Hey, everyone! (Phil 4.21)
Hey, Brothers and sisters in Jesus (Eph 3.15)
Hey, Brothers and sisters OF Jesus (Heb. 2.11)
Hey, Priests of the royal family (1 Pet. 2.9)
Hey, Heirs and heiresses of God the King of all (Rom. 8. 17)
Hey, Alive from the dead! (Eph 2.1-5)
Hey, Stars shining in the firmament (Dan 12.3; Phil. 2.15)
Hey, Judges of angels and the whole world in the coming Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6.2-3)
Hey, Bearers of the new name that no one knows but he who receives it (Rev. 2.17)
Hey, Pillars in the temple of the Living God (Rev 3.12)
Hey, Participants of the divine nature (2 Pet 1.4)
That’s right! I’m talkin’ to you!!
Those are just SOME of the ways the New Testament describes you!
Those are just SOME of the amazing ways God sees you!
That’s HIS assessment
You might feel like a dufuss today for some bonehead thing you said…
You might feel like you’ll always be that thing someone called you when you were ten…
Maybe someone in traffic, out of his car window, called you something other than one of the above titles today…
But the Almighty One sees you differently! He has different names for you!
I was reading yesterday about the beginning of Paul’s new life with Jesus (they called him “Saul” at the time…along with other things!) He had been sooooo much against the followers of Jesus, hating on them at every opportunity while looking for new chances to hate them…
Until he didn’t!
Jesus blazed out of Heaven and Paul was on his knees (or maybe his face!) in the middle of the road, giving his heart to our Lord!
He gained some things and lost some things that day. He gained a new life, new names, new titles, a new purpose, and a new home. He lost his guilt…and, temporarily, his sight!
So…Jesus appeared (somewhat more quietly and gently!) to one of His followers in the town named Ananias. He told him to go and put his hands on Paul’s eyes to heal them. Previous he had wanted to punch those same eyes to blacken them. Ananias protested that Paul had been so hostile to them. But Jesus said, “True! But now he’s a chosen instrument to Me!”
“Wow! I would have called him plenty of things but not THAT! ‘A choice idiot!’…’a major chump!’…but not a choice instrument!”
But that’s how God saw Saul…er, Paul…now!
New titles! New names!
When Ananias knocked on the door and walked in, he might have wanted to call Paul all kinds of things. “You jerk!”…”You creep!”…”You #@$%#!”…But he didn’t.
He said, “B…b…b…b…brother Saul!” (Acts 9.17)
Wow!
“God says that you’re His child, so you’re my family! No matter what others call you, from now on, you’re my brother!”
Y’know, every Sunday morning at 9:30 we get together to talk, share, and encourage each other before we worship our Lord together. We call it “Community groups”. It’s just about being together with important people.
What if you could spend an hour on Sunday hanging out with…
Peyton Manning?
…or Derek Dooley and Coach Pearl?
…or Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood?
…or Ronald Reagan? (Reminds me of the guy who asked his class, “If you could spend an hour with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?” and a girl said, “The living one!”)
…or if you could spend an hour with Prince Andrew and his new fiance?
What if you could spend an hour with an heir of the world to come? Or with someone Jesus calls His sister or brother? Or with a royal priest of the Living God? Or with someone who has come alive from the dead?
You can!
C’mon!
Community groups…every Sunday at 9:30!
A Note from Tom: November 12th, 2010
Hey, everyone!
Wow! What a time we had on Wednesday night! Hee-hawin’ to Devo’s skits…spinnin’ squares, dancing round ‘n round…hand-clapping to corny bluegrass…
Can you imagine the whole Triple C sanctuary rockin’ with…
“Wish that I was on ole Rocky Top down in the Tennessee hills!
Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top ain't no telephone bills…
Rocky Top you'll always be home sweet home to me!
Good ole Rocky Top, Rocky Top Tennessee, Rocky Top Tennesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Now, THAT’s corny!
The Dictionary says “corny” means “overly simple and sentimental.”
If that’s true, “Rocky Top” is the national anthem of Corn City!
Talk about “overly simple”…”Rocky Top” isn’t really “home, sweet home” to anyone! It’s a hill near Thunderhead Mtn. (elevation 5,440 feet) on the Appalachian Trail, overlooking Cades Cove…and nobody lives there! And about the fact that there ain’t being no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top, “…in the Great Smoky Mountains, our most polluted national park, ozone pollution exceeds that of Atlanta and even rivals Los Angeles!”
Rocky Top…it’s more complicated than you think.
So…we went with overly simple and sentimental the other night! It was basically a corn-fest!
There’s a reason why bluegrass music is simple…er, corny. “Corny” was first used in 1932 to describe something that appeals to “country folk…to the corn-fed”. When folks lived in the country… grew their own vittles… made their own corn bread (or they didn’t have any bread at all)… life was simpler. Either God sent you rain or you didn’t eat. Either He blessed your garden and fields or you went hungry.
It was as simple as that.
Simple is good. No matter what happens, I know God loves me. I know He knows what He’s doing. It may sound corny, but “I know He has a wonderful plan for my life.” It may be simple, but it’s simply all I need to know.
Psalm 123 says, “My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother…”
I don’t understand much but those simple things I know are enough.
One day I was listening to an old album of bluegrass Gospel songs by one of my favs- Doc Watson. He is an unbelievable guitarist, who was blind before his first birthday. He’s totally da bomb! Amazing! He has a humongous bluegrass and Americana festival in Wilkesboro every spring. It’s called “Merlefest”, named for his son Merle who was killed in a tractor accident in 1985.
An old waltz-time song on there, called “Gathering Buds” is about how when kids die before they’re grown, it’s like God is gather flower buds before they bloom so they can flower in Heaven.
Doc was singing this ¾ time ol’ timey hymn with Alan O’Brien of the Nashville Bluegrass Band doing a high, lonesome tenor harmony…
“Jesus has taken a beautiful bud
Out of the garden of love
Borne it away to the city of God
Home of the angels above.
Gathering buds, gathering buds
Wonderful care will be giv'n
Jesus is gathering, day after day
Buds for the palace of Heaven.
Fathers and mothers, weep not or be sad
Still on the Savior rely
You shall behold them again and be glad
Beautiful flowers on high.
Gathering buds, gathering buds
Wonderful care will be giv'n
Jesus is gathering, day after day
Buds for the palace of Heaven.
“Wow!” I thought. “That is corny! I guess back in the day, people had to deal with kids dying young more than today…all those little graves in the Cades Cove cemeteries…It’s so awesome to know that in all we don’t know, at least those parents could be sure that our Lord has taken their kids home with Him…but ‘gathering buds’ seems like a really corny way to say it…”
And then…as Doc was singing this last chorus…”Wonderful care will be giv’n…” it happened.
His voice cracked.
And I cried.
No one would ever know why Merle was crushed by a tractor. The mysteries are deeper than our minds can reach. But to know that God had simply gathered him home. He wasn’t lost…just gathered.
Corny…er, simple…is good.
