The Silent Holocron

Thanks for joining as I blog through Don Whitney’s Ten Questions for the New Year. For previous posts in the series click here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
I want to establish habits of diligence and discernment. In the last year we have learned the necessity of sticking to our family budget, as it has kept the bills paid and food on the table, and allowed us to see God provide even when we weren’t sticklers for our budget. I feel the best way to honor God in this area is to be diligent in following our budget, since we want to commit to paying off all debt in the next couple of years.

Since diligence generally means “caution,” one thing I have learned from 2008 (and 2007) is that I must be cautious about those who are church members or even friends. Not all who are your sheep, nor many who are supposedly “good friends,” have your best interests at heart, especially in Deaf ministry. I’ve seen church members who I thought were trustworthy turn against me; I’ve seen people I’ve been good friends with for nearly 10 years — pastors and others — spread horrible gossip and bear false witness about me to my pastor and others. By God’s grace I’ve been protected so far, but I’ve learned a valuable ministry lesson: be careful who your friends are. People I went to seminary with and other pastors had in the past shared similar stories with me; one even went so far as to say there was “a target on his back.” I know now what he means, and when I pray for him these days I pray with understanding.

This ties in with the habit of discernment. I need to be a better judge, not just of personal things like our finances, actions and such, but of people and situations. I’ve learned a lot from watching and listening to my pastor, who along with his wife has an incredible gift of discernment. They have developed this gift over 30+ years of ministry, and I’ve been astounded at times to see it at work. They are sensitive to things I wouldn’t even notice or give second thought to. Oftentimes my pastor notices something “isn’t quite right” and has been praying about it for weeks before I even realize something is going on! In fact, it was my immaturity in this area that was my undoing in the situations related above. If I want to be a good, effective pastor I must be discerning as the Lord leads. So this year I want to consciously practice the discipline of discernment. The only way I’ll get better in my judgment is to practice judgment prayerfully.

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
Have an established time of prayer. I mentioned before in #4 that I usually pray anywhere, anytime, whenever the need comes or something strikes me to pray, and that I have always been this way. This comes from being taught early in my Christian life to “pray without ceasing.” I was taught I should pray no matter what I am doing at any given moment. Obviously, this made it difficult to have established prayer times, since “quiet time” was presented as “personal Bible study time.” Instead I want to make prayer a discipline, something done intentionally. Rather than being random, spur of the moment, situational, and seat of the pants; I want to take time to think through what needs to be prayed for. I want to, as Paul wrote in Romans 8, pray together with the Holy Spirit. The only way I currently know to do that is to be thoughtful, deliberate and intentional about praying. I know my Pentecostal/Charismatic friends are going to get on me for this.

I’ll stop here and tomorrow we’ll get into the final question!

Thanks for joining as I blog through Don Whitney’s Ten Questions for the New Year. For previous posts in the series click here: Part 1, Part 2

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
I actually am not quite sure of the answer to this one. I need to have a good, thoughtful discussion with our senior pastor before I can give a good answer. There are several areas in which our church is in great need of strengthening, and I’m not sure which one is the most urgent and important – they all seem urgent and important!

Our people need to learn to spend significant time in the Word and in prayer. They need to learn to commit themselves to faithful church attendance and service. They need to learn what it means to live lives of holiness. They need to learn to be strong witnesses in our community. All of these things are very basic to what it means to live a “Christian” life. That makes it very difficult to pick just one!

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
As far as our Deaf people go, I’m going to keep this one to myself. Beyond this, I have determined to pray for the salvation of my co-workers and employees at work. I will pray that God will bring me and other believers at work opportunities to speak the Gospel into their lives; that he will place people in their lives outside of work that will share the truth with them; and that he will bring those of them that he has appointed to eternal life to himself that he might be glorified in them. Our company is a great, great place to work; it is also a vast untapped mission field. I want God to be glorified at UPS not only through the work and character of believers there, but through the witness of the truth we share through that work, character, and words.

