Archive for November, 2009

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

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.

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?

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

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.

And for your viewing entertainment…

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.”