On the wall behind my desk here at my home office is a very nicely matted and framed piece of parchment with these words printed on it:

Texas Christian University

 has conferred upon

 Timothy Mitchell Adams

 the degree of

Master of Divinity

together with all the honors and responsibilities pertaining thereto.

Awarded by the Board of Trustees

upon the recommendation of the faculty.

May 14, 1994, Fort Worth, Texas

Was that really thirteen years ago?

Yes, because right across the room from me as I write this is a thirteen year-old girl named Elizabeth Clara Adams sitting in front of her computer doing one of her last homework assignments of her seventh grade career.  She was four months old when TCU Chancellor Bill Tucker handed me that diploma. 

It really has been thirteen years since I finished seminary.

Where has the time gone?  What have I done with that time?

For a little over five of those years I was a pastor, which was sort of the whole reason I went to seminary in the first place.  Ministry was and is the only thing I’ve ever really been interested in and getting the “MDiv” was what they told me I had to do in order to be taken seriously.

But, please don’t misunderstand, I don’t regret going to seminary.  I don’t regret getting my seminary education at Brite Divinity School at TCU.  “Study to show yourself approved” was the counsel Paul gave to another Timothy nearly two thousand years ago and that’s what I did.

Before TCU I got a BA in Sociology from UT Arlington.  Before that there were three different Bible Colleges (that’s a long story) I attended right after high school.  Over a 20 year period (1979-1999) I served 6 different churches in various roles.  I always believed (and still believe) that God made me for one thing:

“Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”  II. Timothy 4:2

That got tattooed on my soul at an early age and the ink is indelible.  Being unable and unfit for nearly seven years to do that one thing for which I was made was the aching in my soul and emptiness in my heart that nearly killed me.

Nearly.

But God had other plans.

“There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.”  Philippians 1:6 (The Message)

There was a time (really several times) from 1999-2006 that I quit.  I gave up.  I told God that was it, I was through.  I gave it my best shot, I made every sacrifice I could, I played by the rules, I got an education -  I tried, I really, really tried - but it just didn’t work out.  I shook my fist toward heaven and I told God we were done.

But God kept at it.  “God's gifts and God's call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded” (Romans 11:29).  Another translation says it this way, “God doesn't take back the gifts he has given or forget about the people he has chosen.”

The God I believe in is a tenacious God.  He doesn’t give up on me or you.  Thank God.

In January I incorporated a new outreach and gave it the name Corriente Ministries.  On April 6 I left my job of the past three years because Corriente had grown so much that I had to make a choice – either walk through this open door or stay where I was.  Rather than walk I chose to run.  And I haven’t looked back.

Today I took on another ministry position (in addition to Corriente) at the church we attend.  It’s “part time.”  But I’ve got some lost time to make up for, so nothing can ever be part time. 

By the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ I’m back - doing what he made me to do, what he called me to do, what the good people at TCU trained me to do.

I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in another 13 years.

Jesus, thank you for not giving up on me, even when I gave up on both of us.  Help everyone who reads this to understand that you haven’t given up on them either.  Amen.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the passing of my friend Dwight Ozard.  Some of you were, like me, blessed and challenged by Dwight’s passion, truth-telling and gifted writing.  If you’ve never heard of Dwight I want to strongly urge you to get to know him through his website http://www.dwightozard.com  - especially his cancer journal, which chronicles his four year and seven month battle with multiple myeloma, which eventually took his life.

It was through Dwight’s writing that I first got to know him.  Following the March 1997 release of U2’s album Pop a friend of mine sent me a review of the disc written by Dwight for Prism Magazine, which he served as editor from 1994-1998.

There weren’t very many evangelicals thinking much less writing about the spiritual dimension in U2’s music in 1997 – most were convinced that they had turned their backs on their faith and God.  So when I read Dwight’s review I knew I had to get in touch with this guy.

I found Dwight at the offices of Evangelicals for Social Action (the parent organization for Prism) and he was more than willing to talk to a total stranger from Kansas (I was pastoring a church in Wichita at the time).  That conversation started a friendship that always included discussions about Bono and the boys and how the church, especially evangelicals, just didn’t “get it.”

But, Dwight wasn’t just a critic of evangelical Christianity.  If you go to his website you’ll see that he had an e-zine called Lover’s Quarrel.  Dwight challenged and critiqued the church because he had a deep and abiding love for Jesus and his church.  And he led by example.

Following his six-year stint at ESA/Prism Dwight took the position of Director of Public Affairs for Habitat for Humanity where he worked with various artists and celebrities to promote Habitat’s work.  Habitat is a household word today thanks in part to Dwight.