I could go ahead and give a couple more questions, but this is a weird day, so I will stop here. Next time we will look at questions 8 and 9.

Thanks for joining me as I blog through Don Whitney’s Ten Questions for the New Year. To see the first two questions, click here.

3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
Begin a regular practice of family devotions. We started that on January 1 by starting the Robert Murray M’Cheyne Bible reading plan. I fully expect we will have fits and starts, and I don’t expect us to be 100% faithful as we seek to establish this habit. We won’t seek perfection in this but simply to establish the habit of family worship. If we miss a day, we won’t try to catch up but simply pick up at the current reading. This year all I’m interested in doing is getting us to have a daily time of Scripture reading and prayer. Perhaps later we can work devotions in. This habit of family spirituality is one that I have become deeply convicted about over the past year as Tricia and I realized that we were going to be a family, and of course as the man of the house that responsibility falls to me. If I want our marriage to be a godly marriage, and our daughter to grow up to be a godly, Proverbs 31 woman, having regular family worship is absolutely necessary.

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
Scripture reading and prayer. As a pastor and seminary graduate, the easiest thing for me to do is to immediately read Scripture as something to be studied, exegeted, and preached. While that is all well and good, I firmly believe I cannot study, exegete, and preach God’s Word unless I am first immersed in Scripture as a reading habit. To this end as we follow the M’Cheyne reading plan I will be using it to do just that — immerse myself in the Word simply by reading it. I won’t try to study it unless I’m using a reading as sermon material. I freely admit this is not a habit I’ve had since the end of my college days and shortly after my first year of seminary. I feel I need to un-learn some of the habits that plague many seminary students/graduates and pastors where their time in Scripture is concerned. You might say I’ve found that I need to re-connect with Scripture much in the way men who find themselves in a period of “busy-ness” need to take time to re-connect with their wives and children. It is not simply “touching base,” but a serious, intentional immersion in the things that one loves and is interested in. It is good for a believer to periodically refocus on Scripture in this way.

I also want to be more intentional about my prayer life. I usually pray anywhere, anytime, whenever the need comes or something strikes me to pray. I have always been this way. What I’m getting at is having a set time where I deliberately pray. I’ve had regular quiet time in the past, and likely I also will in the future, but I want to establish a “prayer closet” habit, not a quiet time. I think that I will strive to determine which part of the day I am most alert, distraction-free, and available and block at least 30 minutes of that time to prayer.

Hmm, we’ve got room for one more…

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
I need to spend less time on the computer. My wife would say computer time is my biggest time-waster. I’m actually not sure, but I’d have to agree. I don’t watch much TV anymore at all, not since I started working nights at UPS. I do most of my work (sermon prep/writing, lesson prep/writing, bill paying, blogging, etc.) on the computer. A lot of the leisure activities I do are also done on the computer. So it would seem I spend a lot of time in my home office. This means I have less time for reading Scripture, reading my books, playing with my daughter, and connecting with my wife. My wife would also say it means I do less housework.

This is an area that I have actually attempted to get under control in the past, but as both my wife and I are computer users (and I’m borderline computer geek), we have failed in this respect. I have a habit, started over 10 years ago in college, of being on the computer quite a bit during the day. Since moving to Louisville and becoming internet-savvy, the bulk of the time we spend on the computer is nothing more than internet time. And I think we can all agree the net is the biggest time-waster out there!

Somehow I need to limit my internet access during the week. I am not yet sure what this will entail, whether it means no access beyond checking email during the day or scheduling limited blocks of time for this diversion or some other thing. I will be mulling over this with Tricia as well as asking other net-savvy brothers and sisters what they have done to regulate this area of their life.

Next Time: Questions 6 and 7.

I recently was directed to a fantastic resource provided by Don Whitney, professor of Biblical Spirituality at my alma mater, Southern Seminary. In it, he asks Ten Questions to Ask at the Start of a New Year or on Your Birthday. Over the next few days I’m going to blog through each of these questions, doing two or three questions per installment unless a question takes up an entire post. Since I am doing self-reflection with these, all of the answers will be personal rather than ministry-related. I may well do this again when I’m done with a ministry focus!