A Note from Tom: November 5th, 2010
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having the most awesome Friday ever! Hope it’s filled with praise and laughter all day! Y’know, the other day I was going to…
(Wait a sec. I didn’t really mean to say some of that stuff. I need to start over…)
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having the most awesome day ever! Filled with praise and thankfulness and joy! But if you have a heart that needs to break, or a tear you need to shed, or someone’s hurt you need to share, that’s OK, too! A day with pain in it…sometimes feeling yours and sometimes sharing someone else’s…doesn’t make your day a bad one.
I was reading this article the other day about the history of anesthesia. This young British doctor, Humphrey Davy (that sounds like a name out of Gilbert and Sullivan!) was trying to find a cure for tuberculosis. He fixed up a makeshift gas chamber and was inhaling different gases in there (risky!!) to see if they helped him breath better. He tried a cloudful of nitrous oxide and found that he didn’t breath better but he did see better. In fact, he saw things that didn’t exist!
"…Trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind…I was now almost completely intoxicated. The sensations were superior to any I ever experienced. Inconceivably pleasurable. I seemed to be a sublime being, newly created and superior to other mortals."
He thought about this goofy feeling the next time he had a throbbing toothache. “Maybe if I breathe some of that nitrous stuff, it’ll calm this pain…”
He tried it. And it did! They changed the name of nitrous oxide to “laughing gas” and dentists started using it for screaming patients around the world ever after.
But not until decades after!
It had never occurred to doctors or dentists to use anything to take pain away from anyone! Extractions and all kinds of surgeries were done with no anesthesia! English didn’t even have the word “anesthesia” until 1846! The only word they had for pain relief up ‘til then was, “YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!”
The reason was that doctors thought pain was good. All the screaming encouraged them to work faster (seriously!) and they thought it was a sign the body was fighting back and healing!
Pain is really a gift from God. Pain in your mouth tells you something about your tooth. Pain in your heart tells you something about yourself. Pain in your friend’s heart because you are going through a hard time tells you something about love.
Heaven will be the place where there will be no more tears or pain. But somehow, it isn’t yet. Jesus feels and shares all your tears, hurts and pain.
It would mean the world to someone to know that you hurt when they hurt. Two girls, Yaguine Koita, age fourteen and Fode Tounkara, age fifteen, were found frozen to death in the landing gear bay of a Belgian airliner, where they, so desperate for a better life, had tried to hide and escape Guinea, their country. They wrote this note in case they didn’t survive…
“We suffer enormously in Africa. Help us. We have problems in Africa. We lack rights as children. We have war and sickness. We lack food…We want to study, and we ask you to help us so we can be like you, in Africa.”
What it would’ve meant to know that someone somewhere knew…and cared…and shed a tear. Or many.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” (Romans 12.15)
Or as the Message puts it, “Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down.”
Hope you have a joy-filled day! But if someone needs a hug from you, give it! If someone needs a “listen” from you, do it. If someone needs a tear from you, shed it!
That WILL make it an awesome day! For them!
And for you!
A Note from Tom: October 20th, 2010
Hey, everyone!
Hope this Thursday is starting out praise-filled and thankfulness-filled (“thankfulllness-filled” may not actually be an English word…but it outta be!)…Before we get to the news, at least we have an awesome weather forecast for today! “…Plenty of sunshine returns with comfortable temperatures in the lower 70s. Overnight lows will be colder near 40 degrees each night!...The weather this weekend calls for very mild temperatures in the middle to upper 70s…”
Mid to upper 70’s for the weekend! Perfect! Especially since it’s predicting the weather and not the score of the Alabama game!
And now (finally!), we got some good economic news this morning!
“What!? I didn’t see any!!”
Oh, I know! I didn’t find it on CNN… The news is that economic growth is so sluggish that it’s like a…well, a giant slug! Unemployed are almost one in ten... The economic rebound is not bouncing as high as hoped. The future might not be so smooth for the bank we go to. But I’m not talking about something you’ll read in the Wall Street Journal, the News Sentinel, or on CNN.com. I saw this news flash just this morning in the Letter to the Hebrews. Check this out…
Breaking news…
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. "So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" (Heb 12.5-6)
And then this…
“God is my shepherd! I don’t need a thing!” (Psalm 23)
“Well, what if you’re having trouble staying afloat, economically?”
Here’s this news report from Isaiah…
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you…”
“But what if inflation heats up?”
“…When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43)
“But what about the consumer index and what it indicates about the health of our economy?”
Don’t know ‘bout all that, but we can know this f’r sure…(take a minute, along with a deep breath, and read these words to yourself…aloud if you can)
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…
Here’s how the Message puts those words…
“Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds…walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
“"If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6)
Now THAT’S what I call news! Good news!! It’s what the Message calls, “absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you!” ( 2 Pet. 1.4)
There’s no way we could ever thank God enough for promises like those in times like these!
And here’s one more…
Y’know how they say, “Offer good while supplies last”? His supply will never run dry! Check this out!
“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.!” (Phil 4.19)
I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout consumer price indexes, but my prediction is that if you invest (some time with Jesus) in these promises, your believers peace index should increase 187 points by noon today…or more!
That’s the weather and your financial report.
A Note from Tom: October 15th, 2010
Hey, everyone!!
Hope you’re having an awesome, beautiful, praise-filled day! Today, we are…
What?!
You’re not having an awesome day? What’s up? Having problems you didn’t anticipate?
Bummer.
Probably wouldn’t help to let you know that it could be worse.
But it could be.
I was telling the dudes at the jail that one guy said that the way he makes it through tough times is to always remember that “it could be worse!...”
“When I’m having a tough time at work with the boss, I just remember…it could be worse! When I’m criticized for things I do and don’t feel appreciated, I just remember…it could be worse! When I feel like my car’s not as shiny and/or new as someone’s I know (who doesn’t work as hard as me!) I just remember…it could be worse! When I feel I don’t make as much as I should, I just think…it could be worse! Sometimes I wake up in the morning, look over at the Mrs. sleeping there, and remember…!”
Speakin’ of…
I was reading the Book of Job the other day and…it really couldn’t have been worse! You know the story of all the million terrible things that happened to him because (he didn’t know this of course!) God was showing Satan what faithful people are like. Job had a lot of “consternation” (as they used to call it) but he never lost his trust in God. He did express plenty of anguish, however. And one point he said, “Why did God give me life if I’m always going to hedged in? There’s this hedge around me and I can’t get around it!” (3.23)
“…I just wish God wouldn’t pay so much attention to me! Every morning You just…watch me! Will You NEVER look away? And leave me alone…even for a second?!” (7 17-19)
Nope.
And you wouldn’t want it any other way!
Y’know that hedge that’s got you so flustered? In chapter one, Satan, the “father of lies”, said one true thing. “God, You’ve put a hedge around Job! And because of it, nothing happens top him that you don’t permit! Because of that dang hedge, I can’t do a thing to him if You don’t give me permission! It’s humiliating!”
Job was right! He was hedged in! By his heavenly Dad! For his safety and protection! And if anything got through it, it was because, for His own wise reasons and for Job’s ultimate good, the Father allowed it!
Job, do you really want God to look away from you? Think about it. He’s not just watching you. He’s watching OVER you!
