Author; N.H.

“The evil spirit answered them, ‘I know Jesus, and I recognize Paul – but who are you?’ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them, overpowered them all, and prevailed against them, so that they ran out of that house naked and wounded. When this became known to everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, they became afraid, and the name of the Lord Jesus was glorified. And many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices, while many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. so they calculated their value and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver. In this way the word of the Lord flourished and prevailed.“

This is the account of a revival that took place in Ephesus in the 1st Century. Revival, of course, of a great movement of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, to save and sanctify people. Isn’t it interesting what Luke, the author of the above passage cites as the reason for the revival? A demon possessed man assaulting some half-rate exorcists.

There are about a thousand accounts of this in the Scriptures and on the pages of Church History. In 1733, a prostitute living in Puritan New England made greater waves than many fiery sermons. A preacher in the town writes:

When she came to me, I had never heard that she was become any wise serious [about following Jesus]…what she gave me an account of, was a glorious work of God’s infinite power and sovereign grace; and that God had given her a new heart, truly broken and sanctified.

The speaker, a pastor, worried the conversion of a woman of her sort might make the people in the town more bold in their sin. Instead, he writes,

But the event was the reverse, to a wonderful degree. God made it, I suppose, the greatest occasion of awakening to others, of anything that ever came to pass in the town…The news of it seems to be almost like a flash of lightning, upon the hearts of the young people, all over the town, and upon others.

Much like the lonely Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel, whose testimony results in the conversion of her whole town, God is pleased to take the tax collectors and prostitutes and make them the glittering jewels in his holy crown. They are the unlikely spark struck at just the right time for the gospel’s power to explode into darkened lives.

The town seemed to be full of the presence of God; it was never so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, everyone intent on public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth.

Do you wish for an awakening? Let us ask for the unlikely sparks, for perhaps we are too respectable to be unbridled flame.

In the monotony of life, most of us chase the escape. There is Netflix, Prime, Hulu for couch surfers; Kindle, Indie Bookstores, and Barnes and Noble for the word thirsty; museums, theatres, and cinemas for the art-savvy. While some would rather Yosemite, or Yellowstone than read or watch – most of us have an escape.

It’s understandable why that might be. Man born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. But what do we escape to? What relief do we find in these stories, paintings, and landscapes of beauty?

In the pages of a book, one can live outside of one’s self. You can go places no person can. In the movies, one can celebrate the triumphs of characters whose essence is more beautiful, strong, or powerful than we.

The problem is not wanting to disappear into stories, for the Creator endorses that. The problem is viewing our lives as something other than stories. I don’t just mean our lives are stories like biographies are stories – one event turning into another, into another affecting a person over time. Rather, I mean a story being written with intent by an author, a story with meaning. Do you see yourself that way? As a character in a story?

It can be a hard thing, for we have a whole genre of stories called tragedies, and if our lives are being written by a divine author, then so many of our lives are of that type. But what if life being a tragedy depends on when the timeline ends? What if we reorient the arc of the story on a different timeline? MLK Jr. popularized the quote, the “arc of history is long but it bends toward justice,” – are we different?

One’s account of World War II could burden one’s soul if the account ended with Hitler conquering Paris in 1940. But what if the account ends with Hitler’s timely end and the surrender of Germany on V-E Day, 1945? Whether a life is a tragedy, or even a success story, depends largely on where we stop telling it.

Moreover, the way we look at life depends on how we see it as sweet or bitter. In a passage known as the Hall of Faith is a striking account of a group of people:

they were tortured, not accepting release, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.

These are the people commended by the author. To end the story there is certainly hard. Among the greatest heroes of the Christian faith are those who despaired and left the world with rags and sorrows. But the timeline continues past the grave. These people banked on a life which doesn’t end with their last breath. They had hopes and dreams – some realized, some not. But their bridge to a better world – and a happier ending – was through faith. The tragedy was they were crushed and afflicted without visible fulfillment. But God says this:

These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. 

They saw the glories and upsets of life as temporary, fleeting things. Jim Carrey says, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” The most accomplished lives are tragedies on the long scale.

