God is still there...

Let me make an observation: there are many who are hurting right now. Some of these people are a part of Corinth, others are just in our local community. Some are hurting financially and wondering where the next meal//job is going to come from. Some are struggling with what they perceive as a “dark” season of testing and trial. Others are wrestling with doubt about who they are and what God wants them to do//be and whether or not He is even listening anymore. Others are just scared or feel all alone.

Perhaps a word that they need to hear is that God is still God regardless of anything else that goes on: God is still there… in the midst of your doubt, in the midst of your pain, in the midst of your trial, and when you feel scared and all alone…God is still there.

Which is why I’m really excited about our next sermon series, starting October 25. We are going to wrestle with some of these questions and look at what God offers as answers. Sometimes, we will like what He says…. other times we might not.

I hope that you’ll plan to be a part of this with us and that if you have a friend//family member who needs to hear words of comfort, that you’ll bring them along too.

Adam

Reflections on the Past

With Homecoming being this past week and all, I've been thinking about the past quite a bit. The past is intriguing to me. Understanding history or learning from the past - mistakes and successes - is an act of reflection that is well worth the time. It is from our past that we learn and move ahead. Knowing where we've been allows us to know where we are going.

What’s interesting about the past, though, is how paralyzing it can be. The past can be haunting, no? We can be haunted by our failures or of the failures who have gone on before us. Looking back at choices I have made in the past that I'm not proud of can be crippling to me and put me into a state of despair. I'm sure many of you have made choices that you have made in the past that you wish you had not and in moments of weakness, you remember these things and it drags you down.

But have you ever considered that we can also be haunted by our past successes as well? We look back at how well something turned out for us in the past and we long for that feeling again. We can walk around humming Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" because that's where we want to live - in the past, because the past is safe because it is only a memory. We end up haunted by those things that used to be so great and we fail to see that there are many more successes (and failures) ahead of us as we live life to the fullest.

What we need is a healthy dose of forgetfulness - that we would learn to forget those times where we failed and to forget those times when we succeeded. Then we will be able to live lives that reflect the words of Paul in Philippians 3, "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." If we are clinging on to the past in our lives - whether it be our failures or successes - we will never be able to fully "press on toward the goal" that God has called us to.

Marked-up

I am practicing a new discipline right now. I have committed myself to reading through the whole Bible over the next 40 days. I have never tried anything this big before and it is a challenge to make the time to do this.But here is where the new discipline comes in: I am not reading with a pen in hand.

That might not sound like a lot to you, but you need to know that I love reading and I love highlighters and pens. Generally, when I read I have one or the other with me and any time I find something that I think will work well in a sermon or is a great leadership principle, I highlight or underline it to make it easy to find later.When I read my Bible, I generally do the same thing. Highlighting key verses or writing notes in my margins of sermon ideas or key themes that can be taught. I am addicted to this style of reading.

When I decided to take on this 40 day challenge, I decided to do it without a pen or marker near by. Instead of scouring the Bible looking for ways to teach others, I need the Bible to scour me. Instead of looking for the next great series to preach, I needed God to just wash over me and do a great work in my life.

I am just a little way in to this challenge, but it has been an exciting time. The story of God is unfolding before my eyes as I turn the pages. Although the pages are remaining untouched, the same cannot be said of me.

~ Adam

Quick Thought

I came across this phrase the other day and I really like it (Batterson, again): Divine Appointments.

The idea is, how many times during the day are there appointments that we have with people that have been set in motion by God? They are conversations or run-ins with people that God has placed before me or you and He is doing it so we can make Him famous in some way. The problem is that I can get so focused on what I'm doing (whether it is important or not) that I miss the opportunity or I don't recognize it until an hour later.

So here's my prayer of late: That I would see divine appointments AS they happen and not AFTER they happen.

- Adam

"You pray too much..."?!?

“You spend too much time praying.”

