There’s a really cool pair of verses found in Judges 13:24,25.

“Samson… grew and the LORD blessed him, and the Spirit of the LORD began to stir him…”

Stir. Like a pot of stew where the potatoes have sunk to the bottom?

No. The literal translation of that word is “to agitate.”

“The LORD blessed him, and the Spirit of the LORD began to agitate him.”

Bug him?

Nag him?

Get him all riled up?

Provoke him?

Cause him angst?

What?

No wonder the guy had so much pent up energy.

I can relate to this, actually. Sometimes God stirs me. A nice, gentle prompting. A nudge, really. A peace, a calm, a knowing.

But then there are times when God rocks me. Trips me. Shakes me to my core. Messes me up. Ruins my placid life with vision or desire or faith that turns my stomach. Wakes me up at 3am to pray. Places a burden on my soul that wrecks me for awhile.

The verse is powerful though: It connects blessing with agitating. As in, it’s a blessed thing to be agitated by the Spirit of God. But its even more blessed to let him have his way, to surrender and see where it leads.

There’s something else, too: Once you’ve been agitated by God, the calm you once mistook for peace looks an awful lot like deadness, apathy, and boredom. You realize that when God messes with you, and you let him win, you’ve never felt more alive.

Reminds me of  a quote attributed to Charles Spurgeon, who said his goal in preaching  was to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comforted.”

Amen.