Noah's Facebook Wall

Noah
Day 1:  God shut the door to the ark.  Feels like I forgot something.  Oh well, too late now.
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Noah
Day 2:  Remembered what I forgot--toothbrush and deodorant.  Eh, it's just family, right?
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Noah
Day 3:  Someone came knocking today.  Thought we were a preschool & daycare.
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Noah
Day 5:  Sitting and waiting.  Quite relaxing, actually.  Should have done this years ago!
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Noah 
Day 7:  Sounds like someone pouring water onto the roof.  Weird.
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Noah 
Day 8:  A lot of screaming and mayhem going on outside.  So thankful to be in the ark!

Noah’s Wife and 6 others like this
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Noah 
Day 19:  Nothing like lying in bed listening to the sound of rain outside.  Don’t wanna get up!
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Noah
Day 47:  The rain stopped.  Now I can’t sleep.

Noah's Wife  Now I can sleep.  You don’t snore when you’re awake.                   
Japheth  Got a song on my heart today:  “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone!” 
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Noah
Day 72:  Caught Ham’s wife trying to light a match in the elephant room.  We really dodged a bullet today!

Ham's Wife  “Flammable” and “Explosive” are so not the same thing.  You need to change your sign! 
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Noah
Day 157:  Feels like we’ve run aground.  Door still closed, though.
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Noah
Day 269:  The crew seems to be suffering from cabin fever.

Ham's Wife  Well, yah.  You won’t even open the window!
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Noah
Day 270:  Opened the window today.

Ham's Wife  Should have done that, like, weeks ago!
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Noah
Day 271:  Doing a little experiment with a raven and a dove.  The wife doesn’t get it.

Noah's Wife  You’re the one who doesn’t get it.
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Noah
Day 272:  The dove came back.

Noah's Wife  You see?  I told you a dove would never mate with a raven!
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Noah
Day 273:  Curious.  Ever since I opened the window, the dogs have had their heads hanging out.
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Noah
Day 320:  Celebrated my 600th birthday! Kids gave me a parrot that’s been next to the roosters, so it crows.  However, unlike roosters, it doesn’t wait until morning to crow. Thinking of trading it for a rabbit or hamster.  Or a rooster.
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Noah
Day 377:  God opened the door.  In the scramble to get out, one of the winged unicorns was trampled to death, leaving the last surviving female with no mate.  So sad.
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Noah
So beautiful!  Thank you, God, for your promise!

 Profile Picture
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Noah planted a vineyard in FarmVille!
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Noah
Just signed a deal for a new reality show, "Big Brother: Ark Edition!"  I'm going to become a household name!

Celebrity God

Celebrity:  (n) a celebrated person

There are probably more celebrities in society right now than have ever been at one time.  An increasing number of ‘nobodies’ are becoming household names seemingly overnight.  Casually dropping one of these names into a conversation will almost certainly get a reaction, sometimes even drawing strong emotional responses from those in the room.  

These celebrities are instantly recognizable to their fans who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know and so much more about their favorites, naming every title an actor has played in, and probably quoting their lines to you; naming all the albums an artist had released, and probably singing the lyrics to all their songs; listing endless stats on sports heroes.  Oftentimes, they even know details of their past and personal lives.

But in spite of a fan knowing a celebrity so well, they oddly never go out for coffee together or send each other text messages.  Why?  Because they don’t actually know them.  They just know a lot about them.  They’re fans, not friends.

When I was growing up, the song “Jesus Fan” was quite popular.  It seems we’ve created a lot of Jesus fans since then.  They love to come to church and celebrate Jesus.  They often clap harder, sing louder and praise with greater exuberance than most others present.  They can tell you anything you want to know about the life and ministry of Jesus.  Many of them can quote scripture better than I can, and I’m a former Bible quizzer and Bible college graduate.  Yet, because they are just fans, they don’t actually know Jesus.  He’s just their favorite celebrity.

Many of them are even in the ministry.  We read about them in Matthew 7:21-23 (KJV):

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

So “wonderful works” is not an indicator of one’s spiritual condition.  Similarly, working for the Lord doesn’t make you a friend of God anymore than being a government employee makes you pals with your head of state.  You can busy yourself with church maintenance, groundskeeping, bookkeeping, outreach, etc., etc., but if you never take time to acquaint yourself with the one you’re working for, you’ve missed the point.  

