From Chaos to Calling: Finding God's Purpose in the Unknown

(audience chattering)
Tyler Cary: Good morning.
I know that today many of you will be blessed
by this man that's standing behind me.
Nolan has been one of my best friends for several years
and someone that I have been blessed to do life with.
Nolan is constant, faithful, humble, and determined
to spread the gospel wherever he goes.
Saint Francis of Assisi said, "Preach the gospel at all
times, if necessary, use words."
This quote reminds me so much of Nolan in the way
that he preaches the gospel with his life.
But today, I pray that you will listen to his
God-inspired words intently this morning.
Please help me welcome Nolan Maples.
Nolan Maples: Test, test. - All right.
Well, Tyler sure paints me in a good light.
I'm just me, my name is Nolan Maples.
I'm a junior here, I'm studying biblical text.
For the longest time, that was kind of the two basic things
I knew about a lot of people.
What's your name, what's your major, right?
Hoping to dig a little bit deeper than that today.
Another cool thing, my brother, Ethan, raise your hand.
Yeah, my brother also goes here, he's a senior.
But about two months ago, he and I were on a deer hunt
and we started having one of those really deep,
intimate conversations, it was probably 2 a.m.,
dumb decision, we need to be up in three hours, right?
But it was one of those conversations that we just
couldn't stop talking.
And one of the cool things that we talked about
was testimony, believe it or not.
And I said that there was a period in my life
where I kind of discredited my own testimony,
sticking to that cliche where I felt like
I had a boring testimony.
And over time, I've kind of realized that in believing that,
all I was doing was discrediting the beautiful blessings
that God has given me and also the ways that God
has been working in my life, right?
So I've kind of put some more thought into how God
wants me to speak about my own life today.
Just a little bit more info about me.
Growing up, there's probably three things
I was most involved in, right?
And that was scouts, swimming, and church.
I've always really connected with God through nature.
And so scouting for me was a huge outlet to connect
with God and always see his creation and his beauty.
I'm an Eagle Scout now and I've poured a ton
of my life into that.
For church, I always remember going on mission trips,
small groups, my parents would host small groups
at our house and we always had this vibrant community
going on.
But my family here is also, well, my whole family's here,
so that's great.
They've been loving me so well for so long
and through the church, they've been loving me
so well for so long.
My dad is also here connected at LCU.
He's the director of the counseling center
and for the longest time, it felt like I was bound
to go to LCU and really, that was kind of the last thing
that I wanted to do.
Well, like I said, I grew up in the church.
I can't really pinpoint a time where I felt like
I converted to Christianity or where I felt like
I was finally different than I was, right?
But I got baptized, I did all the things.
And it wasn't until probably midway through high school
that I felt like I started to falter in my walk with God.
I started to dive into things like alcohol and pornography
and these were battles that I faced for years
in high school, on and off with friends.
I remember losing friends and my parents,
just the look that they would give me.
But if it wasn't for them and the way that they love me,
I very well could be stuck in those things now,
even years later.
But one of the things I was involved in, swimming,
was a huge outlet for me to praise God and live life well.
I got really good at it.
I got a lot of offers to swim in college
and that would come to be the biggest decision
that I faced choosing if I wanted to pursue
a career in swimming or if I just wanted to go to college
and be a normal college student.
And there was a whole lot that went into deciding
if I wanted to do that, but I'm gonna talk to you
about what I'm calling a burning bush moment in my life.
So after my junior year of high school,
I went on a backpacking trip for two weeks
with a bunch of my friends.
And about 10 days into that backpacking trip,
we were gonna hit our last mountain peak.
And so we're going, walking up the mountain,
and before we get to the top, we drop our big packs
and grab our day packs so we don't have to do
the steep elevation with our huge packs.
And I just kinda wanna set the scene here.
The sun hasn't come up yet, the wind is still,
it's black, it's silent.
We're all just exhausted.
So we're trudging up in total darkness and silence.
No one's saying a word, you can just faintly hear
our breath as we're going up.
Well, the sun starts to shine and we come and hit the peak.
We sit down still in silence, but you can hear
God's creation start to chirp, the birds coming,
the wind has woken up as well.
Well, in that, as we're sitting there with creation
around us starting to wake and the sun painting the horizon,
I reach into my day pack, looking for breakfast, right?
But the first thing that my hand hits is a pocket Bible
that I had totally forgotten that I packed in that day pack.
Well, I flip open the pocket Bible to Psalm 150,
I read it aloud, and I say a few words
about the glory of God.
I can't even remember what I said.
But in that moment, with the glory of creation around me
and some of my best friends, it felt still.
But in that stillness, after I had read,
all I felt was God saying, "Yes, this is exactly
what you're meant to do."
That presence that I felt in that moment
was the tipping point of me wanting to pursue ministry.
That was like literal burning bush.
I was on a mountaintop and I felt God speaking to me,
"Yes, this is what you need to be doing."
And so, now I'm at LCU and I found myself here.
We're gonna fast forward basically to right now.
I work at the Methodist Church in Plainview.
I run their college ministry.
And I've gotten to preach and teach
in ways I would never have imagined even two years ago.
It's given me relationships deeper than I've ever had.
But in the past several years,
I have been plagued by anxiety.
I started having anxiety attacks sometime
in my freshman year of college.
And there were times when they were debilitating.
So after a while of just living with that,
I decided that's not how I wanted to be known
or who I wanted to be, right?
Because in those moments of just crippling anxiety,
I never felt more shame or more unworthiness of love.
I just felt out of control of myself.
So I started pursuing counseling
and I'm at the point where I feel a lot more peace
and knowledge about it.
But one of the things that was a big part of my anxiety
was dealing with unknown, not knowing what was next,
not knowing where I was,
or feeling like I knew who I was.
Not unknown in relationships, friendships,
failed relationships, stupid decisions,
looking back at who I was, not knowing where I was going.
In fact, I even got to give a sermon about that
in Plainview in September.
I called it "Living into the Unknown."
So I've just been pinpointing that in my life
a lot recently, but the biggest source of unknown
and chaos for my life was that last year,
the man that was my youth pastor got arrested.
He was charged with rape and sexual assault of many minors.
And for years that was happening
right in front of my face, right?
I had deep friendships with the people that he harmed.
And yet I had this image of a man who loved me so well
and was one of the reasons that I pursued ministry,
one of the reasons why I wanted to work in a church
and give back and speak and preach.
All I remember feeling in talking to some of these girls
that I was deep, close friends with years later,
all I remember feeling was just anger.
There was nothing else I knew how to feel,
just anger, confusion.
I was mad at God.
I was mad at God for letting him be in this position,
letting him take advantage of that.
And it began to creep into questioning
my own call to ministry.
How could I put myself forward into something like that
when that was my experience in the past
of people in ministry?
I've struggled with countless thoughts
on every side of that, and I'm still mad.
But again, with some slowness and some peace,
I have come to know without a doubt
that going into ministry and spreading love
is absolutely where God wants me to be,
more now than ever,
because I see people that use it to not spread love.
And I want to step over that and say,
no, God loves.
And so obviously I didn't share all of my testimony today
or go into all the gory details
of the tripping in my walk with God,
but I'm hoping what you heard
was God working through my life
in ways to heal and to love,
to guide and to correct,
and to bring life more fully.
And all the chaos and the horrible hurt
that the world brings,
God is loving and healing always.
So I'm glad to have shared with you today
and said yes to the Lord in giving my testimony.
I'm hoping that in the coming Mondays,
many of you will do the same.
You are dismissed.