In 2000 Tony Campolo asked Dwight to come back to Philadelphia to assume a large part of the responsibilities at EAPE (Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education).  The position with EAPE wasn’t just another job; He was being mentored by Tony to take over at EAPE.  His whole life, with all of his incredible gifting and wisdom well beyond his years, was right there in front of him.

On April 1, 2001 a good friend of mine and I drove to Houston to meet up with his brother and another friend (these guys were all in my youth group 20 years ago) to go to the U2 concert the following night at what was then called The Compaq Center.  As we settled into our hotel room I checked my email and saw a message from Dwight.

He’d been experiencing severe back pain and had gone to the doctor to determine its source.  The expected diagnosis of a slipped disc was replaced by those two words no one expected – multiple myeloma.  As I read and re-read the message I looked at the list of other recipients – some very recognizable names from the ranks of national evangelical leaders and contemporary Christian musicians.  I knew they represented 1000’s of other believers and that Dwight would have a large army of people praying and pulling for him.

Over the next four years and seven months Dwight endured a bone marrow transplant, several rounds of chemo and assorted experimental treatments.  Even though I knew his prognosis was extremely grim I always thought he was going to beat MM.  How could God take someone like Dwight when he was on the verge of a ministry that had so much possibility and promise?  Why would God invest so much in this one life and then end it so prematurely?

I’m still asking those questions.

I recall a phone conversation I had with Dwight about a year before he passed.  I had called to check on him but he always had a way of turning the conversation toward the needs of others.  I was going through a really rough stretch of frustration in my own life at that time and we ended up spending about a half hour talking about ways to work through that.

The next day I sent him an email and apologized for thinking that my problems could in any way compare to what he was going through.  I felt like a first class jerk for spending half an hour complaining about my life to a guy with terminal cancer.

In a way that was uniquely Dwight, he wrote back and said something like, “Everyone has their “stuff” (OK, he didn’t say “stuff.” Dwight often had a very salty yet refreshing way of putting things).  Right now, cancer is my “stuff” and yours is a career that’s not living up to your expectations or calling.  This is just the “stuff” we’ve been served and we’ve got to find a way to get through it.”

The last time I talked to Dwight was about 10 days before he died.  When I called he apologized profusely for being too sick to talk for more than a few minutes.  I told him not to worry, to get some rest and we could catch up later.  He followed that up with a brief email promising to talk soon.  On November 14 of last year I got the email from Dwight’s wife Sheri telling everyone he was gone.

A few days later I got another email from Sheri.  The first time she drove Dwight’s car after he passed she turned on the CD player.  Of course, he had been listening to U2.

Getting to know Dwight and being counted as one of his friends was sacramental – a means of grace – because God used him, in good health and bad, to challenge my thinking, strengthen my faith and see a vision of the bigger picture that is God’s kingdom.  Every email he sent me in the eight years I knew him ended the same way – “Grace, Peace and Dirty Fingernails” –  which was Dwight’s way of saying get up and get to work.

My challenge to each of you is to follow the links I’ve provided and get to know Dwight Ozard.

By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.      Hebrews 11:4 (NIV)

Grace, Peace and Dirty Fingernails,

Tim Adams

tim@timadams.net

Over the past few months I’ve noticed people being nicer to me.

It’s not as if I was the victim of any sort of cruel and unusual punishment or ridicule (at least not to my face) before I started losing weight, but I can discern a noticeable difference in how people react to my presence.

Several weeks ago I took my kids to the grocery store.  As we were going through the checkout line I noticed the cashier, who wasn’t bad looking, acting more friendly than usual.  She even sort of patted my hand, smiled very brightly and made deep eye contact as she gave me my receipt.  As we walked out of the store and through the parking lot to our car, the thought struck me, “Was that girl flirting with me?”

Yeah right, every middle-aged guy thinks/hopes an attractive twenty-something female will flirt with him.

Maybe I was just the victim of an over-active imagination or ego.  Perhaps that’s how that young lady interacts with all her customers.  Whichever is the case I do know this: People see and treat me differently now than they did eight month ago.

I’m not complaining.  Everyone wants to be treated with dignity and respect.  Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.  And in a perfect world we all would be.

But we don’t live in that world.  (The sooner you come to terms with that the better off you’ll be.)

In this imperfect world obesity may be the most obvious yet unmentioned form of communication that is nonverbal.  Without saying a word or showing anyone your resume, being fat communicates to people that you don’t have any discipline, you’re lazy, you’ve let yourself go and you don’t care.

