2009 Roundup

What a year! It was begun fighting cancer in southeast Arkansas, and it is ending with a healthy family in Virginia. We are humbled and amazed at all that has been done in and through our lives this past year.

Before I write an entry on looking forward, I wanted to look back. So I thought I’d sum up our year with 12 blog entries. Peruse them at your leisure! Happy new year!

• January: Chemo hero
• February: Spiritual centering
• March: Fun faith
• April: Rectal 2009
• May: NCourage and smallness
• June: Burned up or burned out?
• July: Increasing gratitude
• August: Sunday in Krakow
• September: Ode to Monticello
• October: An inglorious testimony
• November: The danger of marginalization
• December: Big weekend

Vote

I’d love to know which one you enjoyed the most. Vote here.

A birthday and an Eve

My best friend was born 39 years ago today.

It’s amazing to think we’ve been married for 17 years, but we’ve been friends since her freshman year in college. I was a senior when I first met her. I was working at Third Street Baptist Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas as their youth minister.

I needed someone to help me teach the youth girls on Sunday nights for discipleship while I focused on the guys. That impulse to divide the youth group by gender was one I’ve forever thanked the Lord for.

It was then that Carolyn agreed to help me – albeit with the warning that she would “never” date me. Apparently, she suspected my motivations were less than holy.

However, I had come to know that Caro was as beautiful spiritually as she was physically, and I was grateful when she agreed to help disciple and teach those young girls at our church.

Each Sunday evening after church we would wind up at the Wendy’s in Caddo Valley, discussing where our youth were spiritually and how we could encourage them in their growth. Those long conversations inevitably would meander to laughter and to deep discussions about life, dreams, and the heart.

Over the course of months, our hearts and common vision for life connected in a way that neither of us was prepared to acknowledge. Carolyn went home (New Mexico) after that spring semester, and it was in her absence that I realized (with some friends’ help) that I was genuinely melancholy.

It’s a long story from there (you can pick it up here if you’re bored), but the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say is that 17 years later, we are still laughing and having heart-to-hearts.

Her beauty is more alluring to me today than ever before. She has two ways of laughing – one is a charming and disarming giggle. The other is a raucous cackle that rattles the china. Her love for Christ and her simple way of serving others with hospitality, phone calls and gifts has been felt by so many. And our kids… wow. They are the direct beneficiaries of a mother who loves them without reservation.

So on this Christmas Eve, I wish my best friend a genuinely happy birthday. I love her.

Sledding in our backyard

It’s nice to have a sled run, with jumps, in our own backyard…

Random ruminations

ruminate |ˈroōməˌnāt|
verb [ intrans. ]
1 think deeply about something : we sat ruminating on the nature of existence.
2 (of a ruminant) chew the cud.

“Random Ruminations” may not necessarily be accurate because few of what you’ll see in this series will require deep thinking. However, it should make for some fun reading. I’ll be using it to post things I’ve seen and heard over a collection of days that caught my attention.

From Facebook:

Who you follow on Twitter has become “the bookshelf” of this time. Remember when you used to go to someone’s house and look at all the books they had on their bookcase so you would know what they were interested in? (Today it’s) Twitter followers. that’s where you see it now… (via Karen Erren)

From The Weather Channel App on my iPhone:

12/16/2009 -WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON FRIDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY… THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BLACKSBURG HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON FRIDAY TO 7 PM EST SATURDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT. * SNOW IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES FRIDAY NIGHT AND INTO SATURDAY. * TRAVEL WILL BECOME DIFFICULT IN THE WARNED AREA. VISIBILITIES WILL BE REDUCED. * STORM TOTAL SNOW AMOUNTS AROUND A FOOT ARE EXPECTED. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS… A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL…KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT… FOOD…AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

(I also posted the above as my Facebook status and got this comment from Shane Glass:

I never understood why weather announcements are in all caps. I mean, they could be urgent, requiring you to assimilate the information as quickly as possible, yet they type in all caps, which, of course, is harder to read. OMG WATCH OUT FOR THAT TORNADO YOU WOULDVE KNOWN ABOUT IF YOU DIDNT HAVE TO READ ALL CAPS. ***

And from Twitter:

Oooow. My son just made me stab my brain through my nose. I was doing a pinky pick when he jammed my elbow. (Yes, this was my update, and it received a bunch of responses both on Twitter and Facebook where I posted it. My wife and mom were horrified.)

