This morning in Greenville, NC, I had breakfast with Bobby Jackson, who has traveled the roadways of America for decades in thousands of evangelistic meetings.  He’s one of the most unique characters I’ve ever met, and I never tire of listening to his stories.  He preached a revival in my home church in Elizabethton in 1964, when I was eleven years old.  I can’t actually say I became a Christian in that meeting, but maybe I did.  It’s about that time that I began consciously trusting Christ as Savior.  Bobby returned for repeated meetings at my home church, and he was much loved by my dad and mom – as he is by Katrina and me.

Well, at breakfast today we talked about the ups and downs of ministry.  He told of one time when he held a series of meetings with about 2000 people in attendance; then he got in his car and drove to another church where he found an audience of seven.  One of them was a five-year-old boy who kept running around the room playing Cowboys and Indians during the message.  Occasionally the boy would point and fire his popgun at Bobby.  Bobby finally paused in mid-sermon and said to the mother, “The next time your boy runs around in front of you, would you mind grabbing him and holding him still because I just can’t compete with him.”  The mother was sorely offended.  She got up, grabbed her son, and stormed out of the meeting, slamming the door behind her. 

“And then I had a audience of five,” Bobby said laconically.

“On another occasion I was preaching at a youth camp on the crucifixion.  Suddenly a commotion broke out in the audience and interrupted my sermon.  There were screams.  Kids leaping over pews.  Turns out a black snake had fallen down from the rafters and landed among the girls.”  The snake was finally captured and removed, and Bobby finished his sermon.

“I’ve had all kinds of things happen during meetings,” he said, “but that’s the only time the devil himself dropped in on a sermon.”

This Sunday morning I studied the little coffeepot in my motel room in Greenville, North Carolina, and decided it hadn’t been cleaned in years.  Going down to the breakfast bar, I pumped some coffee into a styrofoam cup, but it was lukewarm.  I asked the young man at the front desk about it. 

“It should be fresh,” he said.  “I made it about three o’clock this morning.”

“Yes, well…,” I said, bemused, “but it’s gone stale.”

“I’ll make some more,” he said.

By and by, here he came lugging a big thermos.  I pumped out a cup and returned to my room only to learn he hadn’t poured out the old coffee before refilling the thermos.

So this is my first morning in ages without a fresh cup of hot coffee.  But it’s a good reminder as I prepare to preach.  It takes constant effort to stay sharp, excited, and well-prepared.  But the Lord has plainly told us He doesn’t like lukewarm beverages (Rev. 3:16).  May our lessons, messages, sermons, and Bible studies today be served fresh and piping hot, good to the last drop—and poured out of a clean pot!

I’m packing up and heading to the airport, not for a flight but for a rental car.  Tomorrow (Sunday) through Wednesday, I’ll be speaking at Temple Free Will Baptist Church in Greenville, North Carolina.  My friend, Terry Mosley, is the pastor.  If you’re in the area, please join us.  If not, please pray for traveling mercies.  Bill and Brenda Evans are ministering at TDF tomorrow on the next two 100 verses – Isaiah 26:3 and John 14:27.

An article in today’s Christian Post reports on a new survey that finds over half of all Americans would visit a church if they received a personal invitation from a family member, friend, or neighbor.

The latest LifeWay Research survey found that people are most willing to hear about a local congregation through a family member (63 percent) and through a friend or neighbor from the church (56 percent). Less than half are open to receive information about a church any other way, such as through an advertisement.

The survey, which LifeWay says may be the largest survey ever conducted on Americans’ receptivity to different methods of church invitations, shows that conversations are the best way to invite someone to hear about Christ.

“The primary lesson North American believers should learn from this research is that many of your unchurched friends are ready for an invitation to conversation,” said Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, in the report. “Unbelievers next door still need a simple, personal invitation to talk, to be in community and to church. Clearly, relationships are important and work together with marketing.”

Other findings show that Americans are most likely to be open to consider matters of faith during the Christmas holiday season (47 percent) and Easter season (38 percent) as well as after a major national crisis such as 9/11 (38 percent).

With Easter coming up, I want to encourage all Donelson Fellowship members to invite at least five people to join us at 8:45 and 10:15.  Wherever you worship, try to find someone to go with you on Easter Sunday, if not before!