Enter Proverbs 3:6 (NKJV): In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

The word “acknowledge” in this verse is translated from the Hebrew word, “yada,” meaning “to know.”  As a matter of fact, this word is used dozens of time in scripture and is almost always translated into our English translations as “know.” So a better translation of Proverbs 3:6 might be:

In all your ways know Him, and He shall direct your paths.

When I go to the store, if I decide to buy something for my wife, I don’t need to call her mother to ask what she likes.  I know my wife likes Mars bars and roses.  I know her favorite color is pink.  I know she doesn’t drink soda pop, but she likes Kiwi-Strawberry Vitamin Water.  My knowledge of her directs my path in choosing what to purchase.

Back when WWJD was at its peak, church kids everywhere wore WWJD hats, T-shirts, arm bands, etc.  The idea was that when they found themselves facing a difficult decision, they would ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”  Unfortunately, many of them couldn’t answer that question.  They had no idea what Jesus would do in that situation, because they didn’t know him well enough to say.

So how do you get to know Him?  The same way you get to know anyone, by spending time with them.  I once heard C.B. Dudley say, “You don’t fall in love, you learn to love.”  It’s a process requires your time.  As you spend time talking to God in prayer and allowing Him to speak to you through His Word and by His Spirit, a relationship develops.  

Exodus 33:11 says, “So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.” (NKJV)

I wish every young minister could get ahold of this verse.  The young man, Joshua, has the amazing privilege of job shadowing Moses.  What young man wouldn’t want that gig?  You would think Joshua would spend every moment he could with his mentor.  But when Moses left the tabernacle, Joshua didn’t follow.  He remained in the presence of the Lord.  He understood who he really needed to know.

When I was in Bible College, we would occasionally get a visit from a representative from headquarters in St. Louis.  While there, they would usually speak to the student body in chapel service.  However, they usually had just enough time to preach and give an altar call before rushing out the door to catch a flight.

Without exception, he would be accosted by the same contingent of starry-eyed young men hoping to impress him with their flattery, and hoping that he would remember them, giving them a vital contact for future use.  Perhaps they even thought that by rubbing shoulders with a great man of God, maybe some of his anointing might rub off on them.  Most of them are not even in the ministry today, some of them not even serving the Lord.

But the ones who chose rather to seek God in the altar and draw closer to Him, they are the ones who went on to do great things in ministry.

The more you get to know Him, the more you love Him.  The more you love Him, the more you want to please Him.

One year, I was the children’s evangelist at Bannon Camp in New Brunswick.  While walking across the campgrounds one day, I noticed several boys rolling up a hill.  This struck me as odd, because in my childhood memories, it was more fun (and much less work) to roll down a hill than up it.  Nevertheless, up the hill they rolled.  When they reached the top, they came and stood proud as peacocks in front of a girl.  

By this time, I was close enough to hear what was being said.  She looked at them intently and then said, “Okay, now, if you like me, roll in the dirt!”  And boy, did they.  Dust flew everywhere as they all competed to see who could get the dirtiest.  They didn’t care how ridiculous they looked.  They didn’t care what anybody else thought, because all they wanted to do was please that girl who said, “If you like me, roll in the dirt.”

Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:5), yet so many struggle with doing so because they’re afraid of what others might think of them.  They’re less concerned with pleasing Him and more concerned with pleasing themselves or others.  They don’t know Him.  It would be easy if they truly knew Him.

I John 2:4 says, “If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.” (NLT)

And Jesus said in John 8:31-32 (NLT) “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (NLT)

Don’t just celebrate Him.  Know Him.  He’s coming back for them that know Him, not for His fan club!

Pseudoanointed Preaching

An acquaintance once told me about a sermon he preached for homiletics class when he was in Bible school.  He used no scriptures and made no reference to God, salvation or eternity.  He simply recited the alphabet.  However, as he progressed, he named each letter with more conviction in his voice and increasing enthusiasm in his demonstrativeness.  By the time he had reached the final letters of the alphabet, his classmates were on their feet, clapping and shouting.  He concluded his sermon with the statement, “It’s not what you say; It’s how you say it.”  The class instructor gave him an A (no pun intended).

This story puts a knot in my stomach, because I have seen this scenario play out in actual church services, where the sermon content had value not much greater than that of the alphabet, but because he delivered it with such charisma, people walked away talking about how anointed the preaching was.  I wondered if they even knew what they were so excited about.

