I am so excited that I could just do a cartwheel!!!!  (But I won’t, and you’ll thank me for that!)  Why am I so giddy?  Because this coming Sunday morning, our church will be coming together for one special service.  We’ll be observing baptism and the Lord’s Supper and will be following our service with a dinner on the grounds.  This is special because our church general has two morning services.  The challenge with that is that not everyone gets to see everyone else.  As a result, it can be easy to feel a division within the body.  This service will be a chance to get our entire church family, all 200 strong, under one roof.  It will be a celebration of all that the Lord has done in our midst over the course of the past year.  We have so much to be profoundly grateful for.  We have experienced rapid growth, welcoming over 25 new members, 12 by baptism.  There is a passion and excitement among our body that is almost palpable.  Simply put, the Lord is moving in a mighty way and is growing our body, spurring us to action along the way!!!

There is something to be said about doing life with a community of believers.  Man wasn’t made to be alone.  That is why God, in His infinite wisdom, created woman to be His partner and helpmate.  In much the same way, God gave us the church not only as a way to serve Him and bring Him glory on a corporate level but also to serve as sources of support and strength to each other.  I like what Paul says about the church in Colossians 3:16-17:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.  (NIV)

This why the church exists!  We exist to teach one another and to hold each other accountable in this thing we call life!  We also come together to praise the Lord and express our thanks to Him as a body united in the Word that dwells in all of us.  Because the Word resides in us as a believers, we have an obligation to display that at all times, particularly as a corporate body.  I’m so thankful that I get to worship, serve, laugh, and cry with the faith community of University Baptist Church!  I honestly cannot imagine doing life without them.

What about you?  Who are you doing life with?  It was the poet John Donne that once said “no man is an island”.  True words!!!  In the same way that man was not meant to be without a spouse, man was also not meant to be without spiritual support.  We will never make it in this world without the love, accountability, and support that comes from a community of faith.  Do you have such a community?  If not, can I encourage you to find one in your local setting?  Step out on faith and find one that you connect with.  If you’re looking for the perfect one, keep looking, but I can assure you that if you allow Him to, the Lord will lead you to the one that He wants you to serve in.  If you are already in a community of faith, do you let them know how much they mean to you?  Do you truly appreciate them, or do you take them for granted?  Allow me to be share my feelings to much church family.

To my faith family at University Baptist Church, please always know how much I love you.  It is indeed the privilege of my life to shepherd you and to do life with you.  You will never know how much joy you bring me and how much you all mean to me.  I need you all just as much as you need me.  God is currently doing something in our midst that is kind of leaving us all speechless, but I promise you that as long as we continue to look to Him, the best is yet to come.  I can’t wait to worship with you all on Sunday! 

Until Next Time,

Pastor JP

I’m not going to lie.  These past few weeks have not been what I would necessarily call “good weeks”.  On top of the regular load of meetings and study, there has just been a lot of standing with…and crying with…people who are struggling.  Whether that struggle is with sin or with their own mortality, the struggle is real.  There have been lots of long nights and limited family time over the course of the past few weeks.  Then there was the unexpected death of someone I had a great deal of respect for.  It’s been a “walking through the valley” period.  And yet through it all, there have been two constants that remained-the presence and peace of the Lord and Lacie, the love of my life.

So in today’s edition of the blog, I thought that I would just write a little about Lacie, just in case you didn’t know just how wonderful she is.  She is, without a doubt, the best gift that God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, chose to bestow upon me.  How underserving I am, yet not a day goes by that I don’t thank Him for placing her in my life.  Besides the Lord, Lacie has always been the constant in my life.  No matter what storms were or are happening in my life, I take one look at her, and I instantly remember that as long as she is waiting for me when I walk through the door, things can’t really be all that bad. 

We were high school sweethearts.  I was 18, and she was 17 when our best friend Jess introduced us.  I still remember the first time I saw her and thinking, “My goodness, that’s the deepest shade of red hair I’ve ever seen.”  It’s certainly served her well.  You know what they say about ladies with red hair.  It’s usually assumed that they have a fiery spirit to match the hair.  Well I can certainly attest to the truthfulness of that assumption.  I suppose that after fifteen years with me plus the addition of three kids, it’s kind of a requirement for the job.  It’s funny though.  The thing that first really attracted me to her is the same thing that still attracts me to her now.  Her laugh.  Oh that laugh.  If you know Lacie, then you know which laugh I’m talking about.  Not that fake one she’s doing to be polite, but that one that seems to start at her toes and works itself up to her lungs.  The one that threatens to cut off her breathing.  After all these years, there is still no one I’d rather laugh with.  I remember one of our friends telling us “Y’all look like y’all have so much fun together.”  Indeed we did.  Indeed we do. 

