November 2019 – Tri-Valley Baptist Church

“THANKSLIVING: It’s better than THANKSGIVING!”

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Nov 242019

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “THANKSLIVING: It’s better than THANKSGIVING!” By: Ron Woodrum

I am not sure when, where, or who first used the term “thanksliving”. Peter Gomes, renowned preacher of Harvard University in the 20th Century, (though not one I am particularly able to embrace the theology he embraced), wrote that he had a friend who kept an old Sunday Bulletin from the 1930’s because of the misprint it contained. It was a bulletin printed for Thanksgiving Day Service-but a typographical error left the title on the bulletin exclaiming “Thanksliving Day”. Gomes said, “What a wonderful mistake! Thanksgiving, as an attitude, should lead to thanksliving as an action!” I was content to credit Rev. Gomes with being the author of such a magnificent metamorphosis: Thanksgiving to Thanksliving. Then, while reading a sermon by the Great Baptist Preacher of the 1800’s, Charles H. Spurgeon, I came across these words: “I think that it is better than Thanksgiving: Thanksliving! How is it to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual constant delighting ourselves in the Lord and by a submissing of our desires to His will!” That is the earliest reference that have found in reference to Thanksgiving/Thanksliving. John F. Kennedy, though not using the words, certainly expressed the concept. He wrote: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, (Thanksgiving), but to live by them, (Thanksliving)”. Then, in further study, I came across an even more profound definition of the Thanksgiving/Thanksliving connection. G.K. Chesterton wrote: “I would maintain that Thanks is the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted, or with gratitude!” Henry David Thoreau said: “My Thanksgiving is Perpetual”-that pithy affirmation translates thanksgiving into thanksliving. Clement of Alexandria, a Church Father from over 1900 years ago, said: “There is only one offering we can make to God-A Thankful Heart!”-that is the source of Thanksliving!

I love the Thanksgiving holiday! I love the Thanksgiving history! I agree with O’Henry-“Thanksgiving is ours-it is the only truly indigenous American Holiday”. I love Thanksgiving poems. One of my favorite is The Pumpkin, by John Greenleaf Whittier. But I think my favorite Thanksgiving prank was a St. Louis radio show host that told a call-in lady, (he was only joking), to try his special recipe of adding a cup of popcorn to the stuffing placed inside the turkey). She took him serious! She lost her oven and her turkey! He lost his job! My favorite Thanksgiving Story is told by Author/Pastor Chuck Swindoll. In his book Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back, in the chapter on “Misunderstanding”, he tells the story told him by a friend who had a friend who was a young attorney in a sizable law firm in Texas. Swindoll says, “This young lawyer worked for a traditional kind of boss who had a thing for Thanksgiving. Every year the boss would go through a sort of ritual; at this large walnut table he would place a series of turkeys for each member in the law firm. It was not just a pick one up if you need one kind of arrangement. It was a formal setting where your turkey would be placed in front of you, and when the time came for you to receive yours, you would step forward to your turkey, express how grateful you were to work for the firm and acknowledge the gift of this sizable bird for your Thanksgiving. But this junior lawyer was single. He had no use for such a large turkey. He didn’t know how to cook one, and if he did, he certainly couldn’t eat that much meat. But every year, because it was expected, he received his turkey with gratitude, and then had to find a taker for his bird. This year, his friends had pulled a trick on him. They replaced his turkey, with a paper mache’ bird, loaded with lead, and wrapped just like the others!

When his turn came, just like the others, he stepped up and received his bird, (not realizing its bogus nature), and left the office with his Thanksgiving Turkey! He boarded the Transit System and headed home, with his bird on his lap. What would he do with it? As he contemplated his annual dilemma a man boarded the bus, and sat down in the vacant seat beside him. The man had recently been laid off, He had been job-hunting all day-no luck. As he shared his sad story with the young lawyer, the lawyer realized that his problem had been solved. This man, with no job, and a large family to feed for the holidays, would be a great candidate to give the turkey to. But not wanting to embarrass him, he offered the turkey for the bargain price of a couple of dollars, (which was the last bit of money the man had). As the man got off the bus, he thanked the lawyer for being so kind as to sell him the turkey at such a reduced price, to help him and his family have a blessed Thanksgiving. He told him-‘I’ll never forget you!’ Nothing could be more true! The stranger walked into his home and announced to his family that a nice man had made it possible for them to have turkey for Thanksgiving in spite of their recent circumstances! Imagine their surprise as they unwrapped the bogus bird only to find a strange conglomeration of paper mache and lead! The Monday, following the holidays, the rest of the firm was so anxious to hear about what the young lawyer thought of his Thanksgiving Turkey! You can only imagine their reaction when they heard that he had sold it, to the stranger in need, on the bus. Swindoll was told by his friend that the entire firm spent the next week searching the bus lines for the stranger who spent Thanksgiving wondering why a fine young lawyer would take his last two dollars and give him a fake turkey. They never found him!” That is a Thanksgiving experience all of us could be thankful to have never had happen to us! Let me conclude this perspective with one of the most powerful quotes I have ever come across on the Transforming power of a grateful heart. It is a quote by author Melody Beattie: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity; it can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow”. That Attitude of Gratitude Transforms Thanksgiving into Thanksliving!