The other day at the ol’ jailhouse, Lee led the guys in singing the most beautiful song…
“I lift my eyes up to the hills.
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord…
He is watching over you, even while you dream!
He is taking care of you.
He never falls asleep…”
“Guys, did you know that God watches you all night? He never gets tired.
Better than that…He never gets tired…of you! He watches over you and never gets tired of what He sees when He sees you!”
“Mmmmm…”, they said.
Got that right!
A Note from Tom: October 1st, 2010
Hey, everyone!
Can’t wait to get to this email ‘cause I have a hilarious story to tell y’all! But before I do, I just want to wish you a day full of joy! Just a joy-filled day!
Really!
I really mean it!
I realized the other day that I almost always start these emails out with those words…”Hope your day is filled with joy and praise!...”
But there’s NOTHING more important than that! I learned this from an unlikely teacher…especially if you’ve ever seen a picture of him! Remember Jonathan Edwards? Y’know…the ”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” dude from high Western Civ…If your text book had his picture, you wouldn’t forget it! Talk about grim!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody smiled for pictures back then! Maybe it’s because it’s too tiring to keep the corners of your face turned up for the fourteen hours it takes to paint it. Maybe dentists didn’t have it together yet. But pretty much everyone was sour-looking back in the day.
Problem is…we grew up thinking Mr. Edwards’ heart was as dour as his face. Not true!
Sure, he could preach a heated sermon on occasion, but most of his talks were about the beauty of the grace of our God…love (ever read his sermon, “Heaven is a World of Love”? Wow!)…and joy!
You’d never know it, but that ol’ Puritan looooved chocolate! Once he wrote to a friend to remind him to not forget some on his trip to the Edwards home…” If you will bring what chocolate remains, you will much oblige your humble servant."
And he loved joy even more! It’s why he loved Jesus!
He said over and over that joy is the most essential heart ingredient for a healthy vital faith!
"It would be worth the while to be a Christian, if it were only for the pleasantness of it…it begets love and peace, good will one towards another, brotherly kindness, mutual benevolence, bounty and a feeling of each other's welfare…it sweetens" the fellowship of those who believe!”
He first felt this “sweetness” the day he opened his heart to Jesus. "My soul," he reminisced, "was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in him."
He believed that knowing and loving Jesus was the most pleasurable thing the heart can know, and our number one duty is “seeking our highest pleasure”
“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here…”
Wow! How could a guy with a heart like that look so grumpy? Maybe the painter was the grumpy one! Maybe he just didn’t believe a person should be as happy as Jonathan!
The very Apostle Paul felt the same joyous way! He told the Corinthians that he was a “worker for their joy” Not the “head pastor”, “youth pastor” or the “small groups pastor”, but the “joy pastor” was his job title!
He told the Philippians that his only reason for not going to Heaven immediately was so they could have more joy in Jesus! (Phil. 1.25)
His prayer was for joy (Rom 15.13)
The Kingdom is about joy (Rom 14.17)
The fruit of the Spirit is joy (Gal 5.22)
Joy! Apparently there’s nothing more important!
So, as I was saying… I hope you have a joy-filled day!
Oops! With all that, I don’t have time for my hilarious story…Oh, well. Probably wasn’t that funny. And these verses will give you more joy than a joke would, anyway!
A Note from Tom: September 25th
Hey, everyone!!
Hope you’re having an awesome week! If you’re not, here’s an old idea fer ya…”If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness, they would tell you to make it a rule to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity befalls you, if you can thank and praise God for it, you will turn it into a blessing!” (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life -1728)
There ya go!
Speaking of thankful…I was super thankful that Tina got to come with me on my trip to Espana!! We had a blast(!) together!! And I realized something this trip. Usually, when I have to go on a trip, I’m kind of a little bit freaked out, nervous, and squirrely before I go. Sometimes a little bit more than “a little bit”. Lee says it’s for the same amount of time I’ll be gone. If I’m going away for three days, I’m nutty for three days before. If it’s a week, the week before I’m a bit of a nervous wreck. I’ve never understood it and always thought it was some kind of “spiritual battle” or sumpthin. Now I know what causes it.
I don’t like leaving that girl of mine!
‘Cause this time it didn’t happen!
Lee asked me before our trip, “Are you OK with this trip to Spain?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well I haven’t heard you cry and freak out ‘bout anything. It’s weird.”
“Huh. Hadn’t thought about it. Come to think of it, I’m not nervous at all about it. Wonder why…”
Then a bulb went on. We both knew why!
“It’s because Tina’s going!”
That’s what I’ve freaked out about all these years! It’s not a plane ride 37,000’ above the earth, weird food or sleeping with mice! It’s that…I don’t like leaving her!
Besides being cute and my best friend of all time…she has a way of trusting God, hugging the discouraged, laughing through the day, and crying at just the right moment with the heavy-hearted that makes me stronger. She just helps me trust God more.
Kinda like Jonathan. David was super discouraged and “Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God…” (1 Sam 23.17) Actually, in the Hebrew language, it says that he helped David “strengthen his hand in God”…hold on just a little tighter to Him!
That’s a friend!
Later on, when his pal wasn’t with him, David was really upset. But he’d learned to think like his buddy… “David was greatly distressed …but David found strength in the LORD his God…” (30.6) He “strengthened his own hand in God”
(By the way…we have guys that meet on Saturday mornings at 7:00 and it’s pretty much what we do. We get together to “help each other find strength in God.” …Need some? C’mon!)
Maybe if I have to go next time without her, I’ll be mature enough to find my own strength in God.
Maybe.
But it’ll still be better with her!
The only downside to having Tina on the trip was that I almost missed my favorite moment of my trips. That’s when I land in K-town and come through that revolving glass “arrivals” door there at McGhee Tyson and she’s waiting for me to get home! I’m always looking for that cute face!! But as Foghorn Leghorn would say…”I almo…I say, I almost” missed my favorite moment! But…this time, I had to wait on a bag we had to check at the airplane door so Tina said she’d go out and wait on me and pretend I was just getting home after 11 days away!
“There you are! You’re home!”
It wasn’t quite the same, but I was still happy to see that face after seven minutes!
A Note from Tom: September 16th
Hey, everyone!!!
Well, we’re back!! We had a super amazing time in Espana!! It’d take forever to tell y’all about it! I’m feeling kinda of weird because I’m really pumped about all the things that happened but we didn’t sleep tons and we’re really jet lagged! So, on the one hand, my mind is racing with all the thoughts and memories I’m trying to sort out, and on the other hand…uh…other foot…uh, I mean…other… oth…
Zzz…zzzz…zzzzz…zzzzzzzz…zzzzzzz…zzzzzzz…zzzzzzz…zzzzzz…zzzzzzz…zzzzzz…zzzzzzzzz…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…zzzzz…
Huh?! What!?
Opps. Sorry.
You know, one thing that kind of impressed me was that, spending a week waaaaayyyy in the northwest corner of Spain, in a tiny farming village of Ligonde, a town with more cows than people, we were really cut off from the rest of the world! We didn’t have TV. Needless to say, in a village where cows walk in and out of humans’ homes, they ain’t got no WIFI thar! Cell phones don’t have coverage in Ligonde, either. One guy had his iphone and it kinda worked…barely. So we were completely “out of the loop” news-wise.