Not that things have always been easy.  On the contrary, there have been some unspeakably, indescribably tough times, but through it all, we have kept looking to the Lord, and as a result, we knew that we were never walking through the valley alone.  When we got married, our pastor told the congregation that “Lacie doesn’t always say much, but when she speaks, people listen.  Truer words about Lacie have never been said.  She is soft spoken by nature, but she carries herself with such dignity and charm that people just kind of flock to her, which is fine by me.  It’s often been said that behind every good man is an equally good woman.  I’m not sure that applies in our case because Lacie has never been a step behind.  Whenever we walk into a room together, I always feel like President John F. Kennedy when he said, “I’m just the man who escorted Mrs. Kennedy to Paris.”  I’m just the man that escorted Mrs. Cox to wherever it was that was we were going that particular day.   

She always knew that I was going to be a pastor.  She knew before I did.  One day, she told me that the Lord told her that she was going to be a pastor’s wife.  My reply to her was something along the lines of “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m kind of going into politics.”  Her response was “we’ll see”.  Fifteen years later here we are.  I’m a pastor.  A while back, I asked her what she would have done if I never became a pastor.  She simply looked at me and said “I knew it would happen.  I just decided to sit back and wait for you to listen.” 

By the way, what a pastor’s wife she is.  She’s not the one who will play the piano and organ, direct VBS, chair the hospitality team, and lead children’s choir.  She very much prefers to be behind the scenes.  She has always said that her primary ministry area is that of wife and mother.  Everything else comes after that.  She manages our home and schools our children seemingly so effortlessly and still manages to bake things for the church function of the week, all the while watching church members’ children so they can tend to their business.  I am in awe of her. 

I guess what I’m trying to get to is that the Lord has blessed me with the quintessential Proverbs 31 woman.  This is what Proverbs 31:10-17, 25-31 says about finding a wife of noble character:

 ^a]A wife of noble character who can find?
    She is worth far more than rubies.
¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her
    and lacks nothing of value.
¹² She brings him good, not harm,
    all the days of her life.
¹³ She selects wool and flax
    and works with eager hands.
¹⁴ She is like the merchant ships,
    bringing her food from afar.
¹⁵ She gets up while it is still night;
    she provides food for her family
    and portions for her female servants.
¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks.

²⁶ She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
²⁷ She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸ Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
²⁹ “Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
³¹ Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

How incredibly blessed and eternally grateful I am to have found a Proverbs 31 woman like her.  I am a better pastor and a better person for having Lacie Renee’ Stouff Cox in my life.  Men, do you have a Proverbs 31 woman in your life?  If so, do they know how grateful you are for them?  Do you tell them?  Tell and show your spouse just how grateful you are for them.

Until Next Time,

Most students said goodbye to their summer breaks and returned to school this week!  Wow, two months have passed by entirely too quickly (most students would undoubtedly agree with that assessment as well J).  As I’ve been praying for the students over the course of the past week, I can’t help but feel a certain amount of trepidation for them.  Our children are attending school in a totally different environment than what we had to deal with.  They will also face challenging situations that we never before experienced.  Let’s face it.  It’s a very uncertain, often scary world in which we live, and some of us are sending our children out there…alone.  You understand the feeling.  So my prayer for them over the past week or so is that they simply remember that they are not walking alone and that they don’t lose sight of who it is that is walking with them.  I pray that they would learn new lessons and that they would learn them well.  I have also prayed that they would keep their eyes open to new things that the Lord Himself wants to teach them throughout the new school year.  Finally, I pray for a sense of boldness and passion and commitment to sharing their faith with their peers, and I pray that the Lord would lead them to intentional opportunities to share His love with others.

That got me thinking.  Am I doing what it is I am praying for the students to do?  Am I living out my faith in my setting CONSISTENTLY?  Am I looking INTENTIONALLY for opportunities to share Christ with others?  Am I still TEACHABLE?  I’d like to think that I am doing all these things, but alas, the reality of the situation is that I’m not.  The apostle John talks about this in 2 John:

“(4) It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.  (5) And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning.  I ask that we love one another.  (6) And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.  As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.

(9) Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”-2 John 4-6, 9

It occurred to me that the students aren’t the only ones who have things to learn.  Sometimes, we as Christians have this mindset that we know all we need to know about the things of God.  As a result, we almost live our lives on auto pilot, doing our daily routines with little to no direction from the Lord.  If our desire is for our children to walk in the truth, then what are doing to point them to that truth?  John is saying in this passage that the formula is not rocket science.  This is nothing new.  Rather, our most important lesson to learn is one that the Lord gave us when we first came to saving faith in Him.  That lesson is to simply live lives of love that point people to eternal truth.  If we live those lives consistently and intentionally, and remain teachable as John instructs us to do in verse 9, then we will be pointing people to someone who can and will change their lives.  Lesson received.

I never expected that the Lord would take me “back to school”, so to speak, but here I am.  I’m thankful that He is still teaching me things after nearly 30 years of walking with Him, even if we have to go back to basics sometimes.  What about you?  What is the Lord teaching you?  Are you pointing your children to the truth through the way you live your life?  If not, then maybe it’s time to go back to school and spend some time with the Lord and see what He is trying to teach you.  Class is back in session.  Are you prepared?

Until Next Time,

Pastor JP