All scripture is inspired by God and is useful....-- 2 Timothy 3:16 My handicap was heading to single digits and those absurd late fortyish daydreams about the senior tour were making denomi-national meetings more tolerable when disaster struck. Playing with my dad in one of those little friendly-while-you're-winning matches, I was even through fifteen holes. I had been slow, steady, and solid t...
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou are my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, t...
Last words are important.
There is a little country Baptist church down in Perry County, Mississippi. It’s called the Eastside Baptist Church. It is the church in which I was converted. Behind it is a cemetery where I’ll be buried someday. It’s about two hundred yards up the hill from our old home place.
Mom and Dad – whom in my adult life I affectionately called “Mutt” and “Co-bell” (his name was...
How many of you are wearing or have in your pocket or purse some sort of talisman - a small something that reminds you of something much bigger? We often call these things we carry around with us keepsakes or mementos or jewelry. But they're really talismans. According to the dictionary, a talisman is a trinket or piece of jewelry thought to afford some protection against danger and evil. Maybe yo...
Once we open the Scriptures, the sluices of heaven open and we get drenched...in showers of blessings and downpours of strength.
Dwight L. Moody, in his Edinburgh crusade, spoke to a large congregation of very young boys and girls. Moody began his sermon with a question: "What is prayer?"
He wasn't expecting an answer, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than hands raised all over the ...
In Jesus'' prayer life, there was a codicil to every one of his prayers: "not what I will but what you will." This codicil is the solution to the problem of unanswered prayer.
In life there are optimists, pessimists and Woody Allen. Allen looks at life with all its suffering and hardship, all its evil and misery, and boldly concludes that there is no God and that suicide is probably the most reas...
A good friend of mine, Bob Frederickson, is writing a travel book called Flying Coach To Nirvana. I stole his title for this sermon because I want to do simply what he took 400 pages to accomplish. His book is a collection of essays about visits he has made to Gabon in Africa, the West Indies, and on and on. He thinks of his trips as simple, populist, and personal; his point is that anyone can tra...
When my daughter, Hannah, was five years old we lived in Minnesota. Before she entered kindergarten, she had to take an entrance exam. Being the non-competitive but responsible parent that I am, I decided to help Hannah prepare for this test. I taught her how to count to ten — in four languages. I taught her the colors by buying a box of crayons — 64 count, including turquoise, magenta, and chartr...
Which verse is the most dangerous? It is this one that says, "All scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 2:16) or "All scripture is inspired," depending on which version or translation you use. To be perfectly honest, perhaps this is not the most dangerous verse, but as one writer says it is the mother of all proof texts. As the bumper sticker has it, "The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles ...
As usual, the epistle is a little more graphic than we can quite grasp. Itchy ears: what a concept just in physical terms. Experience it for a minute. You itch, you scratch, you sort of know you shouldn't scratch because it will only make the itch worse. But still you scratch, while wondering how the itch ever got started in the first place. What a concept: itchy ears as a vehicle for spiritual tr...
There is no excuse for not running the race of life. Christians need no longer fear that their lives are going nowhere - like some kind of hamster-wheel marathon. Christians are called to join the faithrace, where the "finish" line is just the beginning of our life in Christ.
Paul chose his words carefully when he proclaimed to his long-time companion Timothy that he had fought the good fight, fi...
Some clever person has written a fictitious letter from a pastor to a church search committee. The letter reads as follows:
"I understand your church is looking for a pastor. I should like to submit my application. I am generally considered to be a good preacher. I have been a leader in most of the places I have served. I have also found time to do some writing on the side. I am over fifty years ...
A group of boys and girls was asked to sum up what they had learned from the New Testament. Here is a summation of what they had learned: “Jesus is the star of the New Testament. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Republicans. Jesus also had twelve opossums. The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that ...
What would you like to have as your epitaph some day? Have you ever given that any thought? What will people say about you after you’re gone? It’s always interesting to me to read some of the humorous inscriptions that have appeared on tombstones in days gone past. For example, here is one that should have been edited:
Here lies Col. Brown . . . Shot in battle by an enemy soldier.
“Well Done Tho...
Have you noticed that grandmothers have changed? For one thing they seem so much younger than they used to. Some anonymous bard celebrated this truth in a little poem you may have encountered on the Internet. It’s titled, “Where Have All the Grandmas Gone?”
In the dim and distant past; When life’s tempo wasn’t so fast
Grandma used to rock and knit, Crochet, tat, and baby sit.
When the kids were i...
Once there was a man who acquired a claim to a gold field in California. The claim was in a lonely spot in the mountains. When the man started to dig for gold, he found evidence that much work had been done on the claim a long while before. Far into the excavation he found an old rusted pick, its handle rotted off but its point sticking firmly in the rocky soil. He went to work and, to his amazeme...
Two country boys, Zeke and Zeb, decided to build a Bungee Jumping tower down in Mexico to see if it would make them some money. After they got it set up, they noticed that the crowds gathered around but nobody was buying tickets. Zeke said to Zeb, "Maybe you should demonstrate it to them so they get the idea." After Zeb was strapped on he jumped and fell almost to the ground before springing back....
A Christian pastor named Scott has a sweet tooth. His wife was going out to run some errands and she knew that the chocolate chip cookies she'd just baked might disappear before she returned.
To discourage her husband from getting into those cookies, she taped a Bible verse on them. It was I Corinthians 6:12, "Everything is permissible for me--but not everything is beneficial."
When she returned...
Every week in our country millions of people go to stadiums and arenas to participate in the thrills and chills of athletic competition. Athletic competition attracts people as participants and spectators for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most universal reason for the appeal of sports is the similarity between what goes on in the arena of athletic competition and the arena of life. Athletic co...
Every week that you walk into this church you hear me say something that actually begs a very big question that deserves to be answered. For example, I am going to tell you right now to take your Bibles, or your smart phone, or your tablet and [Turn to II Timothy 3]. Then as we do every week we read a passage from the Bible. This particular passage says this, “All Scripture is breathed out by God ...
"All scripture is inspired by God" (2 Timothy 3:16).
There was a woman who called her pastor late one night in a panic and said, "Pastor, quickly, tell me what I believe." Another believer from a different church who challenged her about her beliefs had cornered her. She quickly found that she could not articulate the basic teachings of her church. "Pastor, quickly, tell me what I believe."
Ther...
The last two years of my life have passed by faster than a speeding bullet. Though the pace of being President of this Convention has been exhausting, the honor has been exhilarating. I will never get over the fact that you, my fellow Southern Baptists, have entrusted me with this position. Being President of the Southern Baptist Convention has made me realize more than ever how blessed I am to be...
I hope I will be forgiven, because I have slightly changed the title of the message that I was assigned. I was originally asked to preach on the topic, "How To Prepare A Media-Sized Message", but first of all, most of us do not have our messages broadcast in what is known as the media, per say. Beyond that, I really felt the topic was a little too small. The truth of the matter is - whether you ar...
Paul had laid down the flail of the persecutor and took up the torch of the evangel on the Damascus Road. There he began the course of a great adventure, an adventure that sent him trudging through the then-known world – through the deserts and over the mountains, through blinding blizzard and blistering sun, traveling in peril of his own life, shipwrecked, beaten by the Romans, stoned by the Jew....
Two “investments” have proven to be recession proof in the past twenty years: security and storage.
Why storage? We’ve bought so much stuff we can’t live with all we’ve purchased. So we have “storage” units where we have visitation rights to spend time with our stuff.
Why security? Look around you. Security systems are everywhere.
Our cars blare their horns and blink their lights if someone dar...