Turning…

I’m taking a class right now, and one of the required texts for reading is “Ancient-Future Time” by Robert E. Webber.

As I was reading today, I came across a sentance that caused me to stop and ponder it for a while – and I wanted to share those thoughts.

Mr. Webber made the following statement:

When we turn away from something, we turn towards something new.

Of course he was applying it to our turning towards God through Jesus and turning away from sin, however this concept (unfortunately) works in the other direction as well.

When we turn away from God, we are turning towards sin.  Or, if you prefer, when we turn towards sin, we are quite seriously turning away from God.

In our lives when we choose to turn away from some part of our lives, there will be something there that is different – and not always better for us.  Alternatevely, when we turn towards something new, we are making a choice to turn away from something that is presently a part of our lives.

The ideal is, of course, to turn towards God and away from sin, to turn towards truth and away from a lie.  The unfortunate thing is that we can also choose to turn towards sin – effectively turning away from God.

So what do we do when this has happened in our lives?  The correct choice is to make a course correction when we realize that it has happened.  We must then repent and turn back to God – and away from the path that sin is leading us down.  A path that leads to destruction and death.

How do we know that we have turned away from God?

The bible says that the Holy Spirit will whisper to us when we turn to the right or to the left to help us stay on the correct path, however we can condition our spirit to ignore His promptings – and the more we ignore them, well, the less we hear them in the first place.

THIS IS DANGEROUS!

Once we have conditioned ourselves to ignore Him, just think of how much harder it is once we desire to hear His voice again!  We must take the time and put in the effort to re-cultivate our spiritual ears to listen to Him, and while we are cleaning out our ears we must make the concious choice to die to the flesh in regards to the temptations of that path of sin!

Fortunately we serve a God who is a God of Love… a God that offers grace and forgiveness to us no matter how far we have strayed from Him.  We don’t deserve His love, grace and forgiveness, and there is no way we could ever work our way back to Him on our own.  BUT… He so desires us that He created a way for us to “get back into His good graces” as it were.

We must cry out to Him in repentance and ask for His forgiveness.  Until we are broken by our sin and cry out to Him we will continue down that same side road over and over again.

The choice of turning away from the sin and towards God MUST be a willful decision.  We can’t just float along through life and try not to ripple the waters around us.  It’s either walk-by-faith… or sink.

If we don’t place our faith in Jesus we will sink.  If we turn away from Jesus and look to the world, we will sink.  If, however, we will keep our hearts focused on Jesus, we will be able to walk on the water towards Him.  He has promised to give us whatever we need to get through the storms that we find ourselves in – but He never promised to take us out of the storms.

There’s a great new song out by Carlos Whittaker called “Rain It Down” that describes what we should be doing.  Here are the lyrics:

There’s a storm coming in the distance
Some will run to it and some will resist it
Our eyes will turn to the sky
With desert hearts looking to the heavens
Desperate for Your holy fountain
Our eyes will turn to the sky

Rain down on us Father
Rain down on us Spirit
Rain down on us Jesus
Rain down on us

There’s nothing like Your healing water
Pour it out on Your sons and daughters
Our eyes are lifted high
We are here and we are waiting
Flood our hearts ’til they’re overflowing
Our hands are lifted high

Come Lord we’re thirsty now
Come Lord and rain it down
Come Lord we’re thirsty now
Come Lord and rain it down

When we find ourselves in the midst of a storm we need to embrace it.  We need to cry out for God to rain down His healing waters upon our dry & thirsty souls – not cry out for it to be over.

We need to turn towards God.

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