I read this the other day. It was a criticism labeled against a preacher (I don’t even know where he was from) by one of the leaders in his church! Can you imagine? As one of my friends responded to him, “I wish someone would accuse ME of praying too much!”

When it comes to our spiritual lives, most of us are probably not praying anywhere near enough to be accused of praying too much. In fact, most of us could probably be accused of just the opposite, “You spend too little time praying.” But, it did make me wonder, “Is it really possible to pray too much?”

Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to, “pray without ceasing.” That’s a fairly direct statement - don’t stop praying. There is something inspiring about being around someone who lives this out. Being around someone who is in a constant mode of communication with God is an awesome experience and it motivates you to do the same. So, on the one hand, I don’t believe it is possible to pray too much. But, there is another hand: When we use prayer as an excuse to not take action on what God has called us to do.

You know, there are some things we just don’t have to pray about. We don’t have to pray about whether or not we should love someone, whether or not we should give, whether or not we should share our faith. We know the answers to these things - it’s YES - Get to it! But sometimes, we find ourselves praying for these things because we want to drag our feet in doing what we know God wants us to do.

Other times, we find ourselves praying for people’s needs instead of meeting their needs. If a friend comes to you and asks you to pray for them to find a computer for school and you have an extra computer - don’t pray that they would find a computer, give them the computer and pray for them to use it well. Don’t allow prayer to become an excuse for not acting.

“You spend too much time praying.”

I want people to say that about me because they know that I’m praying for others, for my enemies, for my family, for the work of God to be evident in me, for those divine appointments that only God can provide, or simply because I just love listening to Jesus. But what I don’t want to be said about me is that I spend too much time praying about the things that I should already be moving on or using prayer as an excuse for paralysis. Be a praying person, but be a praying person who moves.

~ Adam

Twitter

If you are interested in following me on Twitter, you can do so at twitter.com/adamturner Here you can find all of the mundane and interesting things that are going on or random thoughts that roll through my brain - if you dare!

Get your feet wet

For my personal reading, I started to read a book called, Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. In it, he made an interesting observation that caught my attention. He was writing about how in the book of Joshua (chapter 3), God speaks to Joshua and instructs him to have the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant to walk to the water’s edge of the Jordan River and then to go stand in the river. When the priests reached the Jordan and they waded into the waters, God dammed up the river and made it possible for the priests to stand on firm, dry ground and they and the whole nation crossed the river on dry ground. Here’s the question that was posed: do you think the priests wanted God to dam up the river first? Do you think that the priests were thinking, “If God would do this first, then my feet wouldn’t get wet.” In other words, did the priests want God to act first and then they would follow?

Now, we don’t know what thoughts ran through the minds of the priests and whether or not this is what they wanted from God. I can tell you, however, that when I look at my life and the lives of those around me, that this line of thinking is exactly where we find ourselves more often than not. We find ourselves saying, “God, you move first, then I will move.” We want God to provide the sign before we move forward. We want God to provide the miracle before we act in faith. Why? Batterson answers this succinctly, “So our faith doesn’t require any faith!” Stop and think about that for a second. Many times in our lives, we find ourselves asking God to do something that is miraculous or so unmistakably clear and the reason is that we don’t want to have to have a faith that requires faith. Yet it seems like in life that more often than not it is signs follow faith rather than faith following signs.

A friend’s church decided that instead of waiting on their building to sell so they could move and build, that they would move out of the land-trapped facility they were in. They had tried to sell the building for a couple of years and never could and their growth suffered because of it. After the decision to move out and rent a bigger space, guess what happened? That’s right, the building sold.

How many stories do you know that follow this pattern? Signs follow faith.

When we step out in faith, God is honored and signs follow. Maybe it isn’t the day of, the month of, or the year of, but when we step out in faith, signs will follow. When we step into the water, the river will dry up and not before.

Here’s my question, “Are we/you/I standing at the edge of the water, waiting for it to dry up?” If we are, maybe it is time to step in and get our feet wet and see what follows.