Chris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He was a good preacher. Chris was studying to be a pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church, and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C. I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a lifeguard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove into the pool just to swim across and go home. His friends noticed he stopped about halfway as he was swimming across the bottom. Chris drowned.
Read moreBeware of the Home Wrecker!
Some of you remember advice columnist, Ann Landers. Ottis of Wisconsin wrote Ann Landers: Eleven years ago, I walked out on a 12-year marriage. My wife was a good person, but for a long time, she was under a lot of stress. Instead of helping her, I began an affair with her best friend. This is what I gave up:
Read moreAm I the kind of friend I would want to be friends with?
I called a dear friend this week. I met this friend the first week of our college freshman year. He of late has had a difficult life. For some reason, I remembered a book I read years ago: How to Win Friends and Influence People. Why has this book been so popular? This book written by Dale Carnegie in 1936 has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It still sells 250,000 copies annually. The Library of Congress in 2013 ranked this best seller as the 7th most influential book in American history.[1] Why has this self-help book been so popular?
Warren Wiersbe answered: We need Proverbs “Because just about everybody has ‘people problems’ and wants to know how to solve them.”[2] God’s manual on developing people skills was written long before Carnegie’s best seller. God wrote Proverbs to sharpen our people's skills for his glory.
Read moreProphets for Profit (Numbers 22-25)
J. Vernon McGee told of a preacher who came to his wife and said, “I’ve just gotten a call to the church in the next town. It’s a larger town. It’s a much better church. The people in it are more refined and cultured, and they do not cause the trouble they do here, and they’ve offered me a higher salary. I’m going upstairs and pray about this to see if it’s the Lord’s will for me to go.” His wife says, “Fine, I’ll go up and pray with you.” And he says, “Oh, my, no. You stay down here and pack up.”
Read more