And with no further ado, here’s Dr. Whitney’s introduction to the questions, followed by the first couple of questions and my answers.

Ten Questions to Ask at the Start of a New Year or on Your Birthday

Once, when the people of God had become careless in their relationship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. “Consider your ways!” (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things happening to them, and to evaluate their slipshod spirituality in light of what God had told them.

Even those most faithful to God occasionally need to pause and think about the direction of their lives. It’s so easy to bump along from one busy week to another without ever stopping to ponder where we’re going and where we should be going.

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
I can be determined to live joyfully for God, and not allow anyone to steal my joy. The past two years have brought much grief as I have, sadly, been exposed to what one pastor friend calls “small church politics.” I have learned a lot about ministry and who I can trust as a pastor. I have briefly and vaguely blogged about the experience, considering discretion the better part of valor.

I have also, more recently, had to sever close friendships in order to protect my integrity and ministry. Ending these relationships brought much pain which has yet to be resolved. I have had to remind myself that the joy of knowing Christ and serving him are far greater than the grief-bringing experience of broken trust and sorrow. As such, I must live the words of Paul as he sat in jail expecting his life to end at any moment – I must be full of joy at a sovereign God who works all things for the good of those who love him.

I must also rejoice at what God has done in my life and what he will continue to do. I have a daughter that causes that joy to burst forth as a fountain! I have a wife that makes the waters of that joy warm with love and comfort! I serve a church that I love and has a pastor under whose tutelage I have done nothing but grow! God has provided for us and will continue to provide!

2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
To provide the means and direction to get us out of debt. By debt, I do not mean what Dave Ramsey calls “stupid debt” like credit cards and such. My wife and I have student loans from college to pay off. That is, thankfully, the only debt we have. But we are not able to do much more than pay the regular payments, especially since Tricia is not able to work full-time since becoming pregnant with Grace and then with Grace’s birth in January 08. We are not really able to save money, nor are we able to tithe, since our church experienced severe budget cuts in 2008 which extended to my salary. This means that in order to get it paid off so that we can actually use our finances to the glory of God, things must change.

My wife and I would like to have more children, and to me that means I need to be in a position where she does not have to work and we are not stretching our finances to the breaking point. UPS has been a fantastic employer – we have never wanted for anything, and everything they have given me as their employee (salary and benefits) has made it possible for us to be where we are today.

We will be asking God to make the way clear for me to get a full-time day job. Whether that is at UPS or elsewhere remains to be seen. I have begun the process of moving to a full-time position at UPS, but that process could be lengthy. There is also no guarantee of promotion, though I can clearly see God’s sovereign guidance at work as I have worked with my superiors over the past year. If I cannot get promotion, it may well mean it is time for me to look elsewhere, meaning I will have to leave a company I have come to love. This could mean finding full-time ministry, it could mean finding full-time secular employment outside of UPS, only the Lord knows the plans he has for us.

I look forward to seeing how God will provide for us as we seek to honor him by getting out of debt and becoming wise stewards of the finances he has provided.

Next Time: Questions 3 and 4.

I have the first new post in a month over at my running blog, chronicling the first actual run in this new running thing I’m doing. An excerpt:

I followed the advice everyone gives first-time runners and walked the first half-mile as a warm-up. So far, so good, it was all uphill anyway. So I reached the top of the hill (the main entrance to our apartments), turned around, braced myself, and started trotting back.

This could be good, I thought. Wait a minute, what’s that sensation?

You see, my mesh shorts had started to slide off my waist. I hadn’t tied them tightly enough. I’m sure everyone wants to see a 31 year old fat guy trying to run with his shorts down.

Go read the whole thing here and enjoy your weekend.