Word with Friends

This iPhone app is my new addiction. Basically, you can play Scrabble with folks from all over. It only allows for two-person games right now, and I’d love to see the ability to play with more, but it’s awesome.

From Flickr

Adelyn was in The Nutcracker which performed at Burruss Hall at VT last week. This is a shot of her makeup prep. It was her third straight year to be in the production (her first here in VA). Go here for more Flickr shots.

How do you spell RELEASE?

You know the Rolaids commercials about “How do you spell RELIEF?” And they respond with “R-O-L-A-I-D-S?” Well…. last night I was preaching away in our second December Nights celebration at the BCM at Virginia Tech. It was packed. We had a special worship team in from Brentwood Church in Lynchburg led by Nic Carver. The stage was set for a momentous evening.

Until I reached my conclusion…

Let me back up a little.

We’ve focused our evenings around the Advent themes. Last night was about Peace, and the message was “Peace Follows Release.” We began by allowing Linus to read Luke 2 -our focal passage:

The interesting thing about that passage is how the King James Version says “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Most modern translations recognize that another alternate meaning is essentially “peace on earth to whom God is pleased.” In other words, God’s peace is conditional.

The angels weren’t pronouncing world peace at all, after all.

In fact, that little baby that they announced would later pronounce “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth…” (Matthew 10.34)

Was there a discrepancy between the promise of the angels and the mission of the Messiah?

That was the theme of the message. We looked at what Scripture describes as the person who pleases God. Hebrews 11.6 says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God…”

The apostle Paul says in Romans 5.1 that since we are “justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is the person of faith that pleases God, in other words. Peace on earth is promised to those who in faith believe and love the Lord with all their hearts, minds, strength and souls. Peace on earth is not an amorphous promise. It’s succinct. It’s specific. Peace is promised, yes, but only “among those with whom he is pleased.” (ESV)

Those who release their lives to Christ find peace from Him. It is only through faith – trusting God instead of ourselves or others (or our things) that we find release.

And here’s where the Rolaids analogy comes in.

I played with the word RELEASE in my conclusion. I rarely do this, and it’s cheesy, but I used each letter to represent what we should release to Jesus.

R – Relationships. As Jesus said in the Matthew 10.34 passage, we should not allow any earthly relationship to compare to our love for Him.

E – Expectations. All ______ (anger, frustration, worry, anxiety, etc.) is the result of unmet expectations. We need to release our expectations to the Lord.

L – Lesser Loves. Anything good that demands our attention, time and effort is still a lesser love when compared to Christ. We need to recognize them for what they are – idols – if they come between us and our allegiance to the Lord.

E – Ego. Our pride and our relentless commitment to ourselves needs to be released. James 4.10 urges us to “humble ourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

S – Stuff. I know it’s not sophisticated or eloquent. But we all let stuff interfere with our love for God. Our possessions, our time, our checkbooks, our financial goals. We must release these in order to discover the peace that comes from God.

E – Experiences. Whether it’s past successes or failures, fantastic heights or stunning hurts, we cannot allow our experiences to define our obedience. We must release them all before the Father.

There you have it… except for the “A.” The A was “Attitude. We cannot allow a skewed perspective or negative viewpoint to hinder us from following Christ in faith. Our attitude can dramatically alter our ability to enjoy God because it reveals we cherish our emotions more than our Messiah.”

However, last night, I just missed it in my notes. Completely.

Most folks didn’t catch it (or were gentle enough to overlook it). Others were quick to assume that was the Arkansas spelling of RELEASE. And they pointed that out with great glee.

Fortunately, the Lord used it anyway. (I hope and trust.)

It’s not really important that you can spell “release” in all actuality. It’s just crucial that you can do it.

Review: The Best American Short Stories 2005 (Hint: not worth the paper)

The Best American Short Stories 2005 (The Best American Series)

Big weekend

It was one of those weekends as a leader that you anticipate/dread with equal measures of enthusiasm and uncertainty. Our church had an opportunity to host the Glory in the Highest concert tour here in Blacksburg. After deliberation and an email survey, we jumped at it.

