We southern Baptist preachers often either avoid the Old Testament or relegate it to the kid’s ministry. As the professor of Old Testament at Your Oklahoma Baptist University, I engage with students who have an Old Testament knowledge that is severely lacking the “so...
I will never forget seeing Mary for the first time at our informational meeting in the fellowship hall at Stroud, First Baptist Church. She attended to hear about the mission trip that her church would be taking since 1993. I wrongly assumed that she was there to...
Living at peace with God, ourselves, and others is essential for our witness for Christ. Everything God does He does in love. He is always working things out for the good. Even in the midst of conflict, if we allow Him to, He will work things out for our good. Acts...
I will never forget the first time I took a team to Santo Thomas, Nicaragua. We had an amazing medical team, lots of medicine to help the people, and a great VBS team with all the supplies. Everything was pretty perfect. We were the first team to ever go into this...
In the mid-’90s, Paul Powell of the Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention wrote a book titled “Taking the Stew Out of Stewardship.” While the book was well circulated, many pastors still find themselves in a “stew” regarding teaching and preaching about...
In the book Discovering Relational Wisdom by Ken Sande we are called to serve by living the Acronym SERVE S is for SMILE. E is for explore and empathize R is for Reconcile V is for Value E is for encourage. We are called to put wind under the wings of every person we...
The past year my wife Vanda and I have had the blessing to attend and speak at churches across our great state. Although the churches varied in size, location, rural, or city there was one theme that we would hear at each church over and over again before we headed...
I don’t know a person that enjoys being disrupted. I’m not talking about when we speak (although that is annoying), I’m talking about our daily lives, our routines, what we do day to day. We work really hard at keeping our lives as normal as possible and that is a...
We live in a world of conflict. It is on the news every day, nations in conflict with other nations and neighbors living in conflict with each other. We find conflict in or own families. We even find conflict within our churches. Everywhere you turn you find...
If we are honest, I think the majority of us would say we are bored. Not that we don’t have enough to do because we are busy people, but maybe discontent. Maybe it’s the question “what am I doing with my life?” Or, “there has to be more?” Deep in each of us is the...