Not a lot of posting recently, I know. I’ve had family here since the lights went out last week so I’ve been busy. I’ve also had extended teaching opportunities the past month at church also, so there has been a lot of study time that doesn’t allow my usual posting. Not a lot of rest, so I will be spending the following week sleeping a lot when I’m not at work or at church. I also discovered Twitter as I said in the previous post, so you can keep somewhat updated in the sidebar.

Important stuff first. Please pray for Pastor Steve McCoy’s wife Molly. She had brain surgery today for Chiari I Malformation and so far the reports are encouraging. I have been lifting them up to God all week and I encourage you to do the same.

Also, please pray for me as I try to figure out what I want to develop a teaching/sermon series on. I am feeling led to do the Ten Commandments and/or one of the Gospels. These sermons would be preached on my turns on the preaching schedule or could possibly turn into a Sunday School or Wednesday night discipleship series, much like I did with 1 John this summer.

In addition, pray for my pastor, Tim Bender. He will be leading us through a series on Mormonism on Wednesday nights. We just completed a series on Jehovah’s Witnesses. After this he tentatively plans to lead us through the MasterLife curriculum.

Next week, I will post the two promised sermons from the previous post.

Anyhow, for some weekend fodder for you, I recently saw my dream library here (HT: Brent T.). Let’s see if I can provide a pictoral reference:

See it Original Size
(Photo by Andrew Moore)

If I had a library like that, I’d never leave the house.

While browsing the web I came across a band I’d listened to in high school that had one of the most peculiar songs I’d ever heard. When we carpooled to varsity tennis matches we used to play this song over and over in my car, singing it at the top of our lungs. So with no further ado, I present you the video and lyrics to The Flaming Lips’ She Don’t Use Jelly.

I know a girl who thinks of ghosts
She makes them breakfast, she makes them toast
She don’t use butter, she don’t use cheese
She don’t use jelly or any of these
She uses vaseline…vaseline…vaseline

I know a guy who goes to shows
When he gets home he, he blows his nose
He don’t use tissues, or his sleeve
He don’t use napkins or any of these
He uses magazines…magazines…magazines…magazines

I know a girl who reminds me of Cher
She’s always changin’ the color of her hair
She don’t use nothin’ you buy at the store
She wants her hair to look real orange
She uses tangerines…tangerines…tangerines…tangerines…
Tangerines…tangerines…

That’s all, folks. Remember to spend the Lord’s Day in His House with the Local Body of Believers of Which You Are a Member!

If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve bitten the bullet and joined the parade of Twitter tweeters. If you don’t know, Twitter is a web-based application that is intended to provide instant information about its users. You might say a person’s Twitter site is a “sound-bite blog,” so to speak. Instead of writing an entire post about “where I am right now,” I can actually “tweet” snippets of my day on the site. It functions almost like the old AOL “away messages” we made for our IMs. I added an RSS feed in the left sidebar so you can see my 5 most recent tweets.

Why join Twitter? Don’t I have enough technological “junk” already?

I’m firmly convinced that my Vista computer and iPhone have left me with way too much tech, none of which I necessarily need beyond the internet and Microsoft Office. Part of that is from our society’s compulsion to build bigger, better, badder and faster. Just to get what you need these days, you have to purchase the whole shebang. There’s a benefit to that — while everyone else is on the newest Windows or Mac version 10 years from now, I’ll still have everything I’ll ever need on my Vista Monster. That will save me lots of money long-term. Unless, of course, there is a drastic change in technology or I have another computer meltdown between then and now.

But after palling around the Twitter site for a day, and after having spent the week checking the iPhone Twitter apps in my spare time, I was convinced in the end it would be better to use it than not.

Twitter can improve one’s blogging by leaving out that “where I am right now” info that nobody really wants to know except your wife, mother and grandmother. You can focus on writing posts of substance, posts that matter. Of course, one doesn’t have to do that, but I digress. Also if someone wants to get in touch with you, they can simply check your Twitter feed to see if you are available at that moment. For example, if I tweeted, “In the office at church,” one of my church members would know I’m in my office hours and could stop by or email me and I’d be available.