I’ve also been in services where the minister taught profound and life-changing truths, but because he lacked charisma in his delivery, people felt the service was dead.  It makes me wonder what kind of an experience Bible reading is for these same people. Do they get excited about words sitting silently on a page, or do they require it to be read aloud with fervor for it to resonate with them?

It seems we have raised a generation who cannot distinguish anointing from emotion.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying the two are mutually exclusive.  Anointed preaching is often very emotional.  What I am saying is that they are not interdependent.  

Another popular modern method used to enhance “anointing” is rhyming.  The more consecutive sentences ending with “ation” you can throw into a sermon, the greater response you will get from the amen corner.  If these sermons were preached through an interpreter in a global missions setting, would the anointing get lost in translation?

Whatever happened to the days when we got more excited about WHAT the Word said regardless of HOW it was said?  Is our attention span so short that we cannot sit through a sermon that isn’t dominated by showmanship?  Are we so influenced by a society that demands over-the-top entertainment that we expect nothing less from our apostolic preachers?  

I’m not discounting creative presentation, not at all, but I wonder if we have become more concerned with the packaging than the actual contents.

Despite my ranting, I am hopeful.  It seems the next generation has a hunger for the old ways.  They’re not content with the status quo.  

I follow a number of them on Twitter.  Unlike their predecessors, their tweets are not always clever.  Often it’s just a scripture verse, no commentary, just the Word.  Perhaps it’s something they read that morning that really spoke to them.  Whatever they case, they felt it could stand alone.  It didn’t need help to be powerful and relevant.  It is this love for the Word that will compel them to affect their world in ways not seen in recent history.  

Pentecostal pep rallies can get us excited about church for a few days or even weeks, but it’s the Word of God that elicits lasting life changes that sustain us when the superficial wears off.  “Preach the word” (II Timothy 4:2).

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

I’d like to share with you an event that happened to a real-life couple.  This couple was well-respected in their community.  They were independently wealthy.  They had a large family by today’s standards, 10 children to be exact.  God had blessed them abundantly.  But their world was turned upside-down seemingly overnight.

In a freak accident, all 10 of their children, who had come together for a social event, were tragically killed at once.  Then, due to unforeseen circumstances, this couple lost all of their wealth in a single day.  As if this wasn’t enough, his health began to fail.

Now the point I want to make here is that although this husband and wife both experienced these same life events together, their responses to these events were very different from one another.

The wife responded by suggesting to her husband that he curse God and die.  But Job’s response was, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

We all experience trials and tragedies in our lives.  In this respect, we are all the same.  The differences lie in our individual responses to these events.  Those who focus on their circumstances...well, their emotions tend to fluctuate in sync with said circumstances.  But others recognize that while their circumstances may have changed, God has not.  He’s just as good now as he was before, and this is their focus.

Now I’m not suggesting we should somehow be impervious to emotion.  We’re still human.  It’s natural to feel like the writer of Psalm 42:9 when he wrote, “I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”  We all ask “Why?” at one time or another.  

Even Job asked, “Why?”  But if you read through the entire book of Job, nowhere does God ever answer that question.  Job simply had to trust God.  His own words were, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15).

“Trust in God.”  We all say it, usually while giving advice to someone else.  But it can be very difficult to put it into practice in our own lives.  We all want to have the victory, but many often forget that all victories are preceded by battles.  If you want to see a rainbow, you might have to get wet first.  If you want to see a sunrise, you may have to wait through a dark time.  To experience God’s healing power, you may have to first experience some pain.  

Possibly the greatest example of trust in scripture is found in Daniel 3:16-18: 

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed–nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

Notice that they believed God was able to perform a miracle in their situation, but their decision wasn’t contingent upon that miracle actually taking place.  Their unconditional trust in God is encapsulated in those three little words at the beginning of verse 18, “But if not...”

I wonder how many of us today can demonstrate that level of trust.

“I know God can deliver me from my situation, but if not...”

“I know God can save my family, but if not...”

“I know God can heal this cancer, but if not...”

God did NOT prevent those three young men from being thrown into the fire that day.  But here’s the thing.  He went in with them and saw them through their ordeal.

No matter what tragedy befalls you, it is not an indication that God has forsaken you.  That is a lie from the enemy to be rebuked.  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4).  You’re not sent in; You’re led through!

