U-Turns is the third in a series of books that I have written. In Detours, we see how God goes around the block to get us where he wants us to be. Then, in Pathways, we see the trek that God took Esther on in his providence to save a people. So this is the third book in that trilogy. U-Turns shows people who are facing negative circumstances and consequences for past sins how God can take messes and turn them into miracles. God can hit a bull’s eye with a crooked stick, and he can reverse things that have negatively impacted us and still use it for our good and his glory. 

People do a U-turn when they discover they’re going in the wrong direction and need to go the other way. They have to turn around and reverse their direction. A need for reversal is where the concept of U-turn came from. 

We’re facing multiple pandemics—medical, relational, racial, social, judicial, political—one on top of another, and I believe that God has allowed this to get our attention, particularly the attention of the church. He’s calling the church to a reversal. He’s calling the culture to one, but that has to be led by the church because God won’t skip the church house to fix the White House. So, if we as God’s people can do a U-turn, then maybe we can will the culture, likewise, to turn to where it’s supposed to be. 

Yes, I’ve gone through a great series of losses in my own life with the loss of my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my sister’s husband, two nieces, my daughter’s mother-in-law—all of that has happened in a very brief period of time. And so, it has forced me to refocus on life’s priorities. In our ministry, we are looking at how to prioritize God’s work in light of COVID-19. So, I’m rethinking many things lately because of cultural and personal circumstances. 

Moses is a great person to study because he spends the first 40 years of his life living large. He makes a mistake, a miscalculation, and he spends the next 40 years of his life shepherding sheep. So he gets demoted due to a decision that he made. But through an encounter with a burning bush, God reuses him again to set his people free. 

So even though you’ve made bad decisions that have led to extended bad consequences, God still can show you a burning bush and still make use of your life. So, Moses’ story gives hope in the midst of crisis, failure and discontentment. 

Absolutely. I had in mind anybody who is experiencing negative repercussions from past decisions—and there’s hardly anybody alive who can’t identify with that to some degree. So, this book is for anyone, who, when you look back through the rear-view mirror, you wish you could have a do-over. You can’t have a do-over, but what you can do is see God meet you where you are and still make up the years the locusts ate (Joel 2:25). 

A lot of people were just so grateful that they found themselves in one of the topics. They found themselves in situations they regretted, and this let them know that if they’re still here and they’re still willing to follow God, there’s still hope for productivity, usefulness, forgiveness and reconciliation. Their past doesn’t have to determine their future. 

You can go a long way with hope. Hope is a joyful expectation about the future. So they got a lot of hope out of that sermon series, which the book is based upon. I got hope while I was preaching it, and they got hope while they were hearing it.

I hope that tears get dried up, regrets get refocused and failures get recalibrated. I hope that now they can see if they choose differently from now on, not only can they have a better tomorrow, but God also has a big enough eraser to stop the past from the way it controls, haunts and defines them. Far too many people have been defined by yesterday when God wants to take them to tomorrow. 

Anxiety. There’s a lot of anxiety. People are worried. They’re worried about their income; they’re worried about the division. They’re worried about their families, their children in school and the direction of the nation. So we’re being inundated with things to worry about. So, to be able to face these issues but not have to live in anxiety about them is significant.  

If you are looking for hope, you know someone who is or if you want your tomorrow to be better than your yesterday, your future to be better than your past or where you’re going to be better than where you came from, then this book will help you get there through whatever category that’s affecting you right now.