I think my mom, dad, and grandmother will benefit from my use of Twitter more than anyone else, since Twitter provides essentially up-to-the-minute updates of what’s going on in my life. I know the fam likes having us update them on how things are — especially as we are traveling — and email isn’t always reliable; more so since neither I nor my wife can understand voices on the phone. Instead of having to wait for the most recent email from our pagers (especially if we’re in a low- or no-signal area), the fam can simply check Twitter to see the most recent information.

If you’d like the actual web page for my Twitter, click here. For the RSS users, just click on the RSS symbol there in the sidebar or on the bottom left of my Twitter page.

And for those of you wondering just how much my iPhone has corrupted me with the evil Force influence of Apple, here’s some evidence: I made Firefox my default web browser a couple of weeks ago, completely supplanting Internet Explorer as my browser of choice. Further, I’m writing this post on a Safari browser I downloaded to my desktop to try out. Yes, that means in the next few years I might be persuaded to make a certain purchase, switching me from Windows.

But only on the laptop front. I love my desktop Windows behemoth.

Here’s a few bullet points for those who have been wondering.

Writer’s Block Status
I have been working on the first “real” post after (hopefully) slaying the evil Sith Lord Darth WriteBlock. It is looking pretty good. As a reminder, I’m going to do a Beliefbusters where I tackle the myth of human free will. Ooo, provocative! I will start posting it on Monday, so it has the weekend to breathe and be revised. It will be done in two parts, as I exceeded 1000 words just a few minutes ago. I’m going to take part 1 tonight to a friend who is much smarter than me and let him critique it, as well as showing it to my wife to make sure I’m not talking over anyone’s head. I like this subject and I hope it brings discussion to this blog!

Work Status
The decision has all but officially been made for me: I need to get my sorry behind into a full-time position, whether at UPS or in a church. I’m going to be talking to my boss tonight and tomorrow as well as my new boss next week about what opportunities there are for me to move into a full-time position within the next year. (For those who may be confused, I’m getting a new boss because UPS encourages management to get a wide breadth of experience, which means at minimum we need to be moving to new departments yearly. Some will choose to stay where they are until the company moves them, and some — like I did — will voluntarily move.) What that means is that I may have to abandon my initial plan to go back to school and get a business degree. If so, that just means school was not the Lord’s plan; at least at this time.

If that angle does not work, I will need to consider looking for full-time ministry employment. This is a very painful option for me to consider. I love my church. I have grown tremendously in the nearly 10 years I have been involved there, and my senior pastor is quite possibly the exact mentor I needed at this point in life. But our church is small and cannot afford two full-time pastors. Several good friends have asked if this means a return to hearing ministry. I am open to the possibility; however I believe God has called me to minister to Deaf people, and it would have to be clearly the will of God before I could consider such a return. Full-time Deaf ministry, for me, would mean leaving Louisville at the very minimum.

The good news on this bullet point is that Tricia is back at work, full-time. The bad news is that means I will be taking care of Grace during the day. This past month has been an experiment in seeing if I can maintain a jovial mood on 3 hours of sleep per day, and then take a nap when Tricia gets home. So far it hasn’t been happening. Thus the need for me to go full-time.

Me Status
I said before that I wanted to take up running. Here’s the update on that. I’m not running…yet. My excuse? It’s just too hot (more humid than hot) and I do not get enough rest at this point to do anything other than take care of Grace during the day (suggestions from the runners out there would be greatly appreciated). So I’m doing the next best thing: I am walking a minimum of 1 mile every day. A group of supervisors in my building are making the nearly mile-long walk back to the parking lot after the sort each night, and I have joined them. That, coupled with walking down to the stores and restaurants at our apartment, and I am averaging at least 7 walking miles, maximum, per week. In work boots (ugh). If I left for work earlier I’m sure I could get that up to at least 12 or 13 (2 miles at work each night plus the extra quarter- to half-milers we do walking to the stores). I have to see if Tee will gladly let me leave an extra hour early. She’d much rather I stayed home and hung out with her until my usual departure time.