These folks above who wandered in goatskins and lived in caves. They realized what they were looking for was not self-realization, but home – or more specifically – a homeland. They redefined the nature of a triumph story:

they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

The word homeland there is actually “fatherland” (πατρίδα). You can just pick up and move to Canada and become a citizen. But you can only go home to Canada if you’re from there and are going home.

You see, life is either the story of craving to maintain this crumbling existence (of which we will all be robbed by death), or it is the story of the “craving” (earnestly seek after – “ἐπιζητέω”) of fatherland by which we will pay all to regain.

One is the tragedy. One is happily ever after. This is a Choose Your Own Adventure Story. When you find yourself in sheepskins because you’ve chosen to live a life of faith, your story does not end with a breath, but pivots on a resurrection.

Richard Dawkins has a new book out recently attempting to persuade young people to jettison belief in God. Dawkins is an evangelist of sorts for the restless sort of atheism which is discontent with widespread belief in God(s) – but mostly the Christian God.

I don’t believe in the things that Dawkins compares with God: unicorns, leprechauns, or fairies – but I’m not publishing books on how or why not to believe in those things. If belief in God is safely far on the right of ridiculousness, then why is Dawkins continually making a career of evangelizing persons into unbelief? I contend Dawkins is what I was as an atheist – haunted by the Christian God. He [God] ever lives in the conscience of unbelievers never allowing them to live in full moral freedom, always reminding their sub-conscience of their rebellion and need for forgiveness. They can never forgive Him for it.

This isn’t merely a lone hypothesis of an amused believer: psychological studies show atheists, and agnostics often choose unbelief not after a critical examination of the “evidence” for God, but because of psychological disappointment in a God. The thing they accuse believers of is the real determiner for so many: emotion. Further, this emotion often exists in the form of anger toward God.

Some atheists and agnostics reported anger involving God, particularly on measures emphasizing past experiences (Study 2) and images of a hypothetical God (Study 3). Anger toward God was associated with poorer adjustment to bereavement (Study 4) and cancer (Study 5), particularly when anger remained unresolved over a 1-year period (Study 5). Taken together, these studies suggest that anger toward God is an important dimension of religious and spiritual experience, one that is measurable, widespread, and related to adjustment across various contexts and populations.

Exline JJ1, Park CL, Smyth JM, Carey MP; Anger toward God: social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 Jan;100(1):129-48. doi: 10.1037/a0021716.

More evidence follows:

Our interest was piqued by an early study of anger toward God among undergraduates (Exline et al., 1999), which revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward God than believers. At first glance, this finding seemed to reflect an error. How could people be angry with God if they did not believe in God? Reanalyses of a second dataset (Exline, Fisher, Rose, & Kampani, 2004; Kampani & Exline, 2002) revealed similar patterns: Those who endorsed their religious beliefs as “atheist/agnostic” or “none/unsure” reported more anger toward God than those who reported a religious affiliation. Further analyses identified a group of conflicted believers (or slipping believers), all of whom had previously believed that God exists (or might exist) but no longer believed at the time of the study. When compared with believers, these individuals reported more anger toward God. These findings raised the question of whether anger might actually affect belief in God’s existence, an idea in line with Novotni and Petersen’s (2001) clinical descriptions of emotional atheism.

Worthington, Everett L. Handbook on Forgiveness (Routledge: 2005), p 79.

Other studies show that atheists have cognitive dissonance regarding what they say they believe about God and what they feel toward Him. For instance, one study had religious and unbelievers repeat statements daring God to do something harmful. The atheists who had skin electrodes showed the same stress levels at daring God as religious people.

So atheists: you’re not fooling anyone – and certainly not God. Romans 1:21 states this clearly:

For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.

I have compassion on atheists. In some sense they have their lives robbed from them by their own rebellion. They can have no moral rest from the God who haunts them until they repent. If you lived in an atheistic universe, you could have rest. Since you live in God’s universe, you’re only hope is to come to the Savior who said:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30.