Whether or not any of that is true or kind is not the issue.  Whether or not people who think those thoughts are wrong to think those thoughts isn’t going to stop those thoughts from crossing their minds.  If you’re fat that’s what people think and they will treat you accordingly.

That sounds harsh, judgmental, cruel and mean – but that’s the way it is.

So, what are you going to do about it?

First of all, you’re not going to change anyone’s mind.  You’re not going to shame anyone into thinking any differently about you until you lose weight.  In this imperfect world that we live in you will be marginalized if you are obese.

Now, I’m not suggesting that conformity to society’s norms is the path to happiness for obese people or any other group that has been marginalized from the mainstream.  As a Christian I firmly believe that much of the call to follow Jesus is a call to go against the flow, to follow a path that is often countercultural and even counterintuitive.

There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that our society’s ideal body type, especially for women, can be destructive and unrealistic.  God bless any woman who has or is struggling with an eating disorder.

So your answer to the question, “What are you going to do about it?” isn’t an invitation to lose weight or change any other self-destructive habit for the sake of fitting in.  I have this yet unproven theory of adult behavior that says we’re all still in high school – that adults still gravitate toward groups and treat people based on the mental template for social interaction most of us were given in adolescence – jocks, socials, freaks, geeks, etc., with the implied pecking order.  But there’s a lot more at stake here than being part of the in crowd at work, in your neighborhood or at church.

Most importantly, this is an issue of your physical health, of your quality of life and the length of that life on the planet.  If you are obese you are diminishing the quality of your life in ways that you are not even aware of and will not be aware of until you drop the weight.  I’m still a work in progress but I’m here to testify that life is better – so, so much better at 250 lbs. than it was at 365 lbs.

But my losing weight isn’t an exercise in narcissism.  It has improved the lives of my wife and kids.  Friends constantly tell me that I’m inspiring and challenging them.  Through this blog word is getting out to people I’ve never met and now they’re telling me that my journey is making a difference for them.

If you’ll lose weight there is a circle of influence you’ll have that will go way beyond the size of your waist.  You’ll have a lot more to give if you’ll just start losing.

So, I have to ask again, “What are you going to do about it?”  Will you play the role of the victim in an attempt to take the moral high ground against people who stereotype you because of your weight?  You may indeed capture that moral high ground but you may also be buried there because you died 20 years sooner than you should have.

You can’t kick the darkness and expect it to bleed daylight.  Regaining your health by losing weight or changing other self-destructive habits is much more satisfying than any sort of moral victory.  So quit trying to change people’s prejudices and change yourself instead.

You and the people you love will be much happier if you do.

Tim Adams

tim@timadams.net

Most of you probably recognize the title of this entry as the title of a U2 song.  From the first time I heard it nearly 20 years ago, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For has struck a deep and vibrant cord in my soul.  It’s been part of the soundtrack of my life.  But so has most of U2’s catalog.

I can already see many of you rolling your eyes at those last two sentences.

What always struck me as strange about how many Christians responded to this song was that many of them considered it to be borderline blasphemy.

How can Bono call himself a Christian and say he hasn’t found what he’s looking for? Was the commonly asked question.

How can you call yourself a Christian and say you have?  Was usually my quasi-obnoxious answer.

Since my early 20’s I’ve been an odd duck among my evangelical brethren in this regard.  The party line among us born-agains is that “Christ is the Answer” – which inappropriately implies that you shouldn’t ask any more questions.

That short sighted-thinking exists on an intellectual and spiritual level.  Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is recommended reading for understanding the anti-intellectual bias that persists among us born-again Christians.

One of the best statements I’ve ever read about our lack of spiritual quest-ioning is found in A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God.  In the opening sentences of his classic Tozer tells us that when we put our faith and trust in Jesus “It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.  That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.”

Tozer continues, “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.”

“Children of the burning heart.”  When was the last time you looked around the room during Sunday morning worship and that phrase came to mind?

The Apostle Paul said it this way:

I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize. My friends, I don't feel that I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead. I run toward the goal, so that I can win the prize of being called to heaven. This is the prize that God offers because of what Christ Jesus has done. All of us who are mature should think in this same way. And if any of you think differently, God will make it clear to you. But we must keep going in the direction that we are now headed.

                                                                                                Philippians 3:12-15 CEV

No matter where you are in your journey, there is always an element of “not yet.”  We will always be incomplete in this life.  Which is why we have to keep going, growing and, please don’t stone me for saying this – evolving!