Still more promises:

Hebrews 13:5 (KJV) ...for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Matthew 28:20 (KJV) ...lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

If we can remember these things going into our situation, it will be a lot easier to praise God in spite of our circumstance.

If most any one of us was arrested on false charges and incarcerated without due process, our first response would probably be to lawyer up.  But when it happened to Paul and Silas, they had church.

It’s a lot easier to walk by faith when you remember that your steps are ordered by the Lord.

David had this all figured out.  He went from being Israel’s biggest celebrity to Israel’s most wanted all in the space of four chapters.  His king and mentor was now seeking to take David’s life, and David was on the run.  Seeing his friend was against him, he sought refuge with his enemy, the Philistines.  When King Achish turned him away, David left Gath and headed for the hills.

On the way, he crossed the Valley of Elah, where, not that long before, he had defeated Goliath.  Such contrast.  How often are our greatest victories thrown in our faces during our lowest moments to remind us of how bad things have gotten?

When David finally arrived at the caves of Adullam, he did was most of us would probably do in his situation.  He crawled into a hole in the ground.  However, most of us would not have done it with the same attitude as David.  You see, it was during these events that David took out his writing instrument and wrote the first verse of Psalm 34:  

“I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

David was not in denial of his situation.  He was in acknowledgment of an unchanging, ever-present God who knows the end from the beginning.  And He’s good all the time!

All for One

For much of my life, whenever I thought of the ministry of Jesus, I always pictured him ministering to large crowds of people.  I imagined the “great multitudes of people” that followed him from far and wide in Matthew Chapter 4.  I imagined the 5,000+ people in Matthew Chapter 14, sitting and waiting for bread and fish.  I imagined the standing-room-only crowd at the house in Capernaum in Mark Chapter 2.  I imagined a gathering in Luke Chapter 8 so packed that Jesus’ own family members couldn’t get to him.  That’s how I used to think, but my thinking has changed.

Jesus never solicited an audience.  He didn’t send fliers ahead to promote his soon arrival to a town.  His fame spread by word of mouth only, and most of the people who came to him either wanted something, such as a healing, or they were groupies, if you will, hoping to see a miracle in action.  As a matter of fact, when Jesus dove into some heavy teaching in John Chapter 6, many of them walked out and never came back.  They hadn’t come for that.

Jesus never sought crowds.  Crowds sought Jesus.  Jesus sought individuals.  Sure, he had compassion on the crowds, and he did minister to them when they came, but he preferred personal encounters.

In John Chapter 5, there was “a great multitude” by the pool Bethesda, but Jesus ministered to “a certain man.”

In Mark Chapter 5, Jesus crossed the sea, delivered one demon-possessed man, and then sailed back home again.

Relations between Jews and Samaritans were so strained that they didn’t even associate or speak with each other. Yet in John Chapter 4, Jesus detoured through Samaria and revealed that he was the promised messiah to a social outcast before he’d even told his own disciples.

In Matthew Chapter 15, Jesus even took time out of his vacation to deliver a pagan woman’s daughter from demon possession.

Even when in a crowd, Jesus took time out for individuals.  When the woman with the issue of blood touched his clothes in Mark Chapter 5, Jesus halted the entire procession and refused to move on until she came forward.  In Luke Chapter 19, he invited himself into Zacchaeus’ home, leaving the crowds of Jericho outside to probably wonder what had just happened.

To Jesus, one mattered.  He talked about leaving 99 to find one.  While we count heads, he numbers the hairs on each individual head.  We get excited when we hear the reports of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people baptized in Jesus’ name and/or filled with the Holy Ghost at one event, and justifiably so.  But in Luke 15:10, Jesus said, “…there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”

In casting our net for great numbers, we often miss hooking that one who may be the key to many.  In Mark Chapter 5, after Jesus delivered the man from the legion of demons, the locals asked Jesus to leave.  The man whom Jesus had delivered wanted to go with him, but Jesus refused, telling the man, instead, to stay and share his personal testimony.  When Jesus returned three chapters later, 4,000 people came out to meet him.  Never underestimate the power of one.

In an age when it’s much simpler to put up a church website or Facebook page for the masses than it is to minister to people one at a time, we often opt for the easier method of the two.  But technology should complement, not replace, personal evangelism, especially if we want to be like Jesus.

Take an informal survey among some of the people in your church about what brought them to their first church meeting.  You will have no doubt that there is no substitute for personal evangelism.