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 it for thirty minutes, since my first sermon had lasted eight and a half minutes. At least I hadn\u2019t forced the radio station to play music for the unused portion of our hour. People were gracious after the service. Comments were mostly positive, unlike the one I received later in my first pastorate from a dear, sweet lady who said, \u201cBrother Dan every sermon you preach is better than the next one.\u201d I hope she didn\u2019t really mean that. That day in Nacogdoches will forever last in my memory as a day of affirmation. Not only had my Dad trusted me with the Sunday morning pulpit, but I received one of my greatest compliments. His name was Marshall Brown, and he was the Head Basketball Coach at nearby Stephen F. Austin University. Coach Brown said to me, \u201cSon, if I had five guys who could play basketball as well as you can preach, I\u2019d be one happy coach.\u201d Somehow, I knew he didn\u2019t really mean that, but it didn\u2019t matter. What mattered is that he said it. Affirmation is a valuable thing. Some days, I\u2019ve taken my seat after delivering a mediocre sermon and remember the Coach\u2019s words, and known that I could preach again, because the Coach and my Dad believed in me. Even as the Apostle Paul \u201caffirmed\u201d Jesus (Acts 25:19), affirm someone today.<\/p>\n
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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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4054,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053\/revisions\/4054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}