We had no clue about what was happening in the world or at home. Folks were upset about things we didn’t know were even going on! We had no idea a church was being stupid and hateful in Florida. We didn’t know the Vols hung with Oregon for most of a half…and then got spanked! We didn’t know the ‘Cats are off to a less-than-awesome start. We didn’t think once about whether or not the economic recovery has fizzled out. We didn’t know the NFL season started.
Because we just didn’t know about them, things that had tons of people upset didn’t bother us a bit.
In Revelation 4, it says that before the Throne in Heaven, “there is a sea as smooth as glass”
When there are storms blowing and howling here, before Him, the waters are as calm as glass.
But we know some news you might not know about.
Did you know…
…there is a 20-something girl from Hungary named Reka, who walked for a month across northern Spain because she was trying to open her heart to the spiritual things of life? She’s home now, with the Gospel of John to read, and a message in her memory that she had never heard before.
Did you know…
…that a 70-something dude named Tito, from Argentina, walked for weeks in Spain with his best friend from high school, Marzio, who has lived in Italy since their college days? They’ve kept their friendship alive by writing years and years of letters! They both took home a book written by a guy named John about his best friend, Jesus…a Friend John hadn’t seen in years but Whom he was planning to spend forever with.
Did you know that during a week when the news in the States was filled with stories about people who say they believe in Jesus, but are full of hate and malice…about 70 people from nine countries…from South America, to Europe, to Africa, to even the North Pole…ate dinner and spent the night in an old, old farm house and went on their way knowing that people who love Jesus, love people?
Well, that’s the news from Spain!
A Note from Tom: September 2nd
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having (check. did that.) an awesome, beautiful, praise-filled (yup. check.) day! Ours is a little hectic but (yeah. check that.) we’re pumped about leaving today for Madrid and then (check.) on to Ligonde in Galicia and the Camino de Santiago! (check. Can’t forget that!)
We’ll be having a little retreat for the (check. Uh huh.) Young Life Madrid team on Friday and (check.) Saturday and then we all hop on the highway to go reach out to people from all over the (check. glad we remembered that.) world!
But today I just have a second to write this because (check.) we’re trying to get our check list all done! Stuff like…
Do the last laundry stuff (check.)
Get our passports (check.)
Buy coffee to take (check.)
Do we have enough underwear? (‘scuse me. check.)
Figure out how many books I can take (check. Maybe re-check.)
Ibuprofen? (check.)
Farm animals squared away (check.)
Go to the bank (check.)
Thank everyone for making it possible for us to go…
Oh yeah…
There are not words to thank you all for encouraging us and helping us both spend these eleven days in Spain! We’re going to swat a lot of flies, step around (sometimes in!) what the cows of Ligonde walk away from, but we’re going to serve, talk to, and share with a whooollleee lot of people from a lot of countries! And a lot of them will be a lot more open to talking about Jesus than they would have dreamed. We are sooooo thankful to be sent by you! Y’all know how at Triple C, we just trust God for all we need, and nobody knows who gives what. It’s awesome to just trust God and watch Him work! Only problem is that we never know who to thank for giving to C3! All I know is that generosity is the heart of Triple C! And the hearts at C3 are sooo generous to give to Him!! Thank you all for helping us with our trip of sharing Jesus and encouraging those who love and serve Him with Young Life there!!!
Thank you with all our heart!! Pray for us! See y’all week after next!
(check.)
Oh, yeah…toothbrush!!
(check.)
A Note from Tom: August 27th
Hola, everyone!
Opps! Sorry! I’ve been practicing my stumbling Spanish lately…meant to say, “Hey, everyone!”
I need to figure out how to say a good ol’ Rocky Top “Hey!” in a bunch of languages before Thursday! Tina and I are going to Spain to have a retreat with the awesome Young Life team in Madrid, including Jim and Barb McNamee (it’s AMAZING how many times, when someone is telling their story of how they came to Jesus, those two names pop up in the telling of it! God has used them all over!)
…and including our own Kate Sanders, who has been reaching high school and middle school kids both here and there for years now! (Almost sounds like a Dr. Seuss book! “…Both there and here, and here and there, Kate’s kids are everywhere!”).
After a couple of days of encouraging each other, we’ll be hopping in cars and heading north…to Galicia in northwest Spain to run a sorta “B ‘n B” or “hostel” (as they call ‘em) along the “Camino de Santiago” or “St. James Way”. It’s a pilgrimage more than 100,000 people do every year…walking and hiking for hundreds of miles (minimum for a certificate is about a hundred) ‘til they reach the cathedral of Santiago de Campostela, about fifty miles past where we’ll be. Tons of people do it just to get away from their Blackberries and laptops to seek some sense of peace from their normal, rush-y, push-y noise-y lives. Our job is to greet them along the way, open our house to fifteen to twenty a night, serve them a delicious dinner, and talk all day about Jesus to whoever’s up for that.
And there’ll be a lot of those!
We’ll talk to hundreds of people from all over the world who are hungry for a smile and some encouragement…as well as Barb’s delicious pasta! Last year we met folks from thirty seven countries in a week!
That’s why I’m working on my greetings.
I’m good with the “Buenos dias!” and the “Bon jour!”. I can even throw out a “Guten Morgen!” when I have to. But what if someone from Itbayaten comes down the road? How am I gonna remember, “Kapian ka pa nu Dios aschapanderak…y’all!” ?
And the Kalaallisut people in Greenland say, “Unuugujoq!”…Wow!
Kwakiutl folks in British Columbia greet each other with “Gilakas'la!”
Thankfully, they also say, “Yoyo!”
Sounds kinda Hip-hop…”Yo! Yoyo!”
One of the most amazing things about this coming week is that we would have to travel all over our world to speak to so many people from so many countries! If we had to travel to all the countries everybody that we’ll meet comes from, we’d wind up in ICU with critical jetlag! Instead, all we do is sit there by the road that passes through Ligonde…and they come walking down the road to us!
It almost feels like cheating!
Which reminds me…
Ever felt like you wish you had someone to talk with about the stuff going on in your life? Ever wish you knew where you could go to find someone who would care enough to pray about a struggle you’re having?...Or listen to a story of something cool that happened to you? …Or find someone who just wanted to spend an hour hanging out with you? Where would you have to travel to find that person?
Try this. Go up to 100 Ogden Rd on Sunday morning. Get there about 9:25. Go into where we worship. Go up to the front and just sit there. Or go into the room just to the left of the big room. At 9:25 there won’t be anyone in there. Just go in and sit down. Or go into the room next to that room…the one on the end opposite the nursery.
9:25 am.
Sit down.
Pretty soon, people will start walking in. Before long, a bunch of folks will walk into those places and sit by you. You don’t have to go looking for them. They’ll just come walking in there. It’s called a “Community Group”. People come there because they want to be together. They want to be friends in Christ. They want to hear each other’s stories…including yours. They want o pray for each other’s problems. Including yours. They want to grow together…with you. You don’t have to look for all those people. You just sit there and they come walking down the sidewalk and into the room.
