This has been Pastor Appreciation Month and if I am counting correctly, I will meet my 19th Pastor for mid-morning coffee on Tuesday of this week. I envy those who have had the same pastor for many years. My Pastors were all short-term, due to my own frequent relocations, which began early. I attended eight…
I have made reference before to my Private Facebook group that reads a chapter in the Bible each day and some members make comments, while others just read and observe. As I scanned ahead, I noticed that on this Monday, we would begin reading 1 Peter and the verse on which I would comment would…
When I was a teen-ager, laying on a hospital bed with a broken second vertebra of the neck, hearing skilled surgeons agree that it was a miracle that I was alive and not paralyzed, I had just enough spiritual background to know that if I was alive by miracle, it was God’s doing. In school,…
Recently, I posted my Monday Morning Manna on social media, poured milk on my breakfast cereal and sat down to eat. The phone rang. It was a long-time, great friend. (Who else would call before breakfast?) It seems my Manna post has popped up on his computer just as he and his wife began their morning prayer time…
Last Saturday I personally watched two football games. Early in the day, my great-grandson, Crawford Graham Kennedy played for his 6 to 8 year old team in Weatherford, Texas. Later that same day, my alma mater, Howard Payne University played Simpson College from Iowa – the first college game ever played in the Dallas Cowboys’…
In preparing to teach on Caleb, I came up with a question. Numbers 14:24 says, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him. . .” When I read that again, I started looking for a list of characteristics that further defined what “a different spirit” meant. No such list. I really wanted…
I had only been preaching for a few years when my pastor-father invited me to preach for him on a Sunday morning service at the First Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas – my largest audience thus far and we were broadcast live on the local radio station. I finished the sermon, thankful I had made…
After Joanne was released from the Heart Hospital last week, I dropped her off at home, then went to the pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions. The Pharmacist questioned the prescriptions, and we called the release nurse who affirmed them to be rare but not impossible. Without going into detail, my wife was to continue…
If I had known back then what I know now, then would have been much easier. One of the highlights of each year back then, was spending a week, sometimes two weeks at Palacios Baptist Encampment on the Texas Gulf Coast. It was there that I first sensed God’s call on my life and responded…
It has been a season of stress at our house – Joanne’s heart issues, combined with falls and broken bones, plus my double cataract surgery and bleeding retina injections. However, we both have friends with more serious issues, so perhaps these quotes on stress will help other When we long for life without difficulties, remind…