But if we don’t hold our spiritual and intellectual lives in complementary tension we’ll never make the progress God desires for us.  Any overly spiritualized faith collapses into an ineffectual piety and an overly intellectualized faith eventually becomes wooden and hollow.

When I look back over the past few years of my life, I can see a direct correlation between the near-stagnation in the intellectual and spiritual development of my faith and the near-fatal amount of weight I gained.  Just as your intellect and your spirit do not exist in isolation of each other your physical well-being is also an essential part of being a whole and holy person before God.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone who’s in shape physically is in shape spiritually - the relationship is much more complicated than that.  What I am trying to challenge you to think about and hopefully act on are the symptoms of your own intellectual and spiritual stagnation.

My symptoms were obvious to anyone who saw me - I was 5’6” x 6’.  I’d always wanted to be a six-footer, but I never thought it would be in width! 

I confess that I was fat because I was using Papa John’s, Ben & Jerry’s and Shiner Bock to ease the pain of my disconnected relationship with God.  That isn’t self-loathing, it’s truth telling.  And the truth will set you free.

Since March 6 I’ve been getting back on track.  I’m doing better and feeling better than I have in years.  I have a sense of hope and excitement about the future that is intoxicating.  But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I hope you haven’t either.

One Sunday morning several years ago I made a statement during my sermon that offended a woman in the congregation.  OK, I’ll admit, I said something just about every Sunday that offended someone, so it wasn’t exactly unusual – but this particular incident has some relevance to what I want to write about tonight.

This woman took offense that I said one of the ways the Bible is true is that the Bible is like life – it has good, evil, drama, intrigue, suffering, triumph  - and sometimes it’s just plain boring – just like life.  Have you ever read those long lists in the Chronicles?  Or all those begats in Genesis?  Or all those dietary laws in Leviticus?

Now I’ve probably just offended some of you.  So let me explain myself.

Trusting and following Jesus isn’t what it’s advertised to be on TV.  Being a Christian isn’t always your best life now or the power of positive thinking or possibility thinking or being purpose driven.  There are going to be what A.W. Tozer called “dry spells” – times when God doesn’t seem as near and your distance from him doesn’t seem to have any apparent explanation.

Of course, dry spells can be of our own doing – sin and disobedience are always a fast ticket to the wilderness.  But there’s always enough grace and goodness in God’s heart to get us back on track if we’re willing to repent.  A time of renewal is often when God seems especially near.

But the sort of dry spell I’m thinking of is a little less dramatic.  Let’s face it, we’re going to hit spiritual dry spells and get bored.  How we deal with those times will ultimately determine if we grow or digress spiritually.  There’s no such thing as sitting still.

I think God put some of that boring stuff in the Bible just to see if we can get through it.  Seeking or sensing a connection to God when we’re in trouble or on top of the world is expected if you’re a person of faith.  But when the spiritual path becomes routine, when we start to see rules rather than a relationship, when we’re mailing it in and just going through the motions – that’s when we’re most likely to quit.

Moments or seasons of trial or triumph are not the ordinary stuff of life.  I think 98% of us spend 98% of our time somewhere in between.  That’s why dry spells can be dangerous.  Boredom is the mother of apathy.  That’s true in your relationship with God just as it’s true in your relationships with your spouse, children and friends.

Maybe I’m thinking and writing about this because I’ve hit a plateau in my quest to lose weight.  I’ve only lost about six lbs. this month.  That’s the least amount of weight I’ve lost in a month since I started this journey – I actually averaged 23 lbs. a month for my first three months!

So, should I be alarmed?  Am I afraid of backsliding and going back to my old ways?

Absolutely not.

If you’ve read any of the diet plans I’ve mentioned before – Atkins, South Beach, The Zone, etc. – you know that most of them talk about the reality of plateaus. 

When I lost 69 lbs. in my first three months of this journey I knew I wouldn’t and shouldn’t keep losing weight at that pace – it would have been impractical and unhealthy.

Seven months ago I would have had serious doubts that I could stick with this long enough to even have to worry about plateaus.  Which is why reaching one feels sort of cool – it actually represents a milestone.

If I wouldn’t have stayed on track for this long I never would have reached a plateau.  My plateau is actually a sign of my progress.

If you’re at a plateau or in a dry spell right now – in your career, your marriage, your walk with Jesus – don’t despair and don’t quit.

The fact that you’re aware of your dry spell means you’re paying attention, which puts you in a fairly high percentile on the Spiritual Aptitude Test.  If you need to make some corrections, seek some forgiveness or mend some fences – What are you waiting for?

When God gets your attention you realize you always have his.  I’m praying for rain.