It almost feels like cheating.
But it’s just the family of God.
Join in!
Bye for now!
Or as they say in Mexico…Hasta la vista!...
Or in France au revoir!...
Or in Italy…Arrivederci! Ciao!...
Or in Germany… auf Wiedersehen…
Or in Korea…ahn nyung hee ka se yo!...
Or in Poland…do widzenia!...
Or in Lithuania…iki pasimatymo!...
Or in…
A Note from Tom: August 6th
Mornin’, everyone!!
It’s 6:13 in the am…
Wow!
Sun’s coming up…The birds are chirping…Down here in Oliver Springs, I’m looking out over fields and cows with coffee in my hands…Ahhhh! My favorite morning smell!
Not cows! Coffee!
I always like coffee better at my house on my porch than at Starbuck’s or wherever.
And if I haven’t had my coffee yet, I can’t face all those questions they ask you at Starbuck’s!
Like when you order your double caffe mocha frappucino or your iced espresso misto Americano (it’s too early for all those choices!), they ask, “What name should we put on this order?”
Not only do some people have trouble remembering their name before they’re sufficiently caffeinated, but some people, especially from other countries, have complicated names that can create traffic jams in the line.
The other day on the radio, a girl in New York City named Shefali Kulkarni, was saying that when they ask her what name they should put on her order, and she answers, “Shefali”, they go, “What?! How do you say it?”
She says it.
“How do you spell it?”
“S-h-e-f-a-l-i”.
“Could you do that again?”
“Could you people hurry up?”, the folks in line begin to mumble (we’re in New York remember)…
So she came up with a simpler name just for Starbucks.
“What name on the order, Ma’am?”
“Sheila.”
No questions.
No waiting.
No complaining down the line.
Shefali calls “Sheila” her “coffee name”
She said that she noticed that a lot of people from other countries have coffee names.
When they ask, “What name for the order?”, instead of “Gulliermo”…or “Bohuslava”…or “Evdokia”…she heard names like “Sue” or “Tom” or “Jill”.
I just wondered what it was like the first time Shefali was in Starbucks with their friends…or her mom…and she got up when they called “Sheila?”
“Sheila?”
“It’s my ‘coffee name’…Don’t ask.”
Did you know Jesus has a name for you? Listen to this…“I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it…”(Rev 2.17
He has a special name for you. It’s not because your real name is hard to say or spell. He called someone “Hephzabah” in the Old Testament. That’s harder to spell than “Shefali”.
It’s just a name that says something special that He sees in you…something special that you mean to Him. Most of your life of walking with Him in this world is learning to see yourself in the special way He sees you.
Learning His name for you.
And when we’re all together in Heaven and He calls that name…and you answer Him…and your friends say, “What?! Why’d He call you that?!”
…just tell ‘em, “It’s the name He used to call me to wake up my heart in the morning…It’s kinda my coffee name”
A Note from Tom: July 30th
Hey, everyone!
Hope this is an awesome, praised-filled day! After a couple of years of doing Bible study at the Anderson County Detention Center, I’m thinking…if you had anything other than a pimento cheese sandwich for lunch…and you were somewhere where you could see that the sun was actually shining outside,…and if you were wearing clothes that had more than one color, top and bottom, and if you were wearing something that you haven’t been wearing for the last three days…those are GREAT reasons to praise the Lord!
Y’know, this morning I was leaving the house really early for something and I switched on the news really quick to find out what the weather would be for today (I watch channel 10 when I can…Todd’s my weather homeboy!) and before the news and weather, there was a commercial on telling me and everyone in the viewing audience, to go out and buy a new Lexus today, along with how we could get good financing on it. After thinking about it, I realized that if the person (you couldn’t see him…you just heard his voice) was talking at that volume in a room of people, it would probably be classified as yelling. Right after he was done, another kinda “yell-y” person was telling us to go to a certain restaurant and buy a lot of food “smothered in butter and sizzling bacon.” I thought, “Y’know, it’s only 6:07 in the morning and already a person who doesn’t know most of us in the viewing audience has told us to go $37,000 in debt and another person who doesn’t really know who might or might not have heart problems and/or cholesterol issues, has told us to just forget about all that, come to his restaurant and send our LDL cholesterol numbers through the sun-roof of our new Lexus!
Man!
It just seemed kinda pushy and bossy for so early in the a.m., if you know what I mean! So far, I’ve made it through the day without doing either one of those things…
It made me stop and think about a verse in Isaiah…It’s about Jesus, written seven hundred years before He was born in Bethlehem. Listen…
“The Sovereign LORD…wakens me morning by morning. He wakens my ear to listen like one being taught…” (Isaiah 50)
It’s so awesome to think of Jesus’ heart! A heart to please the Father with every beat and every breath! The heart of One who woke up each morning, opening His ears to the Father’s voice as soon as He opened His eyes to the new day…
In Mark’s first chapter, after a night’s sleep following an unbelievably busy day of healing the sick and freeing the oppressed, Jesus’ guys woke up and couldn’t find Him. They might have panicked for a minute, but by then they should have known that He would be up “very early in the morning to find a solitary place” (1:35) to be alone with the Father...to share His heart…and to listen…”like One being taught.”
I think the Father can and will tell you what to do, if you’ll listen. If you really want to know. He won’t yell at you like they do on TV. But if you ask Him, “Father, I want to please your heart today. All day. Show me how my heart and my words and what I do, can please You”, He’ll let you know. Psalm 16 tells us, “I will praise the Lord Who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.”
Whatever He tells you to do won’t be bad for your cholesterol.
In fact, it’ll do your heart good!
A Note from Tom: July 23rd
Hey, everyone!
“Finally home!”
That’s how I felt on Wednesday after a couple of long days. We spent Monday driving to Chicago with all our awesome Triple C team, laughin’ and yakkin’ all day. Then Tuesday was doing that “Chicago thang” at the Bridge. All day Wednesday, I drove home. From the Windy City to Rocky Top in ten hours. I had to go home early because Emi and Graham were coming in and everyone was waiting to party at Mary and Ben’s when I arrived home…
“Finally home!”
Our brother and friend Dan Kuban is finally home! Dan had to “go home early” after two years of walking with God through cancer’s struggles. There was a humongous party waiting for him when he finally arrived home!
Dan was (and is…more than ever!) a person who was (and is…more than ever!) soooo totally devoted to loving Jesus with all the fullness of his heart. Because of that, he loooved being “out there”…where hearts were hurting and tears were flowing…where people are the poorest and the need is the greatest… sharing the love of Jesus with those who need Him and know it. He loved being in those places! He loved those places because he loved people so much with the love he had for Jesus…and from Jesus.
Wow!
Dan was like…
…those guys in the Gospels who first followed Jesus. I could just see him with those dudes! Read those stories. Y’all who knew him…can’t you picture him in the middle of all that?
…jumpin’ out of the boat and doing a back flip on the beach, the day they decided to leave their nets and follow Him full-time…
…shoutin’ and high fivin’ the others when Jesus stopped a funeral and gave a woman her son back…
…walking breadbaskets of miracle loaves to the five thousand scattered on the hill, praising and laughing, and hugging hungry kids as he worked …
…risking his life in Jerusalem streets, telling any who would listen that Jesus is risen and alive! And that he knew it was true!
