My Story #30:

  

My Call To Preach

 

I remember well the time when the Lord began to work in my life to cause me to desire the office of a bishop. Sometimes we call this the "Call to Preach."

I am not sure just when it began, but I do remember, even as a young teenager, having a love for God's word and desiring to learn more and more about the Bible. I remember listening to preachers on the radio and taking notes. I remember having a desire to stand on the pulpit to preach the word of God. Those were the beginning years.

After my move to Lexington, the desire grew stronger, and I remember well the evening, as I was sitting on my bed in my upstairs room on Forest Avenue, that the desire to preach was so strong that I actually got up from sitting on the bed, turned a small table around to make a lectern. I stood behind it and preached to nobody, but I preached; and I believe I did a pretty good job.

That weekend, when I came home from Lexington, I went before my church and told the preacher that I had been called to preach. He said, "Well, if you are called to preach, then you will preach for us next Sunday night." That scared me nearly to death. So, the next Sunday night I preached on I don't know what; I still cannot remember; but I preached my first sermon.

The rest, as they say, is history; and a long and glorious history it is. God has blessed me beyond any reasonable description. Through the quartet I have had so many opportunities to preach. I have preached some pretty good messages and some pretty poor ones, but I have preached.

I continue to preach. I have preached in many churches, in many revival meetings, many conferences, and I have taught many college classes, doing my best to distribute the word of God to those who will listen.

I am thankful to First Baptist Church. This church has given me opportunities upon opportunities to preach and teach God's word.

I am not sure that I can completely apply what Paul said, but I am going to at least take the blessing as it applies in 1 Timothy 1:12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; and maybe with Paul, who said in Galatians 1:1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;), though I am not apostle but just a simple preacher of God's word.

May we preachers NOT take our job lightly but study to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need not to be ashamed. Certainly we are not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, which we know, not just from reading it in the Bible, but also because we have seen that power manifested in the lives of many people.

Just last week I talked with a woman who told me a story about her son, who was at the time, I think, 11 years old. She said that he stayed all night with me, and the next day while sitting at the kitchen table, he said, "Mom, I want to tell you something." She said, "What, son?" He said, "I stayed all night with Ronnie (that's what the kids called me then), and he told me about the Lord, and I am saved now." After all these years, that is the first thing she talked about when we first spoke on the phone. Then I talked with the boy later, and he is now in his 60's; and that is the first thing he told me when we spoke on the phone. Oh, how I love how God works in our lives to make the gospel powerful!