17 Sep
Posted in Book of Acts Church, Devotional Blog, Revival on 09-17-08
I typically would say a phrase like, “If God sends a great spiritual awakening . . .”
Just now I caught myself saying, “When God sends a great spiritual awakening . . .” and I had absolute confidence, NO DOUBT IN MY MIND, that it would happen very soon.
It’s later than its ever been. We’re closer than we’ve ever been before.
Recently I’ve been extremely busy. Now let me reiterate that … extremely busy. When I get stressed like that, I tend to do a hard shift to “Control Country” when it comes to my life and I get tunnel focus. Seriously – if it doesn’t help me accomplish something on my calendar or to-do list, I don’t do it. I’m not saying that’s good – I’m just saying that’s what I do. When this goes on for several days it gets to an unhealthy state… I start thinking things like… (I’m not even joking here…):
“I don’t have time to eat a meal — that’s time wasted.”
“I’ve needed to use the bathroom for 2 hours, but I can finish these three other things before I take that break. Urinating wouldn’t be the most productive use of my time – it’d be time wasted.”
“24 hours in a day – I’ll spend 8 at my office and 10 working at home. I can relax with the remaining 6 hours.”
Obviously with this pattern, it would be easy for me to have this “wasted time” mentality when it comes to my God time as well. But that’s the worst thing I could do. In the stressful times is when I need the God time the MOST.
So last Friday night God was dealing with me about this, and I just came to the conclusion that if my “God time” was wasted time, then I want to get wasted. I want to absolutely ruin and waste my life if that’s the case. All the stuff that’s “me” can be ruined and wasted if it means being closer to Jesus. I love Jesus.
Immediately after that moment, I started shouting out my prayer and promise to God. Then I began spontaneously singing it to a melody that I had actually written 8 months ago.
I want to be wasting my life seeking You. I won’t let anybody get in my way of reaching You. I want to be wasting my life finding You. And I won’t let the devil get my focus away from You.
It took me several hours figuring out how to use my new recording equipment, but I used this song to experiment with the features. I’m posting the whole deal… including a long and snazzy hip-hop keyboard solo and some very out-of-tune background vocals (sorry…). There’s some rough spots, but give me a break its the first thing I’ve ever done on my new equipment. Give it a listen, click here.
Lyrics and Recording are copyright Adam Diehl 2008…. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST! 
Earlier today I was hungry, so I went to “Steak ‘N Shake” and took care of it. The Frisco Melt platter took care of my hunger.
This past week I spent on vacation in Kansas City where I spent time at the International House of Prayer. This is a prayer meeting that started in September 1999 and has never stopped – 24/7. We’re talking over a hundred people praying all the time – even in the middle of the night. It was an incredible experience. The first day I arrived in the evening so I just spent a short hour and a half with God at the IHOP before I was tired and needed to sleep. The second day I was there for 3 – 4 hours. By the end of my trip I was so hungry to just be with God that I would stay at the IHOP prayer room for 14 hours straight. There was nothing that I wanted to do besides be with God. The more I was with God, the more I had a hunger for Him. I learned that you never really “finish” at the IHOP, you just “leave.”
Before my vacation, I would often spend my evenings doing more work (or at the very least planning for the upcoming days). Now that my vacation is over, my brain is trying to get back into my typical work patterns – I keep trying to think of another project I can work on, but I’m constantly distracted by God.
That’s right – I’m distracted by God. I guess you could say that God is bugging me right now. My brain wants to “get stuff done,” but my Spirit is so excited to spend more time with God. I need my brain to understand that spending time with God is the most important thing in the world.
Often we consider prayer the boring thing every Christian must endure. That’s not at all the paradigm of prayer (and worship) that David shared in Psalm 16, “You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” (Emphasis mine).
Eternal PLEASURES? Yea… pleasure.
I like pleasure. I’m going to go get me some.