“Encountering a Living Presence”

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Nov 172019

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE; “Encountering a Living Presence”. By: Ron Woodrum

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, told a very fascinating story about an encounter he had while getting his hair cut at a Barbershop. Listen to his words: “I was sitting in a barber chair when I was aware that a powerful personality had entered the room. A man had come quietly in upon the same errand as myself to have his hair cut and sat in the chair next to me. Every word that the man uttered, though it was not in the least bit didactic, showed a personal interest in the man who was serving him. And before I got through with what was being done to me I was aware I had attended an evangelistic service, because D.L Moody was in that chair. I purposely lingered in the room after he had left and noted the singular affect that his visit had brought upon the barber shop. They talked in undertones. They did not know his name, but they knew something had elevated their thoughts, and I felt that I left that place as I should have left a place of worship”… (John MacArthur, Matthew, p.236). That is Christian Influence! Do you and I carry a Living Presence of our Loving Lord’s Personality with us? The great Methodist preacher E. Stanley Jones says that “the number one problem of the modern Church today is irrelevancy!” We are not impacting lives as we should! The dynamic presence of our living Lord is notably absent from our lives! People see our lives…but there is nothing out of the ordinary to turn their heads. As Christians we must not settle for that. We need to walk in such a communion with our Lord that our lives turn heads and hearts for Him. Someone has written:

YOU ARE WRITING A GOSPEL

A CHAPTER EACH DAY

BY THE THINGS THAT YOU DO

BY THE WORDS THAT YOU SAY

MEN READ WHAT YOU WRITE

WHETHER FAITHLESS OR TRUE

SAY WHAT IS THE GOSPEL

ACCORDING TO YOU?

Edgar Guest has another poem entitled “The Living Sermon” He writes:

I’d rather see a sermon

than hear one any day

I’d rather you would walk with me

than merely tell the way

The eye’s a better pupil

and more willing than the ear.

Fine counsel is confusing

but example is always clear

The best of all the preachers

are men who live their creeds

For to see good put into action

is what everybody needs

The lecture you deliver

may be very wise and true

but I’d rather get my lesson

by observing what you do!

Eileen Guder chides Christians for not living passionate spiritual lives. She writes: “Live a bland life. Eat bland food. Avoid an ulcer. Drink no coffee, tea, or stimulants in the name of health! Go to bed early. Avoid all night life! Avoid controversy. Never offend anyone! Mind your own business. Never get involved in anybody’s problems. Save all your money for the future, never splurge on anything….and you can still break your neck getting out of the bathtub…and it serves you right! Living a humdrum life never impacts anyone! Fear not your life will come to an end! Fear it never had a beginning!”

Henry Clay Morrison, founder of Asbury Seminary in Kentucky, tells how he was out plowing in the field when a Methodist Circuit Riding preacher came by. The preacher had such a powerful presence about him that he was overwhelmed with conviction for his sin. He dropped to his knees and surrendered to Christ as his Savior. We may not have that kind of presence emanating from us, but we MUST HAVE A PRESENCE THAT IMPACTS LIVES OR WE ARE FAILING OUR LORD! In his book Filled With the Spirit, Richard Ellsworth Day makes this perceptive observation: “It would be no surprise, if a study of secret causes were undertaken, to find that every golden era in human history proceeds from the devotion and righteous passion of some single individual. This does not set aside the sovereignty of God; it simply indicates the instrument through which He uniformly works. There are no bona fide mass movements; it just looks that way! At the center of the column there is always one man who knows His God, and knows where he is going!” Ask God to make you and I those individuals! Those who are living with an encountering Presence!

“GOD GIVES JACOB HOLY HEAVEN…AND IT’S ON THE HOUSE!”

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Nov 102019

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “GOD GIVES JACOB HOLY HEAVEN…AND IT’S ON THE HOUSE!” By: Ron Woodrum

The book of Genesis makes no attempt to conceal the fact that Jacob was, among other things, a crook. What’s more, you get the feeling that whoever wrote up his seamy adventures got a real kick out of them.

Twice he cheated his lame-brained brother, Esau, out of what was coming to him. At least once he took advantage of the blindness of his old father, Isaac, and played him for a sucker. He outdid his double-crossing father-in-law, Laban, by conning him out of most of his livestock and, later on, when Laban was looking the other way, by sneaking off with not only both the man’s daughters, but just about everything else that wasn’t nailed down including his household gods. Jacob was never satisfied. He wanted the moon, and if he’d ever managed to bilk heaven out of that, he would have been back the next morning for the stars to go with it. But then one day he learned a marvelous lesson in a marvelous and unexpected way.

