I just heard that child abuse was on a dramatic rise. Somewhere there is a person planning to abuse a child. Stop them, Lord! Redirect their thinking for good and not evil. Somewhere there is a group of people planning to traffic children. Put a detour in their path, Lord. Divert their paths into the…
My parents departed for heaven a couple of decades ago. There are times I really miss my Dad. Those times usually revolve around sporting events or ministry situations. But when I miss my Mom, it’s different. She was a Registered Nurse, and while she didn’t learn this in Nursing School, she did understand the value…
It was not my normal preaching style, but it worked. Last week I took a nasty fall on the parking lot, hitting the asphalt with my knee and face. That means on Easter Sunday I was still hurting, with bumps, bruises and cuts that were healing. I had to continually sip water to keep my…
I got up early last Thursday and drove four hours to attend my Reagan High School class 65th reunion. No surprise! We met in a Bar B.Q restaurant in north Houston. Some things never change. Speaking of change, some of my friends had changed so much, they didn’t recognize me. Actually, when I walked into the…
One of the joys of aging is to see a program/ministry develop over a long span of years. Such is Beach Reach. In the past few weeks, during spring break, thousands of university students were trained, motivated and equipped to spend their spring break on Padre Island, serving God and ministering to others. As a…
When I was five years old, going on six, I went to kindergarten, where I was made fun of (is that the same as being bullied?). I will never forget one such incident. Perhaps it is my earliest school memory. It was Halloween and we were told to wear our costumes to school. My mother…
My father was a workaholic. My mother was a perfectionist. Put them together and you get me. If I had to remember one key word of my early life it would be the word “excellence.” It was never enough to be average – not in school, nor in athletics, nor various methods of competition. I carried this early training into…
Mugs and Prayer We’ve been selling everything in a rent house in order to eventually sell the house, and as a part of it, we took advantage and added some other stuff in order to downsize. In my last office move, I no longer had room for my campus mugs. During my collegiate ministry and…
Interim is a term describing the space of time between an ending and a beginning. When used for a church it refers to the time between the departure of one pastor and the arrival of another pastor. Since Baptist churches do not have Bishops who appoint a successor, the interim time can be long as each church…
You suspect God is calling you for some special task or even for a career of ministry. How can you know your call is from the Lord? In the Bible, people such as Samuel (1 Sam 3:4-10) and Isaiah (Isa 6:8) experienced direct, audible calls from God. These instances left no doubt about the divine…