Tweetcloud

Here’s a nice graphic view of my recent tweets…

You can get one yourself here.

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Experiencing God

I’m currently studying Experiencing God for the 4th time. The first time I studied the discipleship course written by Henry Blackaby, I was in my early 20s and an all-knowing seminary student. I was on staff at First Baptist Church, Garland, Texas. Through the material, and as I began to seek how God was working around me, a series of events unfolded that led to a bedrock certainty that the God of Scriptures is alive, well, active, loving and deeply personal as He invited me into the adventure of listening for and following His leadership for the rest of my life.

Last month, I invited our church into a devotional journey/adventure with me. I’ve resisted making Experiencing God a programmed endeavor. Rather, I’ve simply offered to those in our church who “want to learn more about how to relate with God” to get a workbook and begin a 12-week discovery with me.

It’s been exciting in the past three weeks to hear stories of what God is teaching and how He is transforming long-held assumptions and expectations into new ways of joyful, faith-filled living. People are experiencing God rather than just going through a study.

Each time I’ve been through the material, I’m reminded of how simple, loving, and compelling a love relationship with God through Jesus Christ is. It continues to be a formative and influential study in my life. If you’ve not heard of it, I invite you, too, to grab a workbook and enter a 12-week adventure of turning from religion and to a relationship with God.

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Just do that thang

It’s time. You’ve flirted with the knowledge and sense of responsibility toward an idea for a long time now. The conviction you felt as white hot in that moment long ago has since cooled to ice-edged certainty. You know you need to. But you haven’t done it. You haven’t followed up, followed through or followed God on what He’s revealed or asked. You’re still sitting there in a frozen commitment to indecision.

And you won’t grow beyond where are now.

Not until you suck it up and just do that thang.

Go for it.

What God has placed on your heart and asked you to proceed with will not bless the world or you until you step out and step up.

And when you do.. we’d love to hear here what thang you did. We’ll celebrate here in the comments with you.

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Ode to OBU

It’s my 20th college reunion this October, and I’m pretty excited about returning to the metropolis of Arkadelphia, Arkansas. My days at Ouachita Baptist University were undoubtedly some of the most formative, fun, and forever-directing of my life.

I learned last week that in honor of OBU Founder’s Day, alumni are being asked to blog memories from college where they will be posted here.

So here goes…

I entered the halls of Daniel South with a hopeful optimism. I went potluck on my roommate, since no one I knew from Little Rock was starting OBU with me that fall in 1986. At my high school graduation, we had weepily sung “Friends Are Friends Forever” by Michael W. Smith. Little did I know that in just a few short months, I would be tight-rolling my jeans and dropping test tubes on the floor in chemistry lab.

It only took a few days to form four-year friendships. Andy Dean and Matt Smith were my suitemates from Germantown, Tennessee. Next door were Mitch Bettis a hometown Arkadelphia hero and Dennis Tucker, football-star-turned-preacher-boy from Fort Smith. Ken Gibson and John Turner lived across the hall and also called Arkadelphia home.

It was a rather inauspicious beginning for me. There was a “Mr. OBU” pageant which was before the days of political correctness. Essentially, the guys dressed up like girls and performed on stage. Memory is fuzzy as to why I found myself in the spotlight in Mitchell with large water balloons strapped around my neck with a shoe string doing aerobics, but thank God I didn’t win. I was first runner up.

Though the cast of characters would change some over the next four years, we stayed close. Mitch, Dennis, Matt and I pledged Kappa Chi that spring, while Andy, Ken and John went to the dark side and pledged Beta Beta Swing.

Silly jokes evolved into elaborate prank wars over the course of four years as we honed our skills on one another and learned hundreds of uses for balloons, survived countless crotch shots and developed healthy paranoia about where we left our car keys.

At some point in those early days hours, we all noticed that OBU had beautiful coeds. As an aside, I taught a Bible study last Monday night to a group of Virginia Tech students on sexuality and relationships. I summarized for them my dating experience in college like this: freshman and junior years were spent in wonderful year-long relationships. I ended one and got dumped in another. I’m still friends with both. However, sophomore and senior years were a whirl of semi-serious short relationships that ended amicably, combined with infamous “Coke dates.” Names will be withheld to protect the innocent. (Exes can sigh in relief and continue reading without trepidation.)

After my freshman year, I changed my major from a pre-med focus to communications and got cussed out for doing so by one of my science professors. I still remember the reception I received from Dr. Downs in the communications department that week. With a twinkle in his eye and what looked like a shrunken head on his desk, he informed me that his department was going to be demand my very best work (typo left in intentionally). He was and remains one of my very favorite professors of all time. If he told me to jump today, I would nod and ask “how high” without hesitation.

It was in the communications department during my sophomore year that Mitch and I developed a deep friendship. Mitch was annointed editor-to-be of the Ouachitonian yearbook, and when the department purchased a bunch of Macintosh computers, we were challenged to produce a “camera-ready” yearbook. As we sat down behind MacPluses with their little monochrome screens, it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Apple products.

My junior year was interrupted with heady business plans as Mitch and I created a graphic design agency called AdVantage Advertising. In a few short months, it was consuming our vision, and we moved from dorm rooms to the educational co-op to an empty top floor of an office building downtown. We continued a whirlwind schedule of classes, yearbook production, social activities, dating, church involvement (I was serving at Third Street Baptist at the time) fraternity (we called them social clubs at OBU) and business development. I’m amazed in reflection that I honestly don’t think we ever felt “stressed.” We had taken a huge bite out of life and were enjoying every single moment. Of course, our classmates and girlfriends probably have a different perspective.