There were more than 900 folks at the concert Friday night, and we surpassed the break-even point. While it was never a financial-only perspective for me, I knew that there might be those in our church who would look at it that way, and I was grateful that those results might assuage any concern they had.

One person told me at the concert, “Congratulations on the success of this event.” The comment was made in reference, I perceived, to the amount of people in attendance. And the comment broke my heart in a way. Success at such an event is never measured in terms of numbers and attendance. Biblically, we can only view success as to whether God was glorified and honored in the context and whether we are faithful and obedient.

Jesus Christ was clearly painted as glorious, majestic and worthy of worship and honor from the stage by the artists, and because of that, I was deeply grateful to have been a part of the event. My prayer is that folks who attended, helped and prayed for the event were encouraged to discover that life’s ultimate joy rests in an authentic love relationship with the Father.

Snowy Saturday

We awoke Saturday a.m. to a thickening layer of snow on the ground. It snowed steadily most of the day, finally clearing up around 4-ish. It was simply beautiful, and my kids leapt out of bed, dressed with no sense of grogginess, and were outside in a few moments. If only they treated school days like that…

It was surreal and beautiful. Most of the snows we experienced in Arkansas came after December. One of our church members related that this snow “really didn’t count” as a significant snow. It was more of a dusting. (It was 3-4 inches!!). Man, are we unprepared! My toes have been icicles since last week when the temps started staying stubbornly in the 20s at night. I wore two pairs of socks to our worship service last night.

I had planned to avoid the snow play. However, after helplessly watching two different fathers on our street laboriously build Frostys, I was eventually guilted into creating our own version of a frozen snow human. Sam and I pelted one another with snowballs for a while before my one hand was frozen solid (I had on a nice mitten but couldn’t find its match so on the other hand, I was wearing a cotton glove I use for subzero scooter rides).

Carolyn was out shopping for most of the day, and when I learned she was returning, I told her to look for our snow creation. When she pulled up, she said, “It’s dead.” It had fallen over. Bummer.

Finally… December Nights

Now you see why this was a “Big Weekend.” Our church moved its worship services to the evenings during the month of December. We have creatively called this “December Nights.” It’s…

a wonderful, warm and inviting December of worship and celebration of Christ’s birth! There will be NO MORNING WORSHIP SERVICES during December; instead, we’ll be meeting each Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the BCM at VT for “December Nights.” This is a superb opportunity to invite friends, neighbors and coworkers for 1 hour of contagious joy involving worship and teaching! Come celebrate Christ with us in December!

We experimented with December Nights last year at Journey Church, and our congregation there loved the break in schedule and the ambience. This past Sunday evening was our first DN here. We met at 5:00, enjoyed some hot chocolate and cookies, and then we sent out a large group into the neighborhoods around Virginia Tech to sing Christmas carols.

They returned, frozen, but cheerful, and then we enjoyed a time of worship and teaching centered around the Advent theme of Hope. As folks exited back into the frigid night air, and we cleaned up the BCM, I was thankful for all that happened in a few days.

It was a big weekend.

Review: Crazy Love

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

My short synopsis is: “One of those simple but powerful books that challenges comfortable “Christianity.” Can being a Christian really be “comfortable?” Peaceful perhaps. But anything but comfortable.”

Review: Green

Green (The Circle, Book 0: The Beginning and the End)

ElfYourself 2009

Here’s our annual ElfYourself video. We’ve been practicing for months:

Watching the Billies vs. Bruins online!

What a difference a year makes

We woke early today to go eat Thanksgiving breakfast with the Cook family. That itself was wonderful, but in the grand perspective of things, it’s rather surreal.

Darrell and Laura have been great friends for a long time – since 1995 when Carolyn and I first arrived back in Arkansas for me to serve as a campus minister. Darrell was then at Arkansas State’s BCM, but he had served at the BCM at UAM before me. He has served the last 11+ years as the BCM Director at Virginia Tech, and he continues to love and disciple college students in a fantastic way.