Dan knew it was true.
To me, he was so much like those first followers!
He was as close as you get in our times, to being one of them!
On Thursday…at the party…they told him so!
We love and miss you, brother!
A Note from Tom: July 16th
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re planning on an awesome weekend even though it might be wetter than you’d hoped…
Here’s what’s up, weather-wise, according to Todd the weather guy…
“Today: Hot and more humid with a high near 92 degrees. A chance for spotty afternoon storms returns late, with better chances tonight…Some storms that develop could be strong with gusty winds.
Tomorrow: Mostly cloudy with scattered showers & storms expected. (60% chance)…”
Yikes! That might mean that if you go somewhere, you might not look as “together” as you did when you left the house. You might be soggier than expected upon arrival!
Or, if you were doing something outside, you might have to change your plans altogether. A cookout isn’t as cool when the burgers and buns are wet. At least wet hot dogs don’t smell as bad as wet real dogs do!
But, we REALLY need INCHES of water to fall out of the sky!! We’re about 5 ½“ down for the year! Last week we were over 8” short, rain-wise! Remember two summers ago when we were over a foot short on rain? The flowers were all wilted. My grass was totally dried up…crunchy! That’s the worst! The best defense against weeds in your yard is really good growing grass! I don’t believe in Darwinism, but if I did, it’d be dandelions that would convince me! Those dudes out survive everything!! Grass was dead, and dandelions rockin’ it in my face! The tomatoes were dried up and wrinkly. The lakes didn’t have high enough levels to give us the power we needed! It was a dusty crisis!!
Even tho’ you might have to change your plans because of the rain…
and if you get caught in it, you might look different soaked than you do dry…
we need rain for beautiful things to grow…for nutritious things to eat…for power to run your house and your life.
I read the coolest Scripture this morning. Psalm 72 is all about the Messiah, the coming King of all the world…our Jesus! It says of Him…
“Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
…He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations.
He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth…For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.”
Jesus…like the rain…Wow!
I love the way the Bible says you can just go to Jesus and say, “You’re my King! Help me!”…”And He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.”
The answer isn’t always try to study the Bible more…or find someone to give you the advice you need. Sometimes you know all you need to know. Or as much as anyone else knows. Sometimes you just have to say, “Jesus! You’re my King! I’ll do whatever you say, but…Help!”
Like 2 Thessalonians 2…”May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”
“Lord Jesus! I know the verses I need to know…I’ve done everything I can, but I’m still discouraged! Encourage me! Give me more strength than I presently have! Give me Yours, Jesus!”
“For beautiful and nutritious things to grow…for the power to make it…rain it down on me!”
If you call on Him to directly help you, in the end you might not look the way you did at the beginning of the day…you might even have to change your plans…
But the chance of rain?...
100%!
Let it pour!
A Note from Tom: July 9th
Hey, everyone!
Or as they say in the mother country, “Top o’ th’ mornin’ t’ ya, mates!”
Just happened to be thinking about the Brits this morning because I heard yesterday that they have calculated that in order for the English to have their Queen (and pay for all the other “royals”…and pay for Buckingham Palace…and for all the horses and carriage upkeep…and pay those stiff guard dudes with the tall, fuzzy hats…and for everything else it takes to have a monarchy), it cost per person per year a total of …94 cents!
Wow!
That’s a deal, if you ask me! If you have to have a queen and all, it’s better to have one who’s a bargain! The royal family costs 38,200,000 pounds last year (comes out to about $58 mill) but the Queen threw in about 6.5 million pounds of her own to make it all come out even!
And think about what they get for less than a dollar a year!
I know some think the royal fam should have gone the way of colonization and a king having eight wives. The BBC recently asked readers what they thought of still having a queen in Buckingham Palace in the 21st century.
One dude wrote in…
“What does the royal family do, exactly? Not much from where I'm sitting. I understand they get a good hourly rate, though.”
Dave, UK
But others say that it’s cool to have someone who gives you a link to the glory days of the Empire. Plus, lots of people work for the Royals, polishing doorknockers and scooping horse stuff, which helps the economy. AND…the royal family is a big tourism thing. Surely they make more pounds off tourism than 94 cents a year!!
I vote (not that I get one)…keep it! It’s cool.
Ever wonder how much it would cost for you to have a king?
For Jesus to be your King, it doesn’t really cost anything!
He said, “Come to me all you who are weary and weighed down…” Just come. That’s all it costs.
But when you really come to Him, you find that He is moving. And you have to decide if you want to follow the King where He’s going. And He said that THAT will cost you! “If anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. (Matthew 16. 24)
It will cost you a cross to your dreams, your plans, yourself. It will cost you everything.
So what if you don’t think it’s a good deal? What if you think that’s too much to pay to have a King? What if you don’t think you can afford it?
Jesus said that you can’t afford not to follow Him.
He said that if you try to keep yourself for yourself and not let Him rule you, it will cost you more than you want to pay. It will cost you your life!
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matt 16.25)
If you don’t let Him have it all…you’ll pay more than you ever imagined!
It will cost you…
…the joy you could have had and didn’t.
…the struggles you could have avoided but didn’t.
…the time you shouldn’t have wasted, but did.
…the good you could’ve done, but didn’t.
…the friends you could’ve made but didn’t.
…the changes you could’ve known, but didn’t.
I guess the Brits have to decide if 94c is too much to have a Queen.
You can’t afford to not have Jesus be your King!
A Note from Tom: July 2nd
Hey, everyone!!
Hope this is one of the best weeks of your life! Actually, that’s a saying they use in Young Life when high school kids go to Young Life camp. They always promise “the best week of your life!” Usually is. But every day has awesome stuff in that God has for us…and every week is part of a beautiful plan He is working out to make you into the special “You” only you could ever be…and every day you can ask our Lord to do special stuff for you, and when He answers you, you can say, like the folks in Luke 5, “We have seen remarkable things today." So in some ways, the week you’re living is always the “best week of your life”!
Speaking of the best week of your week, it was an awesome one down at Sharp Top Cove last week! I got to go down and do some jobs to help out. I realized that the whole week I just wore shorts and t-shirts the whole time I don’t always get to work like that ‘cause sometimes…well, you know how it is…
But it was fun while it lasted! One T-shirt I have (NO idea where it came from!) says “Snowbird” on the front. Apparently, it’s the #1 ski resort in America…top elevation is 11,000ft…gets 550” of snow each year…(whoever is responsible for Wikipedia knows everything about everything!)
Anyway, I’ve never been there and don’t know anything about Snowbird, Utah. I just have the T-shirt. One thing that was super cool about Sharp Top was how many CCC T-shirts you’d see during the week! The blue one with “Triple C” on the front was a common sight…The John Deere green one was around a lot. It was amazing how many folks from C3 know and care and love what Young Life does in reaching kids for the Kingdom of God!
