Ecclesiastes 12:10

          The town that I grew up near had an annual event called the “World’s Largest Garage Sale”. Each year half the town would take all their old junk and put it up for sale, while the other half would root around in it looking for a find. (I always said those people would wait till next year and sale the same old junk back to first group.) One person trying to get rid of something, another man is searching for the same thing.  One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.           This adage isn’t just true for garage sales. One person quits a dead end job that is making him miserable; another person comes along and takes that same job he sees as exciting because it of its great potential. One person dreams of moving out of the city to the country with open spaces and no one to disturb him.  Another person wants to move into town where everything is and things are going on. One p...

Last month, I happened to catch a very touching scene at the church building. Several of the area young people met in the parking lot to caravan, along their parents, to Harding University for the upcoming fall semester. It was a mix of emotion for everyone. Excitement at the new opportunity, fear about what would await them, apprehension at the young ones leaving the nest, relief that they had made it this far.   College is one of the most pivotal times in the faith of young people.  Studies show us that that age is when most people’s faith is most greatly tested and that those trials can either make or break their faith. For many, it is the first time they must decide completely for themselves how their faith affects their lives. No one is there to get them awake for Sunday service, Mom and Dad won’t know everything they are doing so choices of morality must now be made on right and wrong more than will I get in trouble at home. Now, they face many major issues on thei...

          A point I often hear from members is that they have heard countless sermons on telling them the need to evangelize and bring others to Christ but no one ever give them a way to do it. Well, here is a way.   Starting this week on the stand in the foyer we will have a stand for the tract of the month. Each month we will put out a new tract. First, we ask each of our members to pick up one of the tracts and read it for themselves .  The tract will be well written, eye catching, and full of good information. Second, sometime that month we ask you to give that tract to one person . You can so directly but there are many other ways to do it as well. Leave them in areas where people read things i.e. waiting room, lobbies, welcome counters. Set them out on the counter of your business. Have them on your desk.   Third, if a person that takes the tract, inform them that we will be having a series of sermons based on si...

A good friend of mine from Lawton shares the same taste in books as me. You would often find us discussing a new book we found or giving each other advice on what to read next. As close as our reading habits were, he had one quirk I could never understand. Whenever he got a new book he would turn to the last chapter and read the last several pages. I thought this was inane behavior. Why would you want to know how it turns out before you read the book! His explanation was simple. He said that if hated to feel tense while reading a book wondering it would all turn out OK for his favorite characters. If he read the just the end, he wouldn’t know the whole story but could be enjoy the events of the book because he had some knowledge of how things would turn out.  I don’t know if I like that in pleasure reading but I am sure glad that God did something similar for us.             You see we don’t know all the turn and pitfalls...