Get out of your spin cycle - You're needed elsewhere

It's not uncommon to get stuck in a personal 'spin cycle.' You've experienced that, right? Think of a 'dirt devil' - a dingy mini-whirlwind of dirt and dust that envelopes, distracts and isolates within the limits of its vortex. A weak little formation, in fact, but all consuming in experience and since we're at the center of the the swirl, our vision is diminished by the debris.

God will not leave us to this demise, but forms His Whirlwind to speak into our little twister. The contrast could not be more compelling. He moves as the mighty cyclone in power, force and purpose. We simply spin and churn in our own...well, stuff. Distracted and distracting - like a poor soul trying to run around the room with one foot nailed to the floor.

Lots of activity: No real progress.

When God speaks from His Vortex, as He did to Job, it may be sharp and loud and demand an account be given, even as we buckle our knees. Or as with Elijah, first may come the violent shaking and quaking, the blowing and burning. And then, in the pause, floats a feathered voice... 'What are you doing here?'

'Here' is the key to the question He presents: This is not geography but the state of heart, mind and spirit as we spin in our own story. When you do hear Him, as you will, pray hold these tensioned truths together: He is Holy, and Wholly Other. Intensely powerful. Deeply mysterious. Yet He remains more personal than your deepest thoughts, your hidden fears and fractured hopes. In all this, He draws you with a severe mercy.

God is speaking from the Whirlwind, that one just over your shoulder. Not safe, but compelling. Turn. Look. Choose: Stay stuck in the sputtered spin of your own clutter or join into His Vortex and impact all of history.

The world says that it's all about you, as you are the center of your own universe. God disagrees. Your true story lies only in Him, in the Eye of His Storm. Stephen Full replay of The Deck teaching, click here.