Author: Adam

Hey this is my personal info. My blog, at least right now, is intended for people who already know me, and they know that I am from Northeast Indiana, but for the summer of 2006 I'm chillin out in Tulsa, Oklahoma for an internship. So since everybody on this page probably already knows me I'm not going to waste extra time to say that I'm 22 and I just graduated with my music degree and I play the piano, and have felt called to ministry since I was in 3rd grade. Yea, I'm not going to say all that extra stuff.
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God is Bugging Me.

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.

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The Great Treasure Hunt.

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.

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For Worship Teams
Unity and Teamwork.

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

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Something I Wrote Down.

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.

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Am I A Christian Fraud?

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. 

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What My Mentor Taught Me.

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.

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Happy Birthday.

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.

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I Am Ironman.

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.

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Steven Curtis Chapman and Evangelism.

Okay I had absolutely no intention of creating an evangelism blog series this week – it just sorta happened! So here’s the impromptu part 3!

Steven Curtis Chapman has a song called “Live Out Loud.” Check out these lyrics:

Imagine this, I get a phone call from Regis. He says, “Do you want to be a millionaire?” They put me on the show and I win with two lifelines to spare. Picture this: I act like nothing ever happened – I bury all my money in a coffee can. Well I’ve been given more than Regis ever gave away, I was a dead man who was called to out of my grave. I think its time for makin’ some noise.”

How true is this?! I agree with SCC, we need to LIVE LOUDLY! Christians should LIVE so loudly that everyone around them can hear, “Jesus!” HOWEVER . . .

God never intended for us to be cookie cutter Christians, He knew what he was doing when he made each of us differently. Living loudly isn’t going to look the same for all of us. Your personality will effect the style of your loud living. But one thing remains – we must live loud.

I remember a few teachers in High School that loved teaching. There were just some teachers that loved teaching so much that you could tell it wasn’t just a job to them. They genuinely loved teaching. I also remember a couple teachers that hated teaching. Especially several substitute teachers. You could tell. They never said they hated it but it couldn’t be hidden. It was obvious they hated teaching (two of the teachers I’m thinking of are no longer in the education field!). Kids can always tell how their teachers really feel about their job — they can’t hide what’s on the inside.

That’s what it means to live loudly.

Living loud doesn’t (necessarily) mean that I have to get on a soap box to share Christ. Living loudly means that my internal life is being revolutionized by Christ (I use the present tense, “being,” because its a never ending goal). Folks – this is the secret right here, but it often gets unintentionally ignored and overlooked (even by pastors and leaders) because its not observable and measurable by others. But that’s the key to living loudly – our relationship with God must be loud on the INSIDE before anything else. After that, it will come out of you through and in the style of your personality, in everyday situations.

Steven Curtis Chapman says it best, “If we’ve really been given the gift of life that will never end and if we’ve been filled with living hope we’re gonna overflow and if God’s love is burning in our hearts we’re gonna glow — There’s just no way to keep it in.” 

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Scientology and Evangelism.

I had heard a lot about Scientology. It’s a religion created out of thin air in the past 100 years, and has thousands of followers. I had heard it was all about removing the aliens from your mind, created by a science fiction writer (both of which are true facts) who was quoted as saying something to the effect of, “Religion is where the big money is at.” But nobody would actually head into Scientology thinking they have aliens in the mind, right? I mean that’s a little far fetched. So I decided to do some checking about what the Church of Scientology advertises about Scientology. I watched numerous videos on their website asking myself the question, “What’s the draw? Why are so many people believing this?” Here’s what I came up with:

Scientology is practical! They provide real life solutions and answers to what we’re thinking and feeling. I think that right there is the kicker – its relevant! (I’m not saying its truth, but relevant to our everyday lives).

Christians, take a snapshot of your daily life. Imagine someone else looking at that snapshot. Would they see a life that has been and is being revolutionized by Jesus? Would they see a Jesus that is stagnant and insignificantly in your life . . . or would they see a Jesus that is passionately renovating your entire being? Would they see a Jesus that applies to today?

With that in mind, I understand why 55,000 Americans have picked Scientology over a stagnant and insignificant relationship with God. Psh – I DON’T BLAME THEM!

The key to evangelism in every situation is to show the one that is seeking for Truth that Jesus is the Truth they’re looking for. People around us are already looking for Jesus – they just don’t know it. Scientology provides answers when Christians (and their lives) remain silent. Start living louder.