In fact, one thing Young Life is kinda famous for is T-shirts! There’s one for every occasion and they sell them at the Sharp Top store. After kids had fallen in love with the place, you’d see a lot of new Sharp Top T’s around.
Sometimes kids would be wearing a Sharp Top t-shirt the way I worn my Snowbird one. I really don’t know what Snowbird is all about. And even though kids in their new Sharp Top shirts had ‘em on ‘cause they were there, some didn’t know what Sharp Top was all about. They thought it was about having a blast with your friends and screaming down monstrous zip lines into lake water and laughing your head off. But they were about to find out that Sharp Top’s really about kids hearing…some for the first time…about the God Who loves them more than they could dream, and Who would rather die than live without them! They were about to find out that it was all about them beginning a whole new life with Him if they wanted! They had the T-shirt, but at first didn’t know that Sharp Top was where everything was about to change forever.
But the ones in the Triple C T-shirts knew!
A note from Tom: June 18th
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having a day FULLLL of thanks, praise, and just…you know…a day that’s a happy one! “Cause we have a million reasons to be thankful all the time! If you just count all the stuff God has forgiven us for on a day-to-day basis, it comes out to an average of about a million reasons to be thankful per month! Plus, all day today, no matter where you go, in ways that go beyond our mind, according to the letter Paul wrote to the brothers and sisters who lived in Ephesus, you’re “seated already in heaven with Jesus”! I don’t fully understand what that means because it’s too awesome to comprehend! But I AM thankful to be sitting there!
Everything looks better from up here!
For all the reasons Jesus gives us to be thankful, we oughta be dancing down the hall at school, cart-wheelin’ out the door to work, and jumping on the desk, doing the tarantella when we get there! It oughta keep us up at night like Christmas eve used to do!
And yet, it takes amazingly little to put a kink in that dance step. The other day I had this jagged-y toenail that somehow was digging into his neighbor. I could feel it when I was walking down the street. Like every step. You know how it is…
…Step…”mmm”…step….”hmmm”…step…”yikes!”…step…”uuhhhh, I need to fix that”…step…”owww! That kinda hurts!”…step…”wonder if it’s bleeding”…step…”That’s gonna drive me NUTS!!”...step…”DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!!”...step…”HOWAMISUPPOSEDTONOT THINKABOUTIT!??”...step…
Just takes a toenail to dominate your thankfulness!
Last week, I was thinking about how little it takes to deflate my praise because I was reading some stuff by Joni Eareckson Tada., whose heart knows how to praise no matter what! Maybe you know who she is. You should. She is amazing! At seventeen, she broke her neck, diving into a too shallow Chesapeake Bay. She’s been a quadriplegic in a wheelchair since ’67. At the beginning, she didn’t know how…or, if…she could make it through each day. Her desperation prayer…”Lord, if I can’t die, help me to live!!”
Wow! Has she ever!! She learned to paint with a brush between her teeth… she’s written 35 books (which rock!)…“Joni and Friends”, her international ministry to the disabled, has served thousands in hundreds of countries…and her radio program is heard on 1000 stations! She’s been on Presidential advisory boards and U. S. State Department commissions.
If a raggedy toenail messes with my thanks, what if you couldn’t use your whole body below your head? Joni decided to praise Jesus!...No matter what!
The other day, I was reading something that she wrote about the first moments she’ll spend in Heaven, suddenly enjoying a new, WORKING, glorious body. She was reflecting on the first things she’ll do… things she hasn’t been able to do from her wheelchair all these years. “Will I dance like I haven’t in forever? Will I jump up and down and then leap into my Savior’s arms? ”, she wondered. And then she mentioned a conference she attended. The speaker asked everyone at the end of his talk, to slip out of their chairs and quietly kneel on the floor in a few moments of worship. She said that as she looked over the room, the only one sitting upright in her chair she couldn’t abandon, she wept. Not for loneliness of being the only one excluded from adoration’s posture, but for the beauty of a room full of kneeling.
“The first thing I’ll do when I have a body that is made new won’t be running, or jumping, or dancing. The first thing I’ll do when I see Him is…kneel.”
Me. too.
A note from Tom: June 11th
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having an “APFF” so far! (“awesome, praise-filled Friday”)…It’s gonna be a hot one! I remember once the weather guy saying, “The atmosphere is going to be hot and unstable today”, and the guy who reports the traffic conditions said, “Hey! That sounds like my first wife!” Anywhoooo…
Speaking of hot, here’s something that may be hotter than you realized…”Georging”!
“Huh?!”
Yeah…georging!
“What on earth is georging?”
Glad you asked! (Otherwise this email would be basically over…)
“Georging” is when people (“georgers”) write “wheresgeorge.com” (as in, “Where’s George?”…as in George Washington’s face on the $1 bill)) on dollar bills, and other people who receive that bill go to wheresgeorge.com, enter the serial number of the bill at the web site and you can find out everywhere that dollar’s been in it’s circulatory “life”.
“Who cares?”
Thanks fer askin’, again! Apparently a lotta people do. 3.2 million have done it and “…as of May 31, 2010, Where's George? is tracking 172,819,383 bills totaling more than $934,977,706!” One pizza delivery guy has registered over 130,000 $1 bills by himself! The furthest one ever went in its travels is 14,000 miles from Springfield, IL (Lincoln’s home…shoulda been a $5!) to Samoa to Oregon!
George gets around!
Y’know, after reading all that, I just started thinking the other day…you all at CCC are soooo faithful to give to God and to His work here at CCC!! It is sooo beautiful to watch how He puts it on the hearts of sooo many to be sooo faithful in giving!
Here’s what Paul told the Philippians about their giving to God’s work:
“I have received…the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering… pleasing to God.”
In other words, the way you give…mmmm! Sure smells good!
But I was thinking in a “georging” kinda way…about where the money you give, goes. Where does it travel?…
Some of the “Georges” you give to the work at CCC will be on their way to Sharp Top Cove in Georgia, later next week! Young Life of Oak Ridge and Clinton is taking 50some kids to Young Life camp! Many of the kids who are going, LOVE Jesus! But many who are going, don’t know Him yet. I know many kids will come to know Christ this week! Y’all help Young Life happen in Anderson County!
Some of your “georges” go to India to support Indian evangelists who travel on bikes to villages where Jesus’ name has never been spoken! They face hostility and threats but share His love week by week!
Some of your money goes to Chicago so Glen, Jane, Mike, Gloria, and Jed can share the love of Jesus to the “least of these” (as they love to say!) and help ex-offenders, addicts, and felons come to know the “love that passes all understanding”. And some of them went to a computer store to buy a computer for Jed so he can make and produce music to reach kids who love heavy, “screamo” music, and who can’t be reached any other way!
Some of your money goes to Spain so kids who live far from their homeland and extended family can come to know the One who never changes in their uncertain and constantly changing world.
Some goes to Missouri so Bill, after years of serving Jesus all over, can reach kids where he grew up, and fulfill the words of Jesus…”"Go home and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."
Some goes to France so Bible studies and churches can begin in Alpine villages where people have never had a chance to really hear the Message in a way they can understand it.
Some goes to Africa so that kids without parents can have a safe, loving, Jesus-filled home in Tanzania, and so that five language groups can finally have some Scriptures in their own language!
