Every once in a while you see a work of God and you wish that everyone could have been around to see it. You wish you could send time in reverse and tell everyone "You need to be here for this. it is really going to be good." I felt that way about encounter last night. Every once in a while you feel amazed at how God has worked and you are grateful that you play a small part in it...you are humbled that you are even there to see it.

Watching people come forward last night moved my heart. I thought about how each of us struggles with idols that we have to overcome on a daily basis. Probably every one of us has been burnt to often by sin and yet we are tempted to go back and get burnt again. Seeing the long line of people come forward to "tear their garments" as a symbol of "tearing their hearts" reminds you that we have so many struggles in the panoply lf backgrounds that we come from. Yet God calls us all out of them and binds us to Himself under the covenant of His love manifest in Jesus Christ.

And that is a stunning thought. Last night we were reminded that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. People often get this wrong. Often times they think that the OT God was a God of judgment and the NT God is the God of grace. How false. Read the prophets as we travel through this series. Listen to God plead with his people for their return. He is angry, but He is angry because His love has been betrayed. He is angry because those He loves deeply are hurting themselves. His anger arises from His love. He doesn't want to see those He loves be harmed. He doesn't want to see those He loves be broken, and lost, and empty. And so His anger is provoked. But it is not because of a divine power trip. It is because of divine love...a power almost incomprehensible.

And it appears incomprehensible, because if we understood it why would we walk from it? If we got the depths of the perfect love of God why would we ever take it for granted? How could we choose cheaper love or feeling if we could even grasp for a moment how overwhelming the love of God is?

As Shawn sang last night, the love of God is a hurricane that washes over us. This is a powerful picture. I will talk more of this later this week.