto a F3 as they channel surfed among the 5 Christian networks out there on satellite, but eventually, that preacher or worship leader wasn’t able to move them the way he or she once had. Fortunately, through a flyer or an email, another storm cell would blip onto the radar and they’d rush off, frantically pulling into the parking lot just in ahead of the mother of all storms.

Doesn’t seem too far-fetched, does it?  In the American church we’ve just about elevated storm chasing to a new spiritual gift. Our ability to sniff our another exciting move of God rivals Lou Pearlman’s ability to sniff out boy bands.  But what happens when the storm speaks back?  What happens when we’re standing there trying to catch our breath from the mad rush our lives have become, and what seemed like a no-lose proposition moments earlier suddenly turns into a no-win situation?

What do we do when seeking the next big thing in the kingdom suddenly brings us face to face with the big voice of its King?  We’d better hope that, in that moment, we know Him and He knows us.  In the case of the storm chasers in Acts, they met the power (it wasn’t a good power, either) and found themselves empty-handed to deal with it.  Eventually, they had even less and ran away naked and bleeding.  But there’s another man in Scripture who found himself face to face with the power of God and wasn’t prepared for it.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” (Job 38:1-2)

Change of underwear, please?

Let’s just spit it out there: we play loosely with the things of God.  We want His power without respecting His holiness.  In some bizarre, sickening, twisted way, we try to rope His power and make it do what we want it to do.  I’m afraid the end of that is not unlike a child tethered to a bull in a rodeo.  Perhaps it’s time to step off the gas, pull the storm chasing caravan to the side of the road, and stop treating the power of God’s Spirit as something to study and instead as Someone to know.

When we do that, we will find there is no longer a need to chase the power of God as if He is elusive and Someone to try to catch up to.  Nope.  We’ll begin to live the lives of the disciples.  Men who didn’t chase power, because everywhere they went they took the power of God with them.

Storm chasers chase storms that are in front of them.  The people of God are destined to leave storms behind them as the power of God moves through them to change the atmosphere wherever they are.  In fact, it was this kind of “power wake” that originally sparked the naked storm chasing we read about earlier.  And it wasn’t just for Paul.  Mark 16:17-18 promises that the plan of God is for His people to know Him and follow Him so closely that they would leave evidence of His power everywhere they go.

Storm chasing is all about us, and it’s time to stop, because nothing could be further from the plan of God than for us to spend our time seeking more ways to soak up more of His power and presence at the expense of those around us who have none.

Instead, what could happen if the American church suddenly respected God’s power and holiness and walked with an eye toward how He wants to reach the world through us by spilling His power out of us?  I want to find out.  I want to stop chasing storms, and start creating them.

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