09 Jan

STONES AND STORIES

A couple years ago, I went on vacation with my husband and the trip was filled with stones and stories. These stones and stories represented significant people, world events, victories in war, marathon winners, and basically anything people from the past wanted us to remember today.

At every stone and statue were tour guides telling large groups of tourists the stories that went with them.

While we were in Boston, we stopped at this statue and the tour guide said, “I’ve been a tour guide in Boston for 25 years and I have seen this statue go unnoticed. No one saw it important enough to take a picture with, and, honestly, people didn’t even know who it was.” He continued, “But six months ago, the Broadway play came out and now it’s ALL people can talk about, and now this is ONE OF THEE MOST photographed statues in the U.S. all because people started talking about this man again!” You want to take a guess who it was? The statue was Hamilton! Alexander Hamilton.

That is the power of storytelling! Only until someone dusted off Hamilton’s story and started retelling it in a beautiful way did people start taking interest in it again.

So, my question is—when people ask us about our God, our faith, our church … what stories are we telling and how are we telling them?

Let’s go back to the OT (the Old Testament). Have you read the Old Testament recently? Give yourself the gift this Christmas of giving the Old Testament a read! It’s so good! Today I’m going to be paraphrasing and highlighting certain points from Joshua chapters 1-4, but I encourage you to go read those chapters in addition to reading this article—you will be blessed!

Starting with Joshua 1:1-2, we see no sugar coating here. God is straight up with Joshua by saying, Moses is dead.

These three words are enough to truly grip the heart. Moses was the nation’s leader for over 40 years. He led the nation out of slavery and bondage from the Egyptians, he journeyed with them in the wilderness, and whether things were good, bad, or ugly, Moses always directed their eyes back to God. But now he died right before the nation was about to cross over the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land.

Before they cross over, God gives them a few instructions. And not like Siri instructions. Siri gives us the fastest, safest route, giving us every step-in advance and shows us where we can find a Starbucks along the way. God’s instructions are higher than our ways and higher than Siri’s ways. When God gives instructions to His people before a time of transition, He gives heart instructions. And in this case, before they are to cross the Jordan River, they go a little something like this:

  1. Prepare your hearts for what I am about to do.
  2. Let Me go first and follow Me in faith.
  3. Pick up stones along the way and share your salvation stories.

This is such a good Word for Joshua and the Israelites. But what does this have to do with us as believers today?

We are all about to transition into a new year, the year 2025. And although may not be a lot of changes from December 31st to January 1st, there is a great opportunity to be embraced in the close of one year and the opening of another. I believe that opportunity is for us as believers in Jesus to follow these same three heart instructions that God gave His people back then.

1. Prepare Our Hearts for What God is About to Do (Joshua 1)

Before crossing into the Promised Land, Joshua commands the people to get their hearts ready, to prepare their hearts for what God is going to do for them, so they do not miss the miracle!

Similarly, we are able to come boldly before the throne and ask Jesus to position our hearts so we don’t miss what He’s about to do in us individually and as a church. Now is the time to get our hearts in alignment with His will and prepare for the goodness of God in the new year ahead. Let’s not miss the miracle!

2. Let God Go First & Move Forward in Faith (Joshua 3)

The Israelites face the Jordan River—an obstacle that seems impossible to cross. But God instructs Joshua to tell the priests to step into the river with the ark of the covenant, and, as they do, the waters of the Jordan get pushed aside. The Israelites walk through on dry ground, a miraculous revealing of God’s power, promise, and provision.

Just as God parted the Red Sea and parted the Jordan River, God is able to make a way for us in THIS generation, too. Our part is to let Him go first and we simply step forward in faith. Because even when we don’t know what the future holds, we know who holds our future. Dude, Yes and Amen to that!

3. Pick Up Stones Along the Way and Share Our Salvation Stories (Joshua 4)

Finally, the people are instructed to take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River and set them up as a memorial. These stones represent God’s faithfulness in bringing them through the river and into the Promised Land. These stones represent how God keeps His promises—He’s a man of His word.

For us, let’s carry the “stones” of God’s faithfulness from 2024, moments where God showed up; moments where God pulled through for us; moments where God went into the pit with us; moments of victory; moments of healing; moments of growth, moments of provision; moments where God showed up in the nick of time.

These are the million little miracle moments that we can hold onto as we step into the new year.

Reader, Friend, Believer,

When people ask us about our God, our faith, our church, what stories are we telling? And how are we storytelling?

Are we telling them the list of things Adventists don’t do? Or are we telling the stories of why we are jazzed and blessed to be Adventists?

Are we telling stories that make it seem like our God is still in the grave? Or are we telling stories that show our God is alive and active?

As we wrap up 2024 and open up 2025, let’s position our hearts in expectation and faith for what God is about to do in us, through us, and for us. Let’s be in a heart posture of anticipation and courage, ready for what God has in store for us as individuals, as families, and as a church!

Let’s allow God to go ahead of us every step of the way—let Him be our Waymaker—trusting that He will make a way even when the path ahead seems dark, uncertain and impossible. Why? Because, yes, nothing is impossible for our God.

Let’s carry our stones of remembrance and share our salvation stories from this recent year, giving hope and encouragement to one another that we have a God who does not slumber or sleep, He’s not on vacation, and He’s certainly no longer in the grave—that’s right, we serve a RISEN God who is fully alive and active.

If we truly believe our God is no longer dead, let’s start telling stories like He’s alive.

