Old Holiness Writings

Last week, I had written about an old preacher who had prayed for me when I was working a medical intensive care unit before he passed on.  My mind has been drawn to that event several times since I wrote about it.  Around that same time, our church hosted a preaching workshop that was an effort to help bivocational pastors with resources and inspiration to help with preaching.  I suppose that as the miles have clicked up in ministry, I have come to an observation that if we are called to preach, if we believe that preaching is important, and if it is one of the most regular things that pastors do, why aren’t their more efforts to help us get better at it?  I have preached more than my share of “bad” sermons, but it is not because I have neglected the efforts to improve.  I cannot even count the number of books I have read on preaching, the Logos mobile ed units I’ve worked through, the You Tube videos that I have watched, and have listened to probably thousands of sermons.

"I Pray the Spirit of Holiness on You"

I love hospitals!  Perhaps that is a strange confession to make but I spent almost 30 years of my life working in four hospitals.  The bulk of those years were spent in Flowers Hospital here in Dothan.  There is another hospital here in Dothan which a few of the old-timers remember as General Hospital, which became Southeast Alabama Medical Center, and has now morphed into Southeast Health.  I worked in their emergency department for a brief period on a PRN (as needed) basis in the late ‘80’s.  When I was in Houston attending Texas Bible College, I worked for a year at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital/Texas Heart Institute in a very busy CVICU.  It was there that the famed Dr. Denton Cooley carved out an international reputation as one of the world’s premier cardiovascular surgeons.  He had some excellent partners who did not have international notoriety but were very skilled in their craft as well.  People from all over the nation and the world came to Texas Heart Institute for their surgeries and transplants. 

O God, Please Save Me from Myself

I am presently in the process of working and preaching through Paul’s letter to the Romans. One of the most powerful things about Scripture is how that it speaks to every single aspect of the ancient church and to the modern one as well. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, Paul wrote this epistle around 54-56 AD according to the range that many biblical scholars have placed it. As of this moment (3/4/2026), I have preached twelve messages from this and the scrutiny by which he writes is discovered with every hour of time that I spend praying and studying through the text. While I was thinking, meditating, writing, and even wrestling with the section of Romans 2:12-16 which I called, The Courtroom of the Conscience, a divine laser light began to burn through me in verse 16. It very well needs to be a standalone sermon, but I did not do so. The sharp focus has not left me now almost three days after I have finished preaching it. In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ! Let that sink in for a moment!