Tommy Mitchell / The Rurban Church Blog

God on a Leash!

Isn't it amazing what all we believe God SHOULD do versus what we believe we should do under His leadership?  We believe God should provide us with PLENTY of money to spend on ourselves - with wonderful houses in which to live - with closets packed full of clothes and sheds filled with our age appropriate toys! We believe God SHOULD never allow us to have a headache, a cold, a sniffile - and certainly we should never experience cancer or heart trouble!  We believe God SHOULD make us VERY happy and allow us unlimited freedom to be happy doing whatever we want!   Yeah! We pretty much believe this based on our prayers and our actions and our expressions of BITTER disappointment when God doesn't PERFORM according to our desires!

But what if?  I am re-reading a book, "Miracle in the Mountains: Experiencing the Transforming Power of Faith in the Heart of Appalachia!"  It is a book about Lonnie Riley and his wife Belinda! Really, it is a book about the what life is like when we surrender our agenda and begin to live out the Lord's agenda!  Here is a quote from the early part of the book by Lonnie!

    "What I could visualize was what I attained! God was in it as far as I knew to let Him be!
     What would God have done if I had let Him be God and had not limited Him to what
     I could do?"

Good question for us all!  We all tend to look at the Lord this way. We can do what we can see - which is not faith at work!  God is working - and often we are working - but more often than not - we are working good things for God instead of letting God utilize us in His work - His plan - His purposes!  Faith is more than a feeling and more than just a statement of belief! Faith is digging down in the Word, hearing from God through the scripture and prayer and ACTING on what HE is doing! 

Let us all give ourselves a wonderful gift this Christmas and let God off our leashes!  Let His will be carried out in our hearts and bodies! 

It Can't (Can) Be Done!

One of my favorite sayings is "The person who says it can't be done is often nudged out of the way by the person who is doing it!"   It can't be done!  I have heard that phrase over and over for better than 30 years!  Sometimes it is about the easiest of things to do!  Sometimes it is about the absolutely HUGE idea or vision!

People are funny!  I have seen huge goals set before people at times - and the people who thought it couldn't be done worked hard to make sure it wasn't done! Then they sat back and said, "See, I told you it couldn't be done!"   We call that "self-fulfilling prophecy!" 

When that sort of things happens, it demoralizes the people who were attempting something great that they believed God had set before them!

Why do some people react so violently against faith living?  Why do some people go out of their way to "gum up the works" when others are trying to follow God obediently in whatever He is doing?

This Sunday I am preaching on "What Can it Accomplish?"  (we are in a series so our people will know that "it" is the stuff with which God has blessed us!)   I am preaching from John 6  and the feeding of the five thousand.   One of my favorite lines in the story is when they discovered that all they had to feed the crowd was the 5 little loaves and 2 fishes of a boy!   Here is the line - "What is so little among so many?"  OR - to put it another way - "It can't be done!" 

Move over - Jesus does it!   And then we say, "Yeah, but it was JESUS who did it!"  - as if that means we could not!  Read the passage!  You will find out that Jesus was presenting them a test!  He already knew what He would do! 

I believe that almost every day Jesus presents us with a test - and He already knows what He will do! 

I think that my favorite saying can be updated a bit!  "Those who say it can't be done need to watch out for the one through whom God is doing it!"

Accepting a Challenge!

What do you do with something way bigger than you - but that requires you to see it through?

1. Bolt and run!  This is a fairly well known strategy - and is used quite often.  A large challenge is before us and we just decide - "no way!"  We cut and run!  The problem is that kind of like Jonah, we usually can't get completely away from it!

2. Try to get someone else to do it!  A lot of people have ideas for great things - but are always trying to get someone else to do the work!  Then, there are many times that the Lord just hands us this huge assignment - and rather than just bolting and running - we try to heap the challenge on the shoulders of someone else in hopes we will not have any guilt or further burden over it!

3. Pray and Prepare!  This is a step in the right direction! God given challenges will only be understood, to the point we can understand them, through talking with Him!  One has to be cautious not to spend to much time praying, "God show me all the details!"   Prayer is probably better spent asking for help with the boldness, obedience, and faith we need to step out!  Pray that understanding will come as we obey!  Preparation may be an option - and to the extent we can - we should! It may be a gathering of knowledge - or methods - or looking at the examples of others who may have faced similar challenges!  But again - sometimes our preparation will be slightly limited by the extent of how far we are willing to obey!

4. Act and Watch God Work!  When we follow Him, He leads the way! He provides the resources! He opens and shuts the right doors!  Don't look back!  We will never accomplish much towards meeting a huge challenge if we are looking back - longing for simpler times, easier times, or the status quo! 

What do you do with the challenges God brings into your life?

What do you See?

Many Christians live in constant defeat because they're looking at the wrong things.  Ten men who spied out the land of Canaan were defeated because of what they saw and what they didn't see.  Be sure your eyes are in the right place because what you see is what you are!     ......Manley Beasley

A Challenge to My Thinking!

Recently I have been reading about great men of faith. The quality of the writings has been excellent.  The essence of that excellence has been the capturing of original writings, notes, and teachings in those books.  Two of the men are Manley Beasely and Hudson Taylor. 

Although these two men lived decades apart during their ministries, they could have been close associates by their faith and actions.  And then it dawned on me - and yes, so could anyone be their close associate who chooses to truly live by faith.

Today I was back to reading more in Hudson Taylor's life.  He spoke of Matthew 6:33 - "Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." 

Taylor believed and wrote that our command in that verse is simple.  Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness!  There is nothing more! We seek after God, follow His way, obey Him explicity, and follow His righteous path.  God will place His mission, His place, His purpose before us.  We must follow! We must obey! What we do not have to do is raise the support!  He will add THESE THINGS! 

Now that is a heavy change of lifestyle for most of us.  Taylor writes the following:

"To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear: 'Owe no man anything.' To borrow money implied to my mind a contradiction of Scripture -  a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and a determination to get for ourselves what He had not given.  .... It seemed to me that if there were lack of funds to carry on work, then to that degree, in that special development, or at that time, it could not be the work of God."

I truly marvel at the depth of Taylor's faith.  He prayed for God to supply His need - and waited until He did!

It challenges my thinking!

Taking "BIG" Steps!

While growing up, I can never remember a time when our family did not have a garden. Daddy always found a spot to plant a substantial family garden.  It was not a "hobby" or a "fun thing" to do.  Raising our family of six required some creativity - so we raised our vegetables and put them up in the freezer and also canned a good bit of stuff.  All of us kids had "purple thumbs" for part of the summer from shelling purple hull peas.  Shelling butter beans was my least favorite thing to do.

I enjoyed being outside with Dad while the garden was being "broken up" and then tilled.  As Dad walked the tiller through the garden, I loved walking in his footsteps.  For me, those were giant footprints and the steps were far apart. So, when I was real young - I would have to jump from one footprint to another.  Sometimes I missed a bit, but the more I did it, the better I got at following the footsteps in front of me.

Simple story from my childhood! It is also a pretty fair picture of following the Lord by faith.  The Lord is walking "His path." He is not walking mine!  He did not come here to establish an intricate "plan" designed and tailor made "just for me!"  He came here to carry out His plan! Because He is a gracious and wonderful God, He has invited me (and you) to join Him in that great journey. 

So often, using the garden story to illustrate, we want God to mark out, in our own steps, our path in the garden.  If we get in trouble, or get off that path, we then send God a 911 call to come put us back on the path.  What God desires is that we walk in His path, in His steps as He carries out His work in this world. 

When we first start, we may be a bit short on faith.  That causes us to sometimes miss the steps He is making. But as our faith deepens, and we become more accustomed to walking by faith, we start getting "dead on" in following Him.

Right now, I am "growing" in understanding and faith! I felt kind of bad about being 52 and hitting another "growth spurt!" But then I remembered that Abraham was a pretty old guy when his most major faith steps began hitting him. I am in the midst of some pretty huge "faith" decisions.  Honestly, I am not so much afraid of taking these faith steps as I am of getting it wrong.  The things that I am pondering are definitely God sized. They require faith - for there is no way I can do them.  My great struggle is that I am not as "practiced" as I should be in this area, and I don't want to do the wrong thing.  However, I cannot wait much longer. 

I am looking forward to looking back and seeing where I hit the steps - of God!

A Truly Great Morning!

This morning was unbelievably wonderful! We had seven professions of faith.  We also had two who transferred their membership to ABC!  The joy of seeing all those folks and their families standing together was cause for great joy! Praise God! He is the author of salvation - the giver of every good and perfect gift. We saw His glory on display this morning.