Last year, having Thanksgiving breakfast with the Cooks would have been a non sequitur. While we have corresponded over the past 11 years, it’s only been occasional. But 2009 finds us in Virginia too, and breakfast with the Cooks is not far-fetched; rather, it’s convenient and comfortable. They live just down the street.

But the time between November 2008 and 2009 has been a long journey. It’s amazing the difference a year can make in our lives.

Last year, we were smack in the middle of health issues with Carolyn. If you’re a new reader, you can catch up on that in this series of entries. This year, we’re significantly outside our comfort and support zone, but we are experiencing God’s generous favor and goodness through renewed friendships, new friendships and the blessing of Christ through our new church in a new state.

We started Christmas decoration last night, and our day of Thanksgiving has included our time with the Cooks, a lovely lazy afternoon of football, napping, and the smell of turkey cooking. We’re also babysitting some friends’ cat, named Duke. His purring makes me a little jealous. That soft, steady noise is exactly what my soul would be doing if it could.

While we’re not without struggles and issues here, I am supremely grateful for my family, friends, and especially for the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. It’s a wonderful and humbling reality as a parent to know that your children have both given their hearts to Christ. It’s joyful as a husband to love and live with a wife who also loves the Lord and whose heart is devoted to Him.

I miss our Monticello friends and church family today. I miss my mom and dad and Little Rock family today. I wish you all well and pray for your gratitude in God to be overflowing. Eat a bunch and love the Lord hard today. He is good.

And for our new Virginia church family and friends… thank you for your gracious kindness and love. We are thankful and excited about the days ahead. But let’s take it one day at a time. This day is for Thanksgiving! We never know where we’ll be in a year.

The “withs” of approaching God

How do you come before the Lord? And, with what do you come before Him?

Psalm 100 is one of those magnificent and attention-altering passages of Scripture that beckon the reader out of temporal living.

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Know that the LORD is God.

It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. (NIV)

The Psalm urges you to approach the Lord with some attitudes and actions. We’re counseled to do so “with singing” and “with thanksgiving” and “with praise.” It is the picture of jubilant entry. Let us as His people – as “the sheep of His pasture” – not stumble or drag ourselves dejectedly or halfheartedly into His presence.

The New Testament gives us another thing to bring with us as we come before Him:

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4.16, ESV)

Our approach to God reveals our attitude towards Him. Do we view Him as a loving Savior and Gracious Redeemer? Or do we view Him as a Capricious Creator and a Demanding Deity?

It’s obvious that the attitude that we approach Him with reveals our experience (or lack of) with His love. Even when times are bad, we are to approach Him with joyful trust. James 1.2 give us countercultural advice: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…”

In truth, if we do not have a rejoicing heart towards Him and, we may not know Him. We may have only acquainted ourselves with a half-god that is no god – a figment, a fade, a little “g” god that disappoints, fails, and is unable to deliver. Our faulty approach may reveal that we’ve created a non-god out of all our disappointments  with ourselves, others, the church and life.

If you regularly come before god with anger, with doubt, with anxiety and with _________, look up for a minute and realize that there’s no God there. You’ve got the wrong equipment and attitude.

You want to approach the Living God? The God of Redemption? The God of Salvation in Jesus Christ? Come before Him with singing, thanksgiving, praise and confidence.

That’s not to say that He doesn’t dwell with the brokenhearted and the contrite. He does. We don’t have to put on a false face of forced happiness. Rather, we clothe ourselves with humility (1 Peter 5.6) and trust (Proverbs 3.5) and come before Him with a new attitude. His perspective and knowledge is far grander than our own.

How do you come before God?

Review: The Heavenly Man

The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun

Glory in the Highest Concert!

Invite your friends, and help us spread the word! You can buy tickets here.

The Danger of Marginalization

As a follower of Christ, I sense it all the time in conversations with others who a) are not a follower of Christ or b) are only a nominal Christian. It gets easier to detect the more contact you have with the person.

I usually notice it in the eyes. It’s a far-off look. A shift, a blink, a quick glance away. Sometimes I hear it in their voice or in their polite avoidance of topics of significance.

I’ve been marginalized.

You know what I’m talking about. It’s that feeling of being “labeled.” It can happen in any area of life for which you’re passionate. It’s how people deal with you. Heck, you do it to others. Typically, it’s how we relate with people that we may be a little uncomfortable with.