Some goes to Italy so that people on the streets can have an encounter with the Message of Jesus and come to know “l’amore di Gesu’ che sorpassa ogni intendimento!”!
Someone told me that families at CCC probably support over 50 (!) kids through Compassion International around the world! Those 32 “georges” per month per child, are going all over the planet!
More incredibly amazing than that, is this! Jesus said that if you give to the poor, you have treasure in heaven! He said when you give, you store your treasure in Heaven! When you give…as you give…and because you give… so that others can eat, live, and know love in Jesus, your “georges” go to Heaven!
That’s travelin’! Try to bet that, all you “georgers” out there!
I thank God for y’all!
A note from Tom: June 3rd
Hey, everyone!!
hurhaad!
“Huh?!”
Oh…sorry. I was just using a little texting abbreviations. I said (in texting) “Hope you’re having an awesome day!”
Somehow there is this almost-a-language that has developed with everyone texting everyone else. It’s just quicker to shorten sentences by abbreviating everything! Like…
“tafn” means “That’s all for now!”
“tmb” means “text me back”
“@teotd” stands for “…at the end of the day”
“2g2bt” translates “too good to be true”.
“rotfl” is “rolling on the floor laughing” because somebody just said something that was omg (“Oh my gosh”) so hilarious that you just lol (“laugh out loud’). Otoh (“on the other hand”) it’s possible to say something ssinf (“so stupid it’s not funny”).
Obtw (“oh by the way”) I had to look these things up! I’m terrible at texting!
Lol!!
R u rotfl?
I wonder tho…
Bitd (“Back in the day”) when folks wrote out their whole thoughts from a full heart on curled up paper with pens they dipped in bottles of ink…
…did they say more? Did they say it more deeply? Did they think more about what they said and felt? Did they feel it more fully?
Are we losing something?
I was just thinking about this because I read a beautiful letter that the Prime Minister of England, William Pitt, wrote to his friend, William Wilberforce in 1784 after hearing that Wilberforce had become a very deep Christian (“an enthusiast”, they called it) and that there was the potential that the two friends might find themselves disagreeing on issues because of this. Here’s just a little of it…
“My dear Wilberforce,
…I am indeed too deeply interested in whatever concerns you not to be very sensibly affected by what has the appearance of being a new era in your life. As to any public conduct which your opinions may ever lead you to, I will not disguise to you that fewer things could go nearer my heart than to find myself differing from you essentially on any great principle.
I trust and believe that this is a circumstance which could hardly occur. But if it should, and even if I should experience as much pain in such an event, as I have found hitherto encouragement and pleasure in the reverse, believe me it is impossible that it should shake the sentiments of affection and friendship which I bear towards you…They are sentiments engraved on my heart, and will never be effaced or weakened…
Reflect, I beg of you, that no principles are the worse for being discussed, and believe me that at all events the full knowledge of the nature and extent of your opinions and intentions will be to me a lasting satisfaction.
Believe me, affectionately and unalterably yours,
W Pitt”
Basically, he was just saying, “You’ll always be my bff.”
But there’s something about saying it…writing it…telling someone what they mean to you.
The Apostle Paul wrote to some near his heart…”Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!” (Phil 4.1)
Twita! (“That’s what I’m talking about”)
I got a bunch of texts last week that I can’t remember. I got a hand-written note of encouragement (that I needed!) in the mail. I remember it! In fact I kept it!
Somebody need a note of encouragement from you?
Tafn (“that’s all for now’)
A note from Tom: May 27th
Hey, everyone!
Or as they say over in Germany, “Wo ist das Badezimmer!”
Wait a sec…that’s “Where is the bathroom?”…
…let’s see…uhhh…as they say over in Germany, “Frohe Weihnachten!”
Opps…that’s “Merry Christmas”…
Well, as I was saying over there, “Guten morgan! Sprechen Sie Englisch?”
Last week, helping out with new-staff training for MCYM (Military Community Youth Ministries, reaching kids of our military for Jesus on bases around the world) I woke up in a castle in the tiny village of Hurlach, which in next to Aichach-Friedberg, Fürstenfeldbruck, and Weilheim-Schongau (FYI… Sometimes German towns have names that are longer than the town is).
This castle belongs to a really cool mission group. They bought it as a place to prepare for, and rest from, sharing Jesus with athletes and fans during the Munich Olympics several years ago. The castle was built by the Fugger family in 1610. That’s…uhhh…let’s see…thirteen years before the pilgrims sat down to the first turkey in America. It was redone by the late (obviously!) Otto Freiherr von Schnurbein in 1898. He forgot to redo the central heat and air however! Castles are cool…until they’re cold. They lose some of their coolness at that point. That one kind of needs an “Extreme Maker-over, Castle Edition”. I can just see it…
“Gooooood morning, Von Schnurbein family!! Franz! Adalwolf! Egbert!
Gottfried!...”
The days before that, we were about two hours up the ol’ autobahn in the Garmisch region for a retreat for the whole MCYM staff. We were on a US military retreat center in the foothills of the German Alps. One thing I noticed about the Alps is…for a big as they are, you don’t see them much! I guess it’s because of the Alpine atmospheric conditions, with lowland air masses climbing the slopes, but the Alps are basically a fog-fest! The amazing, spectacular triple-peaks that the Garmisch-Partenkirchen region is famous for, were right behind us…towering over us…and we never saw them! An invisible wonder, wrapped in clouds! Until…
Sunday! The sun peeked…the clouds thinned and…BAM! Leutasch Dreitorspitze! The Alpine triplets! Amazing!! And you wouldn’t have known they were even there!
And they weren’t the only “invisible wonders”!
I meet a couple at the retreat. They are nearly sixty. A quiet, sweet, kind, gentle couple who work with high-schoolers on our base in Turkey. With all the dynamic young singles and couples, laughing, sharing, and singing through the week, you almost wouldn’t have noticed they were there. Since I was trying to get to know everyone. I sat down with these guys for dinner to hear their stories.
Then the fog lifted…BAM! Dave and Beth Kanelos are amazing!!
They’ve been in Turkey two years. Before that, they’ve done Young Life in inner city Chicago, with urban kids and gangs for twenty five years! They took kids from gangs to Young Life camps with one gang in the front of the bus, and one gang in back. They and their leaders sat in between! Dave accepted Jesus out of the ‘60’s Chicago rock music scene. When he plays YL club music, he wears that guitar out!! They are the coolest couple I’ve ever meet! And they’ve shared Jesus with America’s roughest, toughest kids for over two decades! I’m so honored to be considered their new friend!
A wonder of God. I almost didn’t notice they were there!
Maybe God is using you in a quiet way. Maybe no one knows that you are loving someone in a difficult situation. Maybe you pray quietly and God is answering you to change the unchangeable. Unseen. Unnoticed. Maybe you love, serve, and care for someone who is too old…or too young to say “Thank you, friend”. Or “Thank you, mom”.
Here’s a verse for you…
“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.” (Hebrews 6.10)
He sees. He knows. And one, the fog will lift…
BAM! What a wonder!!
Wundervoll!!