Tag: When Life Gets in the Way

Redirection

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Sometimes we get everything right. Sometimes we serve God in a way that explodes in the best way possible. Lives are changed; communities are made whole. And then sometimes, just when things seem poised to grow even further, God comes and interrupts what we are doing for Him to call us in a new direction. Why would He do such a thing? Today, as we wrap up our teaching series, When Life Gets in the Way, that is exactly what we are talking about. Thanks for being here throughout this journey. May you be better prepared for the interruptions you will yet face as you journey toward His kingdom. Here’s the message.

Redirection

In 2016, we thought we were moving. We had been serving our little, country church for several years, and things were going really well. But then another church reached out, and as we prayed through it and considered all of the various factors involved, it really seemed like this might be something God was doing. We inched our way through their process, but it was quickly clear that things were moving ahead pretty smoothly. It was not easy to wrap our heads around the idea of moving. The church we were serving was the first church we had ever served. They had taken a chance on a young guy fresh out of seminary. Our boys were all three born in that community. The church loved us well. But the further we moved forward, the more we got our hearts and minds wrapped around it, and the more excited we got about the prospect of what God seemed to be doing. 

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Waiting Is the Hardest Part

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Life brings all kinds of interruptions to our plans. And those interruptions come from all kinds of different sources. But sometimes they come from nothing. What I mean is that sometimes our lives get interrupted when what we expected to happen, what we expected God to do, doesn’t happen. We find ourselves facing downtime when we thought we were going to be actively doing something…anything. As we continue in the second-to-last part of our teaching series, we are talking today about what to do when we face the interruption of waiting.

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So, the other day, I had told somebody that I would show up to help them do something at a certain time. I’m the kind of person who would rather be ten minutes early than two minutes late. So, true to form, I showed up about fifteen minutes before I said I would be there. That gave me time to make sure everything was ready when they arrived. As I was pulling in, though, I got a text: “Running a bit behind.” Given who was meeting me, I wasn’t all that surprised. I went inside and started doing the things I knew I needed to do. By the planned meeting time, all of that was done. So, I twiddled my thumbs for a bit. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I expected a little late, but not that much. So, I started doing some other things I hadn’t planned on doing. Then I got those done too. The waiting wasn’t what I planned, but it turned out more useful than I expected. 

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A Choice of Response

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For the last few weeks, we have been talking about the various kinds of interruptions we might experience as we go through our lives. We’ve talked about divine interruptions as God invites us to go in a new direction as well as interruptions from sin – both the sin of others and our own sin. So many of the interruptions we face on a regular basis, though, aren’t critical interruptions, they’re just irritating. In those situations, knowing how to respond to the person who is the cause of the interruption matters a lot. This is especially true when the interruption turns out to be God-ordained after all. In part four of our series, we are taking our cue from the example of Jesus. Let’s dig in together.

A Choice of Response

Covid was tough. It was tough for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons it was tough for me personally was that I wound up working from home a lot. With three still-young children. Who were all doing school from home. Do you know how hard it is to write a sermon or a Bible study outline when you’ve got three kids coming to you on a rotating basis (or simultaneously) either needing help with their schoolwork, needing to be reminded to do their schoolwork, or just needing to be entertained for a few minutes so they don’t start creating their own entertainment which usually creates more problems than it solves? About as hard as it is to get anything else done with all of those things going on. Many of you know those woes far better than you’d like. 

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Redeeming the Broken

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Interruptions are part of life. For the last couple of weeks in our teaching series, When Life Gets in the Way, we have been talking about the kinds of interruptions God’s plans can bring to our lives and what to do in those times. But what about when our interruptions are the cause of our own, sinful choices. What then? Today we are going to explore the story of a Bible “hero” whose choice to sin seems like it should have derailed all of God’s plans for his life. But it didn’t. Let’s talk about why and what that might mean for us.

Redeeming the Broken

People are different. Now, you can take that statement in several different ways, but what I mean is that we’re not like the rest of creation. When Moses was poetically describing the creation process, when he got to the part where God made people, he presented it differently than all the other aspects of creation. He changed the poetic pattern, which would have been a major tipoff that something was different. He said this: “So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.” In bearing God’s image—His personal characteristics, not His divine ones—God made us distinct from the rest of creation. 

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Making the Broken Beautiful

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Sometimes the interruptions God allows to come to our lives are disruptive, they are inconvenient for us, but they aren’t necessarily destructive. Other times, though, life’s interruptions shake things apart so thoroughly that we’re not sure they will ever be able to be put back together again. Last week we talked through God’s interruptions to Abraham’s life. Those were hard, but the interruptions His great-grandson faced were hard on a whole other level. Let’s talk through Joseph’s story, how his life was interrupted, and what his response can teach us for handling our own hard interruptions.

Making the Broken Beautiful

Have you ever had things go from bad to worse? Sick kids are no fun. Several years ago, we had one sick kid. Then another. Then another. Then one of us went down. The dominoes just kept falling. And you would think that was bad enough, but you would be wrong. Just at the point that everybody was sick and all of the accompanying laundry was piling up to the ceiling…the washer broke down. We were at the store the next day. The nice salesman asked us what kind of a washer we were looking for, and we told him we were interested in whatever he had in stock that we could take home that day. I’m happy to report that we are all still alive and well, but that was a rough few days. In the grand scheme of things, though, that particular life interruption wasn’t so bad. It certainly could have been worse. Sometimes when life flies apart on us it feels like things shatter so thoroughly it’s hard to imagine there could ever be a way to put things back together again. 

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