We also saw a wonderful decision by the church! We voted to go ahead and finish the upstairs area in our new building for our youth! The upstairs will have 8 classrooms and a worship room.  The downstairs is moving right along and finishing the upstairs too is going to give us a fantastic completed product.  The vote was 97% in favor! Fabulous!

We are hoping to be in the building around the first of September to occupy the downstairs. The upstairs should be completed about 30 days later!

We had a great day at ABC!

Moving the Mountains!

Living by FAITH is a great concept - until we realize God is completely serious about it!  We think we live by faith, until confronted by the IMPOSSIBLE challenge, circumstance, location, effort, or action God places in our lives.  Then suddenly, living by FAITH becomes more than academic - God is waiting for us to LIVE BY FAITH while we struggle to determine whether we will FAITH it, FIGURE it out in human terms, or just walk quietly away!

Living by FAITH is more than a great concept - it is living with God on a spiritual level that has real human implications.  Are you up to it?

Copy and Paste or Write and Create!

Yesterday I was reading a great book on my Kindle at lunch! Wolfgang Simson, the author, posed this modern day observation about the church and it's leadership.  Too often, much of what we do is just "copy and paste" leadership.  That observation is not hard to prove.  And it is not entirely bad!

For example:  A genuinely praying church is not such a bad thing to copy.  A church genuinely into the Word of God might have some good things to implement.  A genuinely soul-winning church might be worth emulating.

On the other hand, the methods, motives, passions of other churches to carry out those functions is not so easily copied.  Have you ever copied an original - then recopied it- then recopied it - then recopied it? After several runs, you can tell a huge difference in quality. 

So "Church A" is reaching many people for Christ  through evangelistic efforts. A leader from "Church B" happens to visit "Church A."  He sees the results and the joy and is highly impressed. He begins to inquire about "how" they do it?  Well, "Church A" has not really thought much about "how" they do it - but it has taken on some structural aspects.  So, being a good investigator who is always on the "hunt" for better methods to "copy," the leader from "Church B" gets it all down on paper and takes it back to his church.

The result - the much vaunted, new evangelism program that is going to change "Church B" for the better is a dismal failure - leading to more frustration and burnout!  What happened?  "Church B" and her leader copied structures - but not the heart of what was happening at "Church A."    "Church B" did not have the experience of deep conviction, of relationships being healed through extending and receiving forgiveness, of lives being changed through a series of prayer meetings that were held to get the congregation before God for repentance and cleansing.  They never knew about the man in "Church A" who lost an adult child with whom he had failed to ever share the gospel. They never knew about his impassioned testimony - the 8 people saved on that day in the church after his testimony 3 years prior. 

So, "Church B" copied some structure and a little excitement from "Church A," but spiritual energy and Holy Spirit energy does not  copy well in the copy machine!  So, the ministry failed.

What is the solution?   Create!  Simson says that only 5% of church leaders actually get before God and then come before their people with God's unique plan for their church! Only 5% create rather than copy!  It is not that "Church B" is wrong for wanting an effective evangelistic ministry.  They just need to hunker down with the promptings of the Holy Spirit until they discover (1) why they don't already have an evangelistic church, and (2) what the Lord wants to do in them to create that spirit!!

Create! Better than Copy and Paste!!!!

One Month to Live!

Perspective! That is what the book, One Month to Live: 30 Days to a No Regrets Life is all about! If I knew I had one month to live, how would my perspective change - about a lot of things.  During the month of March - I will be using the four part headings in the book as titles to my messages.  The book, divided into four parts, has 30 daily readings with some short study questions that are absolutely excellent.

If you read the book and even make a modest effort to do or think about the questions / suggestions at the end of each daily reading - it will make a huge difference in your life!  

You can click on the link above to order directly from Amazon.  The church usually order books by the case  to sell, but we could not find an economic way to do it this time.  If you know someone who wants the book but does not have internet access, consider ordering it for them - your shipping will be free when it goes over $25.00 and you will only pay close to $14.00 for your book.  We will order them as well - but only in quantities that assure free shipping.

You will want this book as we go through the month together.

The four message titles are as follows:

March 7 - Live Passionately

March 14 - Love Completely

March 21 - Learn Humbly

March 28 - Leave Boldly

I believe these messages will challenge us - and having the "One Month to Live" perspective will sharpen our focus.