Two years ago I talked about playing hide and seek with God. I want to add a little more emphasis on our need to take initiative and go find him. Proverbs 25:2 says,
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
I love this verse; I can’t think of a better sentence to describe our relationship with God. The contrast is totally killer. God likes to hide from us, he actually HIDES. He doesn’t hide so hard we can’t find him, but he hides enough that we have to search for him.
Gosh, I’m such an idiot sometimes. If I need guidance or direction from the Holy Spirit I will ask him for help, and then immediately crowd my life so full of distraction (usually more work) that I wouldn’t be able to hear God if he was standing in front of me with a bullhorn. I ask God for help, but I don’t listen for His voice and I immediately start worrying about it. It’s like I expect God to physically slap me on the back of the head and say, “ADAM, I WANT YOU TO …”
That’s such a disappointment! It’s God’s glory to hide. But its our glory to search for Him.
My worship team is a really weird group of people if you think about it. Some of them are tall, some of them short. Some of them wear their feelings on their cuff, others of them are content never saying an extra word. Some would like to express their worship by jumping up and down, others would prefer to quietly meditate. Each of them have different musical strengths and weaknesses. Each of them have a significantly contrasting emotional makeup. My first inclination is to see differences as a weakness because we all tend to think others should be like us. Every time I really ponder on how everyone on the worship team is so different from everyone else I can’t help but say out loud, “Yea, I’m pretty sure I serve with the best worship team in the world.” (That’s no joke, I say that nearly every weekend).
I’m glad my worship team has figured it out. I hope we always remember the importance of unity on a worship team. In 2 Chronicles 5:11-14 there is an example of how the Holy Spirit totally knocked the Believer’s socks off when the worship team was in complete unity.
The number one destroyer of worship is a dis-unified worship team. Staying unified takes more work, but if we don’t do it – we’re kind of like the Amazing Precision Marching Band. Check out this video
I was recently cleaning up my desk and I found a blank sheet of paper folded in half with some notes written all over it. Not sure where they came from, I think I took these notes while listening to John Bevere speak. I liked it… so I figured I’d post it here:
A sinner has a sinful nature and can’t help but sin! We (Christians) often get mad at them for sinning, but they’re sinners – its what they do! Sinning is in step with who they are. But for a Christian to live in habitual sin just doesn’t make sense — its out of step.
Saying the prayer and confessing Christ does not change the NATURE. Christianity requires a nature change. You can’t just join the “born again club” with an initiation statement.
“Jesus, I relinquish my rights to live for You — whatever You want.”
FOLLOWING JESUS COSTS YOUR FREEDOM.
We proud Americans don’t like to hear that – we like to focus just on how Jesus gives us FREEDOM from sin. That is great — Jesus DOES give us freedom from sin and that is wonderful! But I’m talking about how we Christians must give up our freedom to do what we want to do for what God wants us to do. We relinquish our right to do what we want. That process is called sanctification.
I’ve pretty much decided that sometimes I need to “fake it ’til I feel it.”When I first started seriously learning classical piano in college, I had to practice several hours every day. Sometimes I was excited to work on the music – other times I looked for ways out of it. On those days where I didn’t feel like practicing I learned that I had to just fake it – I had to tell myself, “Adam, you want to practice.” Once I got practicing, I began to feel like it again. But I had to fake it before I felt it.
Can we translate that into our spiritual lives? Can we fake our Christianity? I say, “absolutely!” — I frequently fake my Christianity (Don’t freak out just yet – let me explain myself!)
You see, our faith doesn’t come from our feelings. Our faith comes from obedience. My obedience cannot be the result of my feelings. So, I’ll fake it.
Right now I really don’t want to go read my Bible. I have no desire to pray or seek God. I just don’t want to.
But I’m going to go fake it ’til I feel it. I’m sure that if I am just obedient and chase after God even when I don’t feel like it, the feelings will follow. I’ll feel like it after I get going. But to get going, I’ll fake it.
This post was inspired by a blog by Steven Furtick.
