Rut, Rot or Revival.

I graduated from Bryan College on May 12, 1990. Fourteen days later, Lea and I were married at Westwood Baptist Church in Cleveland, TN on May 26th. We left the next day for 10 days of rest, fun and remembering in Black Mountain, NC and Gatlinburg, TN before arriving back at our first home, Steeplechase Apartments #904 in Knoxville, TN. We bought groceries with the last 80 bucks to our name and settled into our apartment that weekend. On Monday June 8, 1990, I began my first official day as a youth pastor at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville. I met that morning with my former youth pastor/mentor and then new boss Tim Tinsley who was now the High School pastor at Cedar Springs. As I begin these words this morning, I pause to praise Jesus for Tim's life. God used Tim to whisper to me about the vocation that I have been serving in until this writing. 31 years. Youth Pastor. One of the great honors of my life.

Tim died this past Sunday. He had battled cancer over the last years of his life. He is resting, healed and very alive with Jesus now. I am forever thankful that God chose to use Tim Tinsley to point me in this life changing direction of student ministry. Signal Mountain Bible Church is currently, graciously allowing me to continue that vocational path with their students and families today. Even if and when I am officially not a "youth pastor", I hope I die participating with God in student ministry WITH Lea, WITH our sons and their wives, WITH Emma, WITH students, WITH fellow PIGS (partners in the gospel) and WITH whomever else God gives me to.

I think about church a lot. I guess partially because I've spent most of the last 11,315 days at or near church and her people. I don't necessarily think that most other people are thinking about church a ton, which makes sense. Your lives are focussed on the hearts and spots that God has called you to. That 11,315 is some of why reading AW Tozer's book "Rut, Rot or Revival: The Problem of Change and Breaking Out of the Status Quo" is stirring me up. I find it helpful and stirring and convicting to listen to the heart voices of women and men who lived in different eras of time. AW wrote, taught and preached for 44 years from the 1919 to 1963.

And these words do stir me up.

I simply want to bring Aiden Wilson's words into the light of today and share with you things that are impacting my heart in these particular days. So, a little Tozer for now.

"Rut, Rot or Revival: The Problem of Change and Breaking Out of the Status Quo" (Moody Publishers)

"The treacherous enemy facing the church of Jesus Christ today is the dictatorship of the routine, when the routine becomes 'lord' in the life of the church. Programs are organized and the prevailing conditions are accepted as normal. Anyone can predict next Sunday's service and what will happen. This seems to be the most deadly threat in the church today. When we come to the place where everything can be predicted and nobody expects anything unusual from God, we are in a rut. The routine dictates, and we can tell not only what will happen next Sunday, but what will occur next month and, if things do not improve, what will take place next year. Then we have reached the place where what has been determines what is and what is determines what will be."

He continues, "What has been should not be lord to tell us what is, and what is should not tell us what will be. God's people are supposed to grow. As long as there is growth, there is an air of unpredictability. Certainly we cannot predict exactly, but in many churches you just about can. Everybody knows just what will happen, and this becomes our deadly enemy. We blame the devil, the 'last days' and anything else we an think of, but the greatest enemy is not outside of us. It is within- it is an attitude of accepting things as they are. We believe that what was must always determine what will be, and as a result..... we are not growing in expectation."

Dictatorship of the routine.

Nobody expects anything unusual from God.

The routine dictates.

We are not growing in expectation.

Worth slowing in.

Worth slowing in?

Revival for Tim today.

There's more.