ElfYourself 2009
Here’s our annual ElfYourself video. We’ve been practicing for months:
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Watching the Billies vs. Bruins online!
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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.
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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?
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Review: The Heavenly Man
Even before I was able to read this dynamic account of Brother Yun’s life as a Chinese pastor and underground church leader, my book was persecuted. I found it on the floor one morning with the front cover partially ripped and chewed off – a victim of our dog.
The Heavenly Man will definitely challenge the Western Christian’s comfortable assertions of one’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.†So many American believers claim those rights that they forget they are found in a Declaration of Independence – not in the Word of God.
In fact, it should concern every Christ-follower that too many American churches equate democracy with Christianity and the tenets of capitalism with the teachings of Christ.
The dramatic experience and story of Brother Yun is one of torture, faith, persecution, and soaring victory. Yet it is a deeply disturbing one.
Yun is gracious in his comparisons of the faith life lived by Chinese believers and that lived by Christians who are not persecuted daily for their beliefs. However, you can’t help but marvel as you read page after page of accounts of healings, miracles, signs and visions and compare them to our own poverty of the same.
His perspective of the miraculous is powerful, as is his reflection on living in a country whose political system is defiantly opposed to the Gospel:
Once I spoke in the West and a Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom.†This is not what we pray! We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control of both our lives and the government we live under… God has used China’s government for His own purposes, moulding and shaping His children as He sees fit… We shouldn’t pray for a lighter load to carry but a stronger back to endure.
On the signs and wonders:
Many Christians have also asked me why miracles and signs are so prevalent in China, but not so evident in the West. In the West, you have so much. You have insurance for everything. In a way, you don’t need God… In China, the greatest miracles we see are not the healings or other things, but lives transformed by the Gospel. We believe we’re not called to follow signs and wonders but instead the signs and wonders follow us when the Gospel is preached. We don’t keep our eyes on the signs and wonders; we keep our eyes on Jesus.
I can’t recommend this book enough to those who are steeped in Western churchianity. If you’re offended by that term, “Western Churchianity, then you most definitely need to get a grip and understand that what too many embrace as Christianity is actually what Paul describes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.5 happens in the last times. It’s only dead religion – “a form of godliness but denying its power.â€
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3.1-5)
If you’re looking for a reading prescription to renew your perspective and allow your heart to drink deeply of God’s heart for the nations, I’d suggest the following books:
• From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, by Ruth Tucker
• Let the Nations Be Glad, by John Piper
• Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (if you can, find a Perspectives class and take it!)
• The Heavenly Man
What other books or resources are you familiar with that will be good electro-faith-shock therapy for a comfortable Christian?
I’d close with these words from Brother Yun, “I can assure the Western church with absolute certainty that you don’t need any more church buildings. Church buildings will never bring the revival you seek… The first thing that is needed for revival to return to your churches is the Word of the Lord.†God’s Word is missing. Sure, there are preachers and thousands of tapes and videos of Bible teaching, but so little contains the sharp truth of God’s Word. It’s truth that will set you free.â€
Note
Brother Yun’s fantastic account of the growth, persecution and ministry of the underground church in China has been attacked significantly by some claiming he is a charlatan. Here is an excellent response to their attacks.
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Glory in the Highest Concert!
Invite your friends, and help us spread the word! You can buy tickets here.
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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.
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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.”
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Review: The Toyota Way (rated 2 stars)
It’s not that I didn’t like The Toyota Way. On the contrary, the principles behind the Toyota Company’s process and philosophy are dynamic. This book, however, is drier than Corn Flakes.
I plowed through a full 50% of it before I finally set it down. The author was completely unengaging. It’s a shame to make the TPS (Toyota Production System) as boring as he successfully did. Because TPS is anything but boring.
Toyota’s revolutionary way of doing business has defined, and in some sense, is the model for lean manufacturing. For them, money is not the bottom line. Rather, making a lasting contribution to society is. That, and their people are the foundation of all they do and drive their ultimate decision making processes.
I took a lot away from the book – simply by skimming to get the dynamics and highlights of the material. In particular, we have even begun to implement some of the thoughts behind what is known as visual management by beginning a simple wipe erase board process in our church office. We had a friend and disciple of the TPS help our church staff implement the basics of it.
The Toyota Way as a book is a real snoozer. The Toyota Way is definitely not. Read the Cliff Notes or find another book on the business principles beside this one.
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About
Notes from the Trail
The Personal Blog of Jeff Noble
Info: From the misty hills of Virginia, "Notes from the Trail" seeks to encourage you on your journey. Written by a graphic designer-pastor, this blog is a blend of humor, insight, and faith discovery.
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RT @churchplant123: If you want to be a successful new church planter, shave your head. It's the Samson principle. [journeyguy]
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For a brief second, I had just over 500 followers. After blocking spammers and businesses, I'm back under. Do you filter your followers? [journeyguy]
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New blog post: Review: Sticky Teams: Larry Osborne is pastor of North Coast Church, a megachurch, by anyone’s de... http://t.co/KKL4zZFs [journeyguy]
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A blog from the past: "The need for church planting" http://t.co/iwlT5jOh [journeyguy]
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RT @funnyoneliners: I keep a well-stocked pantry in case friends drop by. I could hide in there for days. [journeyguy]
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