This article just appeared in the London Telegraph:

Britons Are Believers of “Fuzzy Faith,” Says Survey

According to the study, only 12 per cent of Britons feel they “belong” to a church, compared with 52 per cent in France.  It also found that the UK has one of the highest rates of “fuzzy faith” – or people who have an abstract belief in God and an ill-defined loyalty to Christian traditions.

The study, conducted as part of the influential EU-funded European Social Survey, will be seen as an indicator of a shift in attitudes and values.

Professor David Voas, of Manchester University’s Institute for Social Change, who led the project, said the UK was involved in a “long process of disestablishment”, with Christianity gradually being written out of laws and political institutions.

“Christian faith will soon have no role among our traditional establishments or lawmakers,” he said….

He added:  “Fuzzy faith is a staging post on the road to non-religion. Adults still have childhood memories of being taken to church, and they maintain a nostalgic affection for Christianity but that is dying out.  They still go along with the some kind of religious identity but they’re not passing it on to the next generation, and people who aren’t raised in a religion don’t generally start one as adults.”

However, Professor Linda Woodhead, of Lancaster University, who is leading a long-term £8.5 million government research programme on the role of religion in society, disputed Prof Voas’ conclusions.

“Just because you’re not religious, it doesn’t mean you’re not spiritual or moral,” she said. “A lot of people simply don’t want to take the whole package of religion on board.”

In other words, people are stripping the Christian faith of its pulpit and keeping only the steeple.  Steeples look good on postcards, but the power is in the pulpit.  

All the evidence tells us America is only one step behind the UK.  That’s why I’m committed to biblical exposition as a preacher, to church evangelism as a pastor, and a congregational program of Scripture memory.  That’s why I’m committed to praying for revival and sowing as much Gospel-seed as possible.  It’s all right, if necessary, to be few in number (Christians usually are) but it’s never okay to have a fuzzy faith.

For the last 38 of my 56 years, I’ve begun almost every morning with an appointment with God – sometimes called “Morning Watch,” “Quiet Time,” “Morning Prayers” or “Morning Devotions.”  It starts the day on a sure and steady note, and I recommend it to you.  My own practice involves several elements:

1. Journal:  I pen a few things in my notebook, usually a recap of yesterday or my agenda for today or perhaps a concern I have.

2. Bible:  I start reading where I left off yesterday, reading as few or as many verses as I want, looking for some truth to take into the day.  I often jot that in my journal, too.

3. Prayer List:  It’s natural to move from Bible study to prayer.

4. Memory Verse List:  I keep my Bible memory work alongside my prayer list and take a little time to work on it each day.

5. Hymnal:  Very often I’ll wrap up my prayer time with a hymn.

6. Devotional Book:  It’s great to finish with a page from a good devotional book.  Right now I’m reading “Some Secrets for Christian Living” by F. B. Meyer.

Two notes: 
–This doesn’t have to take a long time.  The whole process can be abbreviated to just a few minutes.  The important thing is not to rush.  If you have only five minutes, take the whole time as leisurely and richly as you can.  On the other hand, if you have a full hour, enjoy it!

–You don’t have to have all six steps.  The whole point of the Morning Watch is not following a routine but fellowshipping with the Father.  That purpose can be accomplished with a good walk through the park while mulling over a passage and communing with the Lord in prayer.  Find a plan that works best for you.

• For more information about having a daily Quiet Time, check out my book SIMPLE.

Tonight I’m speaking at The Donelson Fellowship on Guidelines from the Book of Colossians for Doing the Lord’s Work.  When you read through this little letter, you notice that Paul kept bringing up the subject of our labor for Christ.  If you want to study this out, or if you need a teaching or preaching outline, here are the bare bones of what he said: 

1.  We’re to bear fruit in every good work – Colossians 1:9-12

2.  We’re to work with Christ’s energy – Colossians 1:28-29

3.  We’re to work with all our heart as for Him – Colossians 3:17 & 23

4.  We’re to work hard for the sake of others – Colossians 4:12-13

5.  We’re to finish the work assigned to us – Colossians 4:17

WEBTV, Atlanta’s channel 2, posted  a story this week entitled “40 Things Every Southerner Ought to Do.”  Coming in at #16 was Roan Mountain.  “The Smokies have great vistas,” said the writer, “but what you’ll see from Roan Mountain, astride Tennessee and North Carolina, will top them all — especially if you visit in June when the rhododendrons are in bloom.”  I couldn’t have said it better.