Mollie Dupper is the associate pastor at Boulder Seventh-day Adventist Church. Email her at: [email protected]

23 Oct

DIFFERENT DAY, SAME GOD

One of my favorite places to get dessert is CRUMBL Cookies. It’s a cookie chain that serves giant fresh baked cookies in a brilliantly bright pink box. The unique thing about this business is that the entire menu changes. Each week, five flavors of cookies change entirely. For example, one week the menu may offer a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cookie, but within seven days, that flavor will be traded out for Lemon Poppy Seed. Customers never know what flavors will show up each week, nor do they know when a certain favorite flavor of theirs will return to the menu. It’s a genius business model if you really think about it. The ever-changing menu keeps customers curious and coming back regularly in anticipation to see which flavors are offered in the limited span of six business days.

CRUMBL Cookies is very similar to life in that you can always count on one thing … change. If only every change we experienced in this life were as sweet as fresh baked cookies. There are many changes happening in our world, whether it be changes in society, the economy, with technology, in politics, in religion, the list goes on and on. Sometimes it seems like the entire menu changes weekly. But it makes me wonder if the changes that are happening in our world today can lead us as Christians to a place of curiosity and anticipation rather than fear and anxiety. It makes me wonder if the changes that are happening in the world around us can lead us to a place where we say, “Different Day, Same God.”

Like all things, this brings me to go look at the Word of God. This subject of change   brings me the old solid Bible story of David and Goliath:

Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle?” Am I not a Philistine? And are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me (1 Samuel 17: 8).

Goliath makes a solid point here. Why would the guys in the Israelite army line up for battle, day after day, morning and evening, for forty days, just to run away?! I guess I can’t blame the Israelites, because with single man combat, the Israelites are no longer looking to God or their full army for help. Instead, they start comparing themselves to what’s in front of them, Goliath. When they compare, they see they have big odds stacked against them! Their struggle is very real! So, they keep lining up, and running away, lining up, and running away.

But what if the army of Israelites had compared their circumstances, their surroundings, and, ultimately, their giant to their God? What if we compare our circumstances, our surroundings, and, ultimately, the giants we are facing in our world to our God? I recently heard a song that sang, “The only remedy for big odds, is a big God.” It makes me ask the question, “Are we as Christians comparing our big odds to our big God?”

Next up in the story, a shepherd boy named David, the youngest son of Jesse, heads out to deliver bread and cheese to his brothers who are “fighting” in battle. That’s right, before there was DoorDash, there was David.

David happens to show up right as the Israelites are lining up for battle and that’s when he hears Goliath talking trash about his God. He also hears about the reward for the one who kills the giant: you get wealth, a wife, and waived from taxes! What a deal! People hear David discussing these matters and bring him to King Saul.

Which brings us to the passage that I believe is the heart of the story and the heart of this article.

But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine (1 Samuel 17:34-37).

This passage often gets skimmed over, but it is the cornerstone of this Bible story. Forever, I heard this story growing up, and the emphasis was always on David and how much faith he had in God. The title we give this story is, “David and Goliath.” The songs we sing about this story go something like, “Only a boy named David.” Forever, I thought David was the main character of this story and the main point was to have courage and faith like David did. But this passage changed everything for me.

This passage reveals that

God was the one who made the first move.
God was the one who first rescued David from the Lion.
God was the one who rescued David again from the paw of the bear.
God rescued David first.
God loved David first.

David is just an eyewitness of the Living God, and THAT makes David look at his current situation and say, “Different Day, Same God. Different Giant, Same God.”

It’s God’s faithfulness that gives David the courage and confidence to … go to the frontlines,

To boldly speak truth to the giant;
To run towards him;
To kill him with a stone;
To stand over him in victory; and
To, ultimately, reverse the entire story for the Israelites.

The story even ends with the Israelites doing a victory chant and chasing after the Philistines.

Talk about a plot twist. I think God loves a good plot twist.

The point of this story is not just “Try to have the SAME FAITH as David,” but that “We have the SAME GOD as David.”

I used to think of the Bible as stories about

Abraham having faith in God.
Joseph having faith in God.
Moses having faith in God.
David having faith in God.
Daniel having faith in God.

And I used to think the main point of these Bible stories was that I need to try to be like these characters and have a lot of faith. That’s not a bad message by any means, but the problem was that once the Bible ended, it’s done. That’s where the God stories stop. That’s where the powerful God stops, because all of those Bible characters are dead and done, including God.

But when reading through the Bible, I realized it is not just a bunch of separate stories of humans having faith in God, the Bible is one BIG story of God being faithful to humanity.

Which means, when the Bible stops, God keeps going.

Which means, when our world throws us curveballs, God keeps working.

Which means, when our world keeps changing, God remains constant.

Which means, when it’s 2024 and we are surrounded with new challenges, our big God is still in it with us.

It means He’s NOT just the God of Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and David …

He’s the God of Mollie,
The God of Rajmund,
The God of you, Reader!
The God of each and every one of you.

He is so in love with us, ready and willing to walk, talk, and do life with us.

Fellow Christian, our God is the God who is and who was and who is to come. He’s got the whole world in His hands. So instead of looking at the changes and challenges that surround us in this world today with fear and anxiety, let’s confidently be in a place of curiosity and anticipation. Let’s be curious and excitedly anticipating how God is going to work this time, how He’s going to come through this time, how He’s going to win this time.

When we realize that our God is big and faithful, this gives us the confidence to live confidently in an ever-changing world, with ever changing battles, with ever changing giants. So whatever change or challenge we face, whether good, bad or ugly, we can confidently say,

Different Day, Same God
Different Struggle, Same God
Different Job, Same God
Different Battle, Same God
Different Economy, Same God
Different World Leaders, Same God
Different Life Chapter, Same God
Different Giant, Same God.

Mollie Dupper is the associate pastor at Boulder Adventist Church. Email her at: [email protected]