Falling Forward by Tom Hovsepian

A new friend of mine, I’ll call him Fred, has had his run-ins with the police off and on through the years. Yet, he’s the kind of guy, despite these difficulties, who always seems to end up “falling forward”. I love this quality about Fred. Well, the other day, the Sheriff came knocking and Fred ended up in the clink for a 2 day visit. During his time there he met a guy I’ll call Ralph. The next day Fred and his new friend Ralph were released on their own recognizance. While they were standing outside of the jail trying to decide how to get back to Mammoth (a 60 miles journey), Fred decided to call me. No, I couldn’t pick him up, but if he made it into town I would meet him at our prayer meeting later that evening and give him a ride home from there. Fred told me about his new friend Ralph, and I said, “Invite him to the prayer meeting too!” Whereupon Fred did just that. Fred and Ralph hitched a ride with a trucker and got a ride all the way to Mammoth. Fred made it over to my house just in time for us to get a quick bite to eat before heading over to the prayer meeting at the Looney Bean. The prayer meeting was going along as normal, when a guy came to the (locked) door and tried to get it. Fred jumped up and said, “It’s Ralph!” I quickly unlocked the door and invited Ralph to join us. Just as he sat down, my friend Jerry started to share his testimony. Wow! What a wonderful story of God’s mercy and grace. When Jerry finished, I shared a 3 minute version of my own testimony. By this time Ralph was wiping away tears. Something resonated with him and we asked him to tell us about himself. When he finished telling us the story of his difficult life, we invited him to “open the door of his heart to Jesus”. We shared that Jesus had radically changed our lives and set us free from slavery to our own selfishness. We also told him that through Christ we have the opportunity to not just exist through the course of our lives, but to actually live it abundantly. Ralph said “Yes” and we prayed with him to allow Jesus to take control of his life. More tears ensued... Wow! I haven’t been to a prayer meeting like that in a long while. The best part happened on the way home. I asked Fred if he realized that it was his ability to make friends, and Ralph’s trust in that new found friendship, which brought Ralph to the prayer meeting in the first place. I also asked him if he realized that just as Joseph had to go through some injustice and hardship in order to fulfill the plan God had set in motion, he too might have been put in jail for no other reason than to meet Ralph and ask him to go to that prayer meeting. I asked Fred if going to jail for the night was worth it if it meant seeing Ralph give his troubled heart to the Lord. He immediately said, “Yes, of course.” How true for all of us. We can’t always see the end from the beginning. All too often we focus on the injustice of our situations, or how they don’t seem to make sense… when all along God may be orchestrating circumstances to do something much bigger than we think. His desire is to actually USE us in the midst of our difficulty. That’s one of the ways He makes “all things work together for good.” Just like Fred, and just like Joseph, God can take our persistence in simply “falling forward” in the midst of our failings or our unjust circumstances, and make good things happen. Tom Hovsepian is the pastor of Church on the Mountain, a vibrant community of believers in Crowley Lake. We meet at 9:30 Sunday mornings. Call for more information: 935-4272 or www.ChurchOnTheMountain.org

No Greater Love than This by Pastor Tom Hovsepian

No Greater Joy than This By Pastor Tom Hovsepian I recently bumped into a longtime friend and his family. It was a delightful time spent catching up and talking to each of his boys about their present endeavors and their future plans. Each of them had such diversity of focus and desires, and I could see their confidence and the security they had within themselves to pursue their own interests. The key really came when their dad told me he was on his way down to Bishop to purchase a couple of off-road motorcycles. What? I looked at mom to see her reaction. She was fine with it. Well, there it was. Mom and dad were purposeful in nurturing their kids to have the freedom to be different. They made room for the boys, even if it was a bit sketchy. I couldn’t imagine my friend wanting to ride a motorcycle on his own. But it wasn’t about what my friend wanted—for him it was about spreading out to encompass the desires of his kids. The Apostle John was like that. He said in 3 John1:4 “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.” If you notice in the previous verse, he isn’t just talking about the doctrinal tenants of the faith. He uses the phrase “walking in the truth” twice in two verses. To him, it wasn’t just about knowing truth. It was about a lifestyle. Polonius, in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, speaks the same thing to his son, Laertes, as he heads off to university; “To thine own self be true.” What I believe Polonius and John were speaking to is every parent’s desire to see their children walking in their own convictions of who they are and how they are to relate to the Lord, and to the world they live in. When a child discovers this—and they have to discover it on their own—it brings, like John said, “no greater joy” to their folks. The Lord is like this with us. He absolutely loves it when we take initiative and launch out in the discovery of what pleases us, while simultaneously having a heartfelt desire to please Him. He is for us in our discovery of what it means to walk out the truth for ourselves. It brings such freedom to know that it is okay to be different. When Mom and Dad celebrate and cultivate the process of discovery as to what the truth is for us to “walk” in, life becomes a joy instead of drudgery. And that’s what is on The Father’s heart too, right? That our joy may be full! Tom Hovsepian is the pastor of Church on the Mountain, a vibrant community of believers in Crowley Lake. We meet at 9:30 Sunday mornings. Call for more information: 935-4272 or www.ChurchOnTheMountain.org