It wasn’t until the end of my senior year that I invited a freshman student to help me with the youth group at Third Street. Carolyn Brooks had attracted my attention as a well-grounded, spiritually-vibrant girl who I hoped would teach the girls in the youth on Sunday nights while I taught the guys. She also suspected my motives. I was quickly informed that she would help, but that she was N-O-T interested in dating me.

Our relationship remained friendly throughout that year, but we became steadily closer in heart. Even while she condemned my Coke-date approach to social life, she maintained a joyful perspective on our friendship and continued to offer wisdom and occasional rebuke. It wasn’t until my May 1990 graduation and she returned to Hobbs, New Mexico that we began dating. I stayed in Arkadelphia for another year to work with Mitch before heading to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the summer of 1991.

Over the course of four years, I distinctly remember looking across the tables of friends at Walt’s and marveling over just how blessed I felt. Ah, Walt’s. It was there that we debated, had late-night pancake breakfasts (where I lip synced Nylons‘ songs with Mitch and Dennis in a choreographed group called The Goobers), tossed jello squares, and planned our futures.

There were professors that inspired and professors that perspired. We were family at OBU. The small post office in the bottom of the  student center wasn’t just a mundane stop. These were pre-email days, and those metal boxes were approached with hope and expectancy. The short dejection of an empty box was quickly replaced by the crowd of friends around you.

I remember…

• wrecking on Andy Dean’s motorcycle in the river bottoms below the student center
• pinching Andy Westmoreland on the butt in a crowd of dignitaries in his pre-presidential days and feigning innocence
• getting handcuffed to a rail at Frances Crawford during a Kappa serenade by my “brothers” and watching in dismay as several exes emerged to paint me with makeup
• Loving how “classless” OBU was – it was not unusual for any member of any class to hang out with others.
• Watching Operation Desert Storm on the TV until late at night in the Starlight Apartments.
• Bumping into then Governor Bill Clinton on a yearbook trip to New York City
• Doubting that CDs would ever succeed over cassette tapes
• Writing a weekly humor column for The Signal – and the one column that was censored and never saw the light of day
• Rarely missing Noonday in Berry Chapel but detesting the organized chapel experience
• Avoiding Tiger Tunes like the plague. I still don’t know how I got out of it.

OBU was and is magical. More so than the iPad. It was a place for training leaders and making friends. It was a place for self-discovery and spiritual challenge. It was there that my earlier preparation by family, school, and church met in blissful intersection. It was there that I was prepared for days ahead.

Those happy days contained our own versions of Fonzies, Ralph Malphs, Richies and Potsies. We dug deep into relationship and discovered community. We knew the value of looking at another’s face and reading books before Facebook seemed to cheapen both.

Thank you, Arkansas Baptists, for providing for these generations a small college by the Ouachita River. It’s meant the world to us all.

[Read Carolyn's reflections here. For more memories of OBU and a deeper look at the Noble's life since then, you can check out my series I wrote simply called Our Story.]

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Loving stops leaving

Don’t Go to Church; Be the Church.

Our church has embraced this slogan with a whole heart in the past year. We were grateful for the graphics at the Faith in Action website and adapted them for our use this past year. But it’s more than a slogan for us; it’s a mission.

The church – your church – was never meant to be a place. Your church is a people – and they include you. The church as described in the New Testament is a gathering of people who are growing in their love for God daily and who surrender their lives, vocations and goals to the will of God and His mission.

More importantly, discovering love in God cannot be self-contained and should not be marketed. It should be shared. The easiest way to share truth that requires life adjustment is through loving service.

That’s why we urge one another to be the church. Loving involvement with others provokes spiritual sensitivity. Love is amazing. It destroys barriers and uproots objections. Love in the face of a world that offers cheap substitutes transforms.

I have no statistics to throw out, but I’m convinced that people will rarely leave a loving church. If they do, there are much deeper issues at stake in them than in the church.

So, loving stops leaving… most of the time.

In short, we cannot love God and not love people. Loving people means getting involved, serving, helping, and yes, teaching them in the way that Jesus did.

Let’s recklessly love our neighbors AND our enemies and watch how God uses the power of His love through us to weaken resistance to Him and call folks to Himself.

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Taking a breath

At the end of July, I communicated to our church staff and membership that it was “all hands on deck” for August. It promised to be a hurricane of activity, and we needed everyone in place to serve. There are three college campuses and one medical school within 15 miles of us. The student population swells the the county by almost 45,000 students (undergrads and postgrads) each fall. As these students and families make their educational pilgrimage to the area, the opportunity for ministry is astounding.

Our August schedule was so marked up with fellowship opportunities, service projects, community and campus events that I think my iPhone got heavier every time I pulled up my calendar.

Yesterday at our staff meeting, I shared with an amazing group of people – both paid and volunteer – how proud and grateful I was to serve with them and the members of our church. We had our first Sunday with two services this past Sunday, and there were few glitches. More importantly, in the last two weeks, we’ve seen God (and it’s been all Him) bring over 200 new people to our church – students and families.

Now begins the joyfully hard work of ensuring that this new crowd becomes a congregration. It is our prayer and deep hope that we will be faithful and diligent to encourage every single person and family coming to our church to love and good deeds in Jesus Christ. (Hebrews 10:24)

A busy August is over. I’m grateful and humbled by the amazing things God has done. I want to enjoy this moment. Simultaneously, this time is also one of great spiritual urgency as we seek to encourage and equip the people God has sent us to be the church.

I plan to take a deep breath over the next few days, gaining perspective and seeking wisdom.  I’d appreciate your prayers for our staff and our church.

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