When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change [Paperback]

M. Craig Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 1996

Our lives are constantly changing. It's hard to keep up, to keep our balance. It's hard to keep trusting in God. And it's especially difficult when the changes we're faced with are unwanted: the death of a loved one, a child leaving home, an illness, a frustrated dream. Craig Barnes knows the dark side of change. As a pastor, he has counseled many Christians through tough times of transition. And he has been challenged by unwanted changes--interruptions--in his own life. At times it seems as though God has moved far, far away. But Barnes has discovered that just the opposite is true: during times of change and seeming abandonment, God is right at our side offering to lead us in a new direction, offering us new life. He writes, "A young widow can outlive her grief and decide her life may never be the same but is far from over. A lost job can become the beginning of a new vocation." Here is the book for all who have known disappointment, bereavement or the shattering of faith, a book all the more valuable because it promises hope without denying despair. In When God Interrupts a sensitive, insightful pastor shows us how we can be found by God in the middle of unwanted change.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books (February 7, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830819797
• ISBN-13: 978-0830819799
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

M. Craig Barnes is pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His previous books are Yearning, Hustling God, and When God Interrupts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Conversion: a journey from confusion to terror, April 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change (Paperback)

Several years ago as I was in the midst of meticulously charting the expected course of a job change, a wise friend told me: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." "When God Interrupts" by M. Craig Barnes, pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., is the book to turn to in those disquieting moments when it becomes clear the plans we have made -- perhaps staked our futures upon -- have become finally so much dust. In accessible and at times deeply-moving prose it helps the sympathetic reader get beyond the question "Why me, Lord?" that inevitably accompanies such disappointment to a deeper understanding of what it means to worship a God whose ineffable grace is often to refuse us what we insist we want most.

"When God Interrupts" is book of hard contemporary wisdom set firmly within the Christian tradition. It is only secondarily a work of inspiration, although it contains passages that will invariably draws tears of recognition, and it will bring absolutely no comfort to those used to browsing the self-help literature for answers to their problems. It is a book for those who may have labored for years under the illusion that they have somehow taken the measure of God, at last understood His will, and are now ready to accept His reward for all their faith and righteousness. God's silence at the other end of this "deal" can be overwhelming, but for Barnes such moments, and he refers to them here and in other contexts as abandonments, are an invitation, a challenge to finally give to God what He wants most from us: ourselves.

One quotation is sufficient to catch the thrust of the book:

"When we are abandoned by the things we value, when we discover that no matter how much we have gathered we do not have enough, when we realize that even in the currency we value we are very poor, we are ready to start talking to God. Not before. Faith means betting our lives on the grace of God. (page 75)"

This is a book in the tradition of Peter Kreeft's "Making Sense of Suffering" but one that gets substantially closer to the felt experience of living a loss and the painful journey back to a God we may feel -- and perhaps have great justification for feeling -- chose to challenge us where we are most vulnerable and then disappear. Barnes's himself recognizes that these are journeys we may not wish to take, likening us on one occasion to Christ's disciples soundly sleeping through His agony in the Garden of Gethsemani, but once the journey is undertaken, it can, will, must lead to new life. God asks of us everything that we have, and more to the point, all that we are, but in the end He leaves us, and Barnes is entirely convincing on this point, with "a purer form of ourselves(page 157)."

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Losing your life in order to find it, January 5, 2002

By 

Paul M. Dubuc (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change (Paperback)

A little over six years ago I started to experience as series of very disturbing "interruptions" in a life that I thought had progressed nicely up until that point. Little did I know that M. Craig Barnes had just published a book that would help me greatly in making some sense of it all. I'm glad to have found it.

Any Christian who has suffered a huge interruption in the life that he or she has expected to live will benefit from this book. Like it or not, most of us will be abandoned by many things we value in this life. Even the best things we have our only ours for a time. We stand to lose our material wealth, our health, our livelihood, people we love, and finally our very lives as such. Dealing with this grim reality requires a choice of perspective. We can devote our life's energies to trying to preserve our lives as we want, or hope, them to be. The fear of losing our self-made lives will rule our lives. Inevitably, loss will come. How will you take that loss? If the meaning you find in your life depends on your ability to keep it the way you want it, then the loss may come pretty hard. Alternatively, M. Craig Barnes presents a perspective based on Bible lessons and people's stories which can help us to see and appreciate the sum of our lives as an unearned gift from God.

Gaining this perspective requires a conversion process that goes beyond mental assent to certain doctrines or simple belief. It is when we are abandoned by things we hold most dear that the test of faith comes. Is it real, or is it mostly dependent on our having our lives the way we want them to be? Most of us will have more than one opportunity in our lives to find out. The good news is that, even if we can't have the life we wanted, God can show us a way to want the life we have. Sounds risky (and it is). But, no matter how much we have in this life, we will lose it all some day. Learning how not to worry about losing what we think we depend upon for our peace and security could be a long, uncomfortable process. But if being so focused on "saving" the kind of life we want is making us blind and ignorant to the better kind of life that God wants for us, then it is a risk worth taking. This is not to say that it's good to throw the nice things we have in life away. But I would like to be the kind of person who can lose those things when the time comes without too much regret and also use them (while I have them) to bless others in God's name. This can only happen if I truly believe that my life is the product not of my own will and struggle, but of an intimate and everlasting relationship with God.

This book is a good elaboration on what Jesus means by losing our life when we try to save it and finding it when we lose it for His sake (Matt. 16:25) and what it means to find the pearl of great value (Matt. 13:45). As Barnes says at the end of his book, "People who have a God do not need to become one". This book will help you break the habit of trying to be your own life's savior and enjoy letting God do that for you. If you read this book and want more, I would also recommend Philip Yancey's books "Disappointment With God" and "Reaching for the Invisible God". But don't pass this one up for those. I read this after Yancey's books and gained many valuable insights.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another incredible book, July 4, 2005

By 

R. Conerly (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change (Paperback)

I thought after I read Sacred Thirst (which mysteriously appeared in the back of my car and remained there for over a year) that there was no point in reading any of the other books by Craig Barnes becasue they would never measure up to this one. I was wrong. I have read 3, bought 6 and am on my fourth. This one is beautifully written, as are all his books. Maybe this one goes even deeper to the heart of the matter, which I would say is Barnes' specialty. He tells more truth, the deep, hard truth, and somehow leaves you changed and deeply grateful for having heard it. The way I use these books is this: I read a small section (all Barnes' books are organized into smaller sections within each chapter) as part of my morning devotion. This and his other books have made an enormous impact on me and the people I've shared them with.