Pastor Joe's Blog

The month of October is Clergy Appreciation Month, and it is altogether fitting that we pause and reflect in gratitude for those who have shaped us and prepared us for eternity.

My pastor for the first 20 years of my life(with the exception of a short time in Pensacola, Florida) was Ray Jenkins.  Brother Ray still lives in the same house in Madison County and still actively serves the Lord.  He is probably the most respected man in Madison County and is the county’s de facto pastor.

I don’t know what words to use for Brother Ray that adequately describe his influence and impact on my life.  Far from perfect, he is the most consistent example of godly manhood I ever saw.  I never Brother Ray to utter a harsh word, a double entendre, or any type of shady inuendo at all.  And I watched him; I knew he was supposed to be my example.

He taught me to love Jesus, preach God’s Word, study diligently, and fear no man.  Thank you, Brother Ray, and may many souls be in glory as a direct result of your faithful labors.

Along with the Bible, there are several books I read annually.  They include:

The Traveler’s Gift, by Andy Andrews

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

The 4:8 Principle, by Tommy Newberry

The Call, by Os Guinness

Right now I’m reading The Call again.  Os Guinness makes the point that the term “seeker” really is misapplied today.  Most churches fancy themselves as being “seeker-friendly.”  But I’ve been pastoring for 20 years, and I have yet to meet someone who says to me, “I sought God for so long, and I finally found Him.”  No, none of us seeks Him. 

But graciously, He is seeking such to worship Him(John 4:23-24).  So the real “seeker” is God himself, seeking and saving that which was lost(Luke 19:10).  So, I’ve determined to seek the real seeker, and in seeking Him, I know that whatever men and women are looking for in this world apart from Him, they will never be satisfied until they surrender.  Good news, as was told to the blind Bartimaeus:  “Be of good cheer; He is calling you.”

We hear so much at Christmas about the fact that Jesus would be called Emmanuel, “God with us.”  Rightly so, I think.  But we don’t really focus much on it during the year.  And I think this is wrongly so.

I preached this last Sunday from the first chapter of Revelation about how Jesus is actively involved in His church today, in 2011.  We are in danger of forgetting this for a number of reasons.  We live in a hectic, frenzied age.  We are distracted more than ever.  The enticements of this current world system and all its priorities are ever before our eyes and ears and minds.  And we are quickly losing conversation and personal communion with other human beings, and this contributes to our isolated thought life in which we fail to encounter God daily, much less moment by moment.

No, I’m not anti-technology.  I simply believe that we live in an era that does not push us toward a constant awareness of Jesus’ presence in us and in His church.  And this will paralyze us if we allow the process to take its course without a fight.  I need to be reminded constantly that He is God with us, God with me.  The hope of glory?  In my Bible, it is “Christ in you…”

If you had asked me 6 months ago, I would have told you that I have written my last blog and certainly will not be blogging as a pastor again.

I had just been through what is the most painful, heart-rending, confusing, and lifechanging event of my life so far.  I’m thankful for the lessons learned.  I’ve counted it all joy to fall into the varied trials of life, but this one took more courage and more determination than all of them combined.  I learned a lot about who my friends were, and who they weren’t.  I’m so grateful to God for the ones who stood by me, and especially for the Lord Jesus, who delivered me out of the mouth of the lion.

I’m so thankful for the church that God has brought me and my family to.   There’s so much potential at Sonlight.  What a blessing of God to take a kid who admired his bus driver, a bi-vocational church planter, and let him grow up and pastor the same church that bus driver started.  Life is like that; it has endings.  This is a hard thing for us to come to grips with, but it’s essential.  Once we make peace with the endings, God can show us the exciting new beginnings.  He is a God of new beginnings.  He formed the universe out of nothing, a new beginning.  He sent His Son, a woman encompassing a man, a new thing in the earth, foretold by Jeremiah the prophet.  And He makes us new in Christ, and old things pass away.  And one day, He’s going to create a new heaven and a new earth.  Until then, He calls on us to celebrate the new beginnings, and this day, I do!