“He’s an Amway rep.” (or insert any other MLM company)

“She is a dog freak.”

“Uh-oh, here comes Mr. Granola. Don’t let him see the milk carton in your trash can.”

We label and compartmentalize people so that we can deal with them better. When we put them into a category, we marginalize them. When they’re marginalized, then their particular passion or interest has no effect on us. It’s been relegated to a file somewhere – to only be examined if we’re truly interested… later… if ever.

The problem with what we all do is that we miss out on truly relating with another person. And even if we’re not passionate about cloth diapers or homeschooling or pet adoption or the like, we can still relate and enjoy their part in the Grand Drama.

If everyone played the role I play, it would be a fantastic gig, but pretty short-lived, right? We desperately need to wide swath of colors, hues and views that other people’s passions paint on life’s canvas.

When we marginalize people, we force ourselves to see life in monotone.

Another danger in marginalization is that we may actually miss truth.

You see, when I sense that I’m being marginalized, it most often comes as a result of my joy in Jesus.

“Here comes the preacher…”

“He thinks he’s a real Christian…”

If Jeff Noble is being marginalized, that’s one thing. If the Gospel of Jesus Christ is marginalized, that’s an entirely other thing.

If you push truth to the side, if you relegate it to a mental file somewhere, if you stick it in a compartment… you essentially begin living half-life.

Even Jesus faced marginalization:

He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6.65-68)

That’s the danger of marginalization. If you relegate an important/truthful message to some mental or digital graveyard, your world suddenly becomes only what you make it to be. You will suddenly begin living a life and reality that only you define. If you push the magnificent to the margins, you’ll discover at some point that your life page is bland – or even worse, blank. And if you choose to live in the margins, you’ll be ignoring the content that lies between them.

Grumpy Muppets

And for your viewing entertainment…

Halloween fun

Yes, Virginia, there is a Halloween.

Not that we thought it was an exclusively Arkansas entertainment event…

We spent a relaxing, overcast day with college football, a neighborhood parade and activities for kids in costume and of course, trick or treating. Adelyn was a clown this year – and she dressed as one too. She borrowed one of our church member’s orange clown hair that he uses only for Clemson games. It was a quite an honor, we were informed.

This was the first year that Sam purposefully chose NOT to go trick or treating. He did buy a scary mask and sat on the front porch with the candy bowl in his hands, unmoving. It was rather entertaining to watch the kids hesitantly approach and anxiously attempt to peer through his eye-holes to determine whether he was a real person or not.

On occasion, he would yell, and a couple of times (one being when Adelyn and friends came to the door), he hid in the garage and then burst out to chase the screaming menagerie down the driveway. All in all, it was a pretty successful event. I define “successful” as whether the kids raked in enough candy for the parents to have some as well.

We carved four pumpkins this year – VT, Boo, a Razorback and a traditional jack o’lantern. Carolyn was pretty proud of them.

And speaking of proud, Caro was pretty proud of this shot. The colors this past week hit their peak. It’s been pretty breathtaking. You know we’ve pointed it out excessively when Adelyn said in the car once last week, “Don’t say anything or mom will start talking about the T-R-E-E-S.”

Review: The Toyota Way (rated 2 stars)

The Toyota Way Field Book

NRVHub to give $500 to local church

A new local news site – The NRVHub – is sponsoring a great competition. The local church that registers 100 users for their site by October 31 will receive $500! I’d like to humbly ask you to consider registering to help Northstar Church (or another local church if you’re a member there). You don’t have to be a member of Northstar to register. They made this clear in the following instructions:

Just go to the Hub (http://www.nrvhub.com) and go to the upper right hand column, where it says sign in or create log in; from here the user will be sent to a new page to create their profile. This is where they can type in the church affiliation. So far not one Church has reached 100 names. Gotta get there to get the $500!
Remember the user does not have to be a member of your church. It can be anybody that you ask to help you earn the $500………..

So spread the word. The $500 will be a great boost, and we’ll present to you some ways that it can be used specifically for kingdom purposes if Northstar should win it. Remember to put “Northstar Church” in the affiliation spot.

Thanks!