My Uncle Mike is amazing. He’s probably the most brilliant mentor ever. He has forgotten more about Worship Arts Ministry than I know. Several times I have asked him for advice about a certain situation, wanting to tap into his seemingly infinite knowledge. Each time I fully expected him to say, “Adam, the solution is simple. You need to _____.”
But he never has done that. He’ll start by saying something like, “What do you think?” or “What do your instincts tell you to do?” I hate it when he asked that! It would be so much easier if he just told me how to think. But he never did that. He continued to ask question after question until I solved my own problem.
As time went on, I found myself contacting my Uncle Mike for advice less and less. Every time I encountered a potential problem I started to intuitively ask MYSELF, “Adam, what do your instincts tell you to do in this situation?” If my Uncle Mike told me how to think, then I would be an Uncle Mike Junior (not that that would be all bad, I mean he’s pretty cool). But instead, my Uncle Mike helped develop me into my own person with my own leadership “guts.” Would it have been faster and easier for him to just tell me what to do? Sure, but not better.
I wrote this down on paper last February (I don’t remember why):
“A disciple-maker/mentor must regularly check his motives. The disciple-maker’s goal is to develop his proteges into devoted followers of Christ, in the context of their giftings, Calling (with a capital C), and personal vision.”
By the way, if you consider yourself a devoted follower of Christ and you’re not mentoring someone else, well, Jesus told us to go and make disciples… so get going. You don’t have to be a super-Christian. You just need to be honest. I wrote about that in 2006 right here.
Woot!!! My blog is exactly two years old today. I can’t think of anything creative to do in celebration except to link back to my blog post on June 3, 2006. I wrote it while on my internship in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Pastor Ed Gungor. Here it is.
Also, just for kicks, I must share with you. I saw in my Google Analytics report that someone got to my site by searching in Google, “what happened to ‘Turbo’ from American Gladiators?” lol. Cracks me up.
When I was little I wanted to be a superhero. I even filled a backpack with all the superhero essentials: rope (to swing from building to building), squirt guns, a mask, and a belt with cool crap on it. I wanted to be Batman, specifically. My best friend wanted to be Superman. Another one of my friends wanted to be Spiderman. Together – we would save the world. I doubt I’m the only one who wanted to be a superhero! Truth be told – most of us (especially the guys) wanted to be a superhero as well.
Recently it occurred to me that I am a superhero — I’m a Christian. Consider this:
Superheros help people — Christians are Christ’s ambassadors, and so therefore help people. Superheros save the day — Christians are working with the Guy who did. Superheros have superpowers to do amazing things — Christians have supernatural powers to heal (amongst other things), when they’re walking with Christ and lined up with the will of Christ. I mean to think about all the things that a Christian is supposed to do — all the responsibility God has placed in the hands of His Church — its incredible, and very similar to being a superhero! I AM IRONMAN!
Now don’t wet yourself – Jesus is the only one who really saves. I’m not trying to diminish His role – but I’m trying to help all of us remember how important OUR role is! God has given US the responsibility of being His ambassadors.
So many people (even most Christians) think that Christianity is boring. It’s about being a nice, clean, good (and boring) person. That’s ridiculous.
I remember just under 10 years ago I was at church camp. Pastor Matt Keller was giving an altar call for those that wanted to open their lives up completely to Christ and would say to God, “However You want to use me, I’m available.” I remember when Pastor Matt followed that up and said, “Be careful responding to this altar call – if you open your life up to be used by God, HE WILL USE IT!” I remember how seriously I devoted my entire being to Christ that night.
From that moment on weird crap started happening to me. I often feel like I’m living in a well scripted action movie. Its as if God is directing a movie called, “Adam Diehl — the Superhero.” I’m not swinging from building to building knocking out muggers, but the opportunities God has orchestrated into my life is absolutely amazing. I couldn’t have a more action packed life if I were Indiana Jones.
Many men spend their lives looking for action and adventure. You will never find more action and adventure than in the life that is completely devoted to Christ.
