Heart Tracks - Bursting Through

"So David named that place Baal-perazim (which means the Lord who burst through)" 2 Samuel 5:21

"Like waking up from the longest dream, how real it seemed
Until your love broke through
I've been lost in a fantasy, that blinded me
Until your love broke through

From "Your Love Broke Through" by Keith Green

I have written down in my prayer journal, "Lord, in all of our ways, show us again how You are "the Lord who bursts through." That's a prayer that none of us can pray too much because we are a people who can so often walk into the seemingly impossible place, or have loved ones and friends trapped in those places. David was the newly crowned king of Israel. The people of Israel had been dominated by their Philistine neighbors for generations. God directed David to lead the army of Israel out against them in battle and he won a great victory against overwhelming odds. In response David exclaimed that his God, "burst through my enemies like a raging flood," and named the place Baal-perizim, The Lord Who Bursts Through.

One of the first songs that gripped my heart as a believer was Keith Green's Your Love Broke Through. Its lyrics seemed to perfectly mirror my own experience with the love of God in Christ. It wasn't just His piercing of my fallen lifestyle, filled with drugs, dishonesty, lack of integrity, and dedicated to pleasure and self. It was how He burst through and into a life that I thought was real life, and was leading me steadily ever deeper into darkness and destruction. As He did with Saul/Paul on the Damascus Road, He burst into my darkness and death with His Light and Life. My blind eyes were opened and my dead heart was made alive. My own longest dream and fantasy dissolved and His reality took their place. Nothing has been the same ever since. His love, like a raging flood, broke through the bars of my prison and the chains that held me there. With the opening of my eyes, I began to see just how empty and superficial my life had been, how the freedom I thought I lived in was nothing more than captivity to a myriad of things, attitudes, desires, and compulsions. His love burst through all of them and all the lies that went with them. It would not be the last time that it did.

We are born into the grip of a fallen world where death gets all the attention. It is impossible for us to find a way out of it. It's power is great so Someone much greater has to rescue us. That Someone is Christ. He is the One who pierces all darkness and death and He is always doing so, but only the heart sensitive to Him will see Him. Others were on that road with Saul/Paul, and they heard a sound of thunder, but they did not see or hear Him. Paul did. What about you and me? We may weekly attend worship services, Bible studies, prayer gatherings. We may hear the "sound of thunder" in all of them, but do we see Him? Does He pierce our darkness, our captivity, our deepest need? Are we forever changed, or do we emerge the same as we entered? God is always coming in like a flood, but are we swept up into Him, or swept aside? An old Ray Stevens song contains the lyric, "There is none so blind as he who will not see." There is but one thing that can stand against His piercing light and life; your and my hardened heart. Where in your life are you standing against His light, His life? In some area, we all walk our own Damascus Road. Will He break through all the circumstances and impossibilities around us, transforming us, or, will we just keep on the road, hearing the sound of thunder, but never experiencing His wonder?

Blessings,
Pastor O