PS – If you need a place to stay, check out Roan Mountain Bed and Breakfast .

If you’re in or near Nashville, I hope you’ll join us Sunday at 8:45 or 10:15 at The Donelson Fellowship.  The sermon is from John 14, and during the message I want to deal with the word “mansions.”

Years ago when I memorized John 14 in the King James Version, it said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”  When I read it now in my New International Version, it says, “In My Father’s house are many rooms.”

I’m not happy that my heavenly accommodations have been downgraded from a mansion to a room.  There’s a lot of difference between a mansion and a room.  When I travel, I don’t mind if they upgrade me, but I don’t like to be downgraded.  And it’s quite a downgrade to go from a mansion to a room.  So what gives?

Well, our English word “mansion” comes from a Latin word meaning to live or dwell; and originally the word “mansion” simply meant a place to live.  When Katrina and I were first married, I preached for a Presbyterian church in Roan Mountain and they let us stay in the church’s manse.  What the Baptists call a parsonage, the Presbyterians call a manse.  It wasn’t a mansion; far from it.  It was a house for the pastor, a dwelling place.  When Tyndale first translated the Bible into English, this is the word he used here:  Manse, mansion.  It didn’t have the connotation it has now; it simply meant “dwelling place.”

The Greek word is μονή,  and it literally means “dwelling places.”  It doesn’t literally mean “rooms.”  It means dwelling places.

Why, then, do some of the newer versions use the word “rooms.”  Well, it’s obvious.  They are responding to the analogy Jesus is using.  He’s comparing the New Heavens and the New Earth and the New Jerusalem to a house.  “In My Father’s house are many places to dwell.”  And what you have in a house is “rooms.”  But that doesn’t mean that we’re all going to be confined to a single one-room efficiency in some sort of heavenly tenement house throughout eternity.  I actually think that the word “mansion” is a pretty good one.  After all, the smallest house in heaven is going to be a million times better and more wonderful than the grandest palace on earth, and so I don’t think the idea of “mansion” is inappropriate.  I’m going to stick to my old King James terminology here.  In my Father’s house are many mansions.

This morning as I was writing an article for Turning Points and working on a sermon, I found an old book entitled “Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer” by S. B. Shaw, printed in 1893.  Rev. Shaw collected a great number of truly remarkable stories, including this one:

Many years ago, James Rogers of the Alabama Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church told the story of Annie Clayton of San Jose, California.  As a child, she and her sister Vanie took a long walk one Saturday morning to collect some scraps of wood as fuel for heating their family’s home.  As they returned, Vanie collapsed from the lingering effects of cholera and was unable to proceed.

Annie, who was only five years old, was helpless and they sat beside the road not knowing what to do.  Finally Vanie said, “You know, Annie, that a good while ago mother told us that if we ever got into trouble, we should pray, and God would help us.  Now you help me get down upon my knees, and hold me up, and we will pray.”  So there on the sidewalk, the two sisters prayed earnestly for someone to come along to help them.  Then they resumed sitting on the curb waiting to see how God would answer their prayers.

Far down the street, they spotted a man who walked out of a factory and looked curiously up the street, and the girls thought perhaps he was the one God would send.  But the man went back into the factory.  Presently he came out again, looked up the street again, and reentered the factory.  Then man walked out of the factory a third time, wear his hat and walking toward them.

Approaching the children, the man said in a broken German accent, “O children, what is the matter?”  When they explained the situation to him, the German hoisted Vanie up in his brawny arms and carried her all the way home. 

Once the girls were safely delivered, the gentleman told his story.  He was the proprietor of an ink factory, and he had been working hard on payroll checks for his men.  Suddenly as he was pouring over his books his eyes had clouded up and his vision had blurred.  He had a plain impression that someone on the street wanted to see him, so he stepped outside and tried to focus his eyes up and down the street.  Seeing no one, he returned to his desk and tried to work. 

The darkness in his vision was even worse, and the impression was even greater.  So he walked outside again, puzzled.  Then he returned to his work again, but his fingers would not grasp the pen.  He found himself unable to write a word; moreover the impression on his mind was urgent.  So he fetched his hat and walked up the street in bewilderment until he saw the girls who had prayed earnestly for someone to come along and help them.

PS  – We need more stories of remarkable answers to prayer.  If you have one from your own life, I’d love to hear it.  For information about Shaw’s book, Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer, click here.  For my sermon, Praying Up a Storm, click here.