Faith, he said, is not losing the ability to trust Jesus. He added that God put bookends in his life, with his dad on one end and his son on the other, when he walked into his son's room and told him God was moving the family from Clinton to Durant in his senior year. I dismissed all of what he was saying, because I knew I was going to be a preacher, and everyone would fall in line because I was preaching the Word of God. But that was before I pastored my first church, before I had children, before indebtedness, before leading people through a church split, before medicine I had to take every day, before my wife was on life support. I found out my daddy was right.
Life does get tough.
He said God has promised victory and will show up and do something he has never done before if he needs to. God has left us with riches, but we are living beneath them because we don't open the Book where his promises are. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, he said. When we, as Oklahoma Baptists, decide to move beyond ourselves, we'll see God in miraculous ways. Keith Russell, former pastor First Baptist Church, Elk City, now at Westside Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., told how his church turned around in the last three years.