As it is, I’m going to actually start running this fall after the humidity goes down; namely around September. Not sure how exactly that’s going to work out, but I will make the time to do it. All the walking I will have done by then should have my legs nice and strong. We are also going to have to start cooking more as well, we eat out too much, which contributes to the problem.

Stone Temple Pilots Status
We will officially be going to the Stone Temple Pilots concert in August! I’m excited and ready to rock. It will be Tricia’s first ever rock concert, and I am off that Friday, so we will have a whole weekend to ourselves. Party hardy rock ‘n’ roll.

Grace Status
Grace is doing well. We do think she has a cold, she has been sneezing a lot this week and is fussier than usual. We also think she will be popping a tooth any day now. So I’m going to close this update with a nice pic for you guys (mouse over the pic for a caption):

Through my meditations in the Force, I sense my writer’s block slowly fading. I’m not sure where my writing will be led next, but I do know that the first post after the FBC Starbucks reposts will be a Beliefbusters post. And I already know exactly what the topic will be. I’m going to tackle the myth of human “free will,” as it is commonly described today. Don’t be surprised; those of you who actually read your Bibles ought to be able to discern exactly what I’m getting at! Here’s a few verses for you to look at; I won’t provide the text, I’d like for you to actually open your Bible and read it! Please withhold all judgment and knee-jerk reactions until you have actually read both the Scriptures and what I have to say.

John 8:34
Romans 6:15-22
1 Corinthians 7:21-23

Thanks for your patience as I deal with writer’s block, and join us as I re-start the engines soon!

Here’s a few things that have been happening recently, for those interested:

• I finished my review of David Wells’ The Courage to Be Protestant, chapter 6 yesterday. The chapter is entitled “Christ.” Look for it over at Said at Southern next Monday. I do plan to post it here as well for those of you too lazy to click the link.
• Things appear to finally be slowing down life-wise, so that may herald the return of more regular blogging. As always, said blogging is subject to Providence, so stay tuned.
• Speaking of blogging, the divorce post has been going very slowly due to the aforementioned real-life. All I’m gonna say is it’ll get here when it gets here. Hey: it’s my blog. If you don’t like it, go start your own.
• Speaking of Providence, I was given a flyer advertising jobs opening at a certain plant here in Louisville. If my wife could get a job there, we’d be financially secure until I could go full-time at UPS or the Lord moves me to a full-time ministry. We’ll be praying for God’s guidance on this, since it is extremely difficult for Deaf people to get good jobs here in the ‘Ville.
• On going full-time at UPS; I’m going to start the process of enrolling at the University of Louisville to pursue a business-related degree. UPS will pay full tuition and most of the books. If I want to move to a good full-time position (not necessarily the next level of management, full-time supervisor), I need a business related degree. Counseling degrees can only take you so far.
• Wonder of wonders, I learned just last night that one of my best friends from high school is moving to Louisville. He is also a minister, a graduate of Asbury Seminary near Lexington, KY. He’s been in youth ministry for his entire ministry and will be serving as young adult minister (ages 18 to 30) for the first time in a Methodist church somewhere in town. I’m excited ’cause I haven’t seen the guy in 10 years! Incidentally, he’s also prettier than I am – he’s got more hair.
• In other wonderful news, we learned that our tax rebate will arrive this week. That’s fantastic because all the little bills from Grace’s birth that keep popping up unexpectedly will finally go away. We’ll take care of that, gas up the cars, and then use the rest of it to take a major chunk out of our student loans.
• I’m reading D.A. Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry in my downtimes at work. I have God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson as well as Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin as my bathroom readers. See the sidebar to see which Puritan Paperback I’m reading this month.
• Grace bought me The UBS Reader’s Greek New Testament for Fathers’ Day. I must be raising her right for her to get me a Greek New Testament.

Well, that’s it for a while. Just wanted to make sure you knew I wasn’t dead or drowning in a pool of baby diapers and spit-up.