It happened just after he’d ripped Esau off for the second time and was making his getaway into the hill country to the north. When sunset came and nobody seemed to be after him, he decided that it was safe to camp out for the night and, having left in too much of a hurry to take his bedroll with him, tucked a stone under his head for a pillow and prepared to go to sleep. You might think that what happened next was that he lay there all night bug-eyed as a result of his guilty conscience or, if he did finally manage to drop off, that he was tormented by conscience-stricken dreams, but neither of these was the case. Instead, he dropped off like a baby in a cradle and dreamed the kind of dreams you would have thought were reserved for the high saints.

He dreamed that there was a ladder reaching up to heaven and that there were angels moving up and down it with golden sandals and rainbow-colored wings and that standing somewhere above it was God himself. And the words God spoke in the dream were not the chewing-out you might have expected, but something altogether different. God told Jacob that the land he was lying on was to belong to him and his descendants and that someday his descendants would become a great nation and a great blessing to all the other nations on earth. And as if that wasn’t enough, God then added a personal P.S. by saying, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”

It wasn’t holy hell that God gave him, in other words, but holy heaven, not to mention the marvelous lesson thrown in for good measure. The lesson was, needless to say, that even for a dyed-in-the-wool, double-barreled con artist like Jacob there are a few things in this world you can’t get but can only be given, and one of these things is love in general, and another is the love of God in particular.

Jacob didn’t have to climb his ladder to bilk heaven of the moon and the stars, even if that had been possible, because the moon and the stars looked like peanuts compared to what God and the angels were using the ladder to hand down to him for free.

Another part of the lesson was that, luckily for Jacob, God doesn’t love people because of who they are, but because of who God is. “It’s on the house” is one way of saying it and “It’s by grace” is another, just as it was by grace that it was Jacob of all people who became not only the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, but the many-times great-grandfather of Jesus of Nazareth, and just as it was by grace that Jesus of Nazareth was born into this world at all.

Genesis 25:24-28:17

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words Buechner has also depicted the life of Jacob in his novel Son of Laughter.

“The greatness of a man is the measure of his surrender!”

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Nov 032019

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The greatness of a man is the measure of his surrender!” By: Ron Woodrum

Most of us are very familiar with the ministry of the Salvation Army. We have all given donations to the Red Kettle, and probably many of us have even taken a turn or two at “ringing the bell”. Every major town or city has its Salvation Army Church and ministry center right in the heart of where it is needed most! That was the aim of their founder from the beginning. William Booth started this ministry in 1865, on the East Side of London England with that very intent. He said, “Go for souls…and go for the worst”. He did that very thing. He encountered and won the prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics, and homeless beggars to Christ. His ministry revolved around the three “s”‘s-Soup-Soap-Salvation! He was converted under the ministry of John Wesley, carried on by Wesley’s followers after his death in 1791. Booth found Christ at a Methodist revival in 1844, at the age of 15. He said, “I worshipped everything that bore the name Methodist. To me there was one God, and John Wesley was his prophet. I had devoured the story of his life. No human compositions seemed to me to be comparable with his writings…the best hope for the salvation of the world was the faithful carrying into the practice the letter of the spirit of his instructions”. He spent his life doing just that! He said. “The greatness of a man is the measure of his surrender!” In that regard William Booth is a great man and a great example of those who would follow Jesus.

Let me share a few of his impactful quotes. He said, “to get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor…you must graft on the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine!” Listen to this: “It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of the sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages!”. Called to ministry? His view: “Not called! Did you say? Not heard the call. I think you should put your ear to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened agonized hear of humanity and listen to their pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters not to come to this place of torment. Then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world!” “God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with passion for the impossible!” “We must wake ourselves up or somebody else will take our place, and bear our cross, and steal our crown”.

He said the danger for the future is: “A religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ; forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics without God; and heaven without hell!” He was a very perceptive prophet. Listen to his determination. “While women weep, as they do now. I’ll fight. While children go hungry, as they do now-I’ll fight. While men go in and out of prison, as they do now-I’ll fight! While there remains one dark soul without the light of God-I’ll fight. I will fight until the very end!” “We are not to minister to a congregation and be content to keep things going. We are sent to make war and to stop short of nothing but the subjugation of the world to the sway of the Lord Jesus”. When he was asked to speak to a graduation class of clergymen he said, “If I would have had my way you men would not have be graduated with just these studies. I would have had you spend twenty-four hours in hell to experience the torments of those who are damned and then turned you loose on a dying world!”. Toward the end of his life he was unable to attend the annual meetings of his denomination. They asked him to telegraph a message for the congregants. He responded with one word-“Others!” When he was told that the work was failing and they did not know what to do next-he responded with a two-world telegraph-“Try tears!” It would not hurt us to take a refresher course in the theology of General William Booth. He sounds very much like our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen?