Sunday Summary

What a delightful day in the Lord! Although this past Lord's Day was a busy day, it was a blessed day! I was very honored to be the 8am guest preacher for Pastor Rickardo Taylor and the Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church. Pastor Taylor and church were celebrating 11 years of service as Sr. Pastor. He has an awesome testimony as he left a good paying job in Indianapolis to come and pastor a 15 member church on the southeast side of South Bend. With the Lord's help, he has since grown this church into one of the largest, most progressive churches in the region. I was very glad to be preaching at 8am, as the Oklahoma City Tornado, known as Pastor Ray Owens, was preaching at the 11am service.

The service was very uplifting and inspiring as their music and mime ministries set the atmosphere for preaching. I know that the schools of thought vary on this issue, but in my feeble opinion, I do not believe that our job as pastors is to go to another church and then chastise the people about what they should be doing for their pastor. In my experience this does more harm than good, because as the guest you leave, and the pastor of the church has to stay and deal with the backlash, which often lasts longer then the sermon. So i went simply to encourage the pastor and people. I preached a message from Psalm 27:10-14. The message was entitled, "The blessing in being forsaken". Here's the outline:

1. Dependence (10)

2. Direction (11)

3. Deliverance (12)

4. Determination (13)


God really blessed the preaching moment as we rejoiced on verse 14. "If you have the patience, God has the power".

When I arrived at BBC, I was excited about seeing the saints. I always appreciate the opportunity to travel and preach in other venues, but the saying is true, "there's no place like home". Worship was inspiring from the devotional service until the benediction. I was really excited about preaching in the pulpit that Christ has made me overseer of. We continued in our series, "No More Drama". The message was taken from James 4:7, entitled "Make the Devil Do it". Before you tune me out, please read the introduction, "There was a popular comedian, named Flip Wilson that had a variety show. One of the most popular characters was Geraldine Jones. Every time Geraldine was confronted about something that she was not supposed to do, she wold reply by saying, “The devil made me do it”. This phrase became extremely popular and even found its way on t-shirts.

Even though he passed away in 1998, his popular phrase lives on, and what’s worse is that it has found its way into the church. There is so much “Devil talk” in church, that we forget that God and the devil are not equals.

A careful study of scripture will reveal to you that the devil cannot make you do anything, but today’s text let’s us know that we can make him do something and that is flee from us. "

In order to make the devil flee, you must:


1. Relinquish

2. Resist. If you do these 2, the devil will

3. Retreat


God really blessed the exposition of this text as we were challenged to "Submit to God". I really liked this word because it literally means to place under. It carries the connotation of voluntarily placing our total selves under God's authority. This includes our failures, fears, faults, and frailties. I contend that the reason we have so much "drama" in our lives is that there are some things that we haven't placed under His authority.

Our day of public worship ended at the Pastoral Appreciation service for Pastor Cory Gathright. Pastor Gathright is a son of BBC and he pastors the Greater New Birth Christian Ministries Church. Dr. E.A. Jones preached a wonderful message, entitled "Love and Happiness".

I believe that God was pleased with our offering of public worship on today. Pray for us this week as the Gun Buy Back draws closer. It's looking well, but we are still looking for support. Later on in the week, I will post a link to it. God Bless!!