I have a very simple reason for believing in the living God. And it has nothing to do with all the philosophical things people come up with. Nothing to do with science or the universe. It’s personal.
He spoke to me. Simply, clearly.
The year was 1989. Margaret and I were being harassed by a number of people determined to get us out of their church. I’d been pastor of this church for three years and it was flourishing. We were reaching people for Jesus and running ahead of the budget and finally–I had thought–the Lord had shown the naysayers that He was in charge.
Some people do not care about God though. And they keep being put in leadership places in church. So, here’s what happened.
Margaret and I would sit on the screened-in back porch and discuss matters. We had a little agreement that we could say anything out there we pleased, but we would not bring it in the house. And I was about to read Scripture.
For reasons I do not remember, I was about to read Psalm 67.
And God spoke.
“No. Read Psalm 66.”
That’s what He said.
Now, I could not have told you the difference. These were not familiar scriptures.
So, I read Psalm 66. And got down to the middle of that psalm and could not believe what I was reading. It was describing what had been happening to us.
You have tried us, O God.
You have refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the net.
You laid an oppressive burden upon our loins.
You made men ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water.
Yet you brought us out into a place of abundance. (Psalm 66:10-12)
We were stunned.
I do not recall if we discussed that. But when I finished with all 20 verses, we were praying. And Margaret said something totally unexpected.
“And Lord, we thank you that you promised to lead us into a place of abundance.”
I went back into that Psalm and sure enough, there it is, He’s promising to lead us into a place of abundance.
Not long after that we were out of a church, out of a job, and out of our home. Into an apartment, and waiting for the Father to show us what was next.
For a solid year I preached in churches far and near. I spent my spare time writing on an unpublished manuscript on The Gospel of Luke. And every time we talked with a pastor search committee, as we considered that church and the city where it was located, we asked ourselves, “Is this a place of abundance?”
We were not sure what exactly that meant.
So, He sent us to New Orleans. To the First Baptist Church of Kenner, which is on the east side of the New Orleans airport. A classmate of mine, Dr. Ron Herrod, had pastored that church during the seventies and eighties and constructed a huge sanctuary. The pastor who followed him tore the church up and left it with half the congregation and all the debt, millions of dollars.
We came in the middle of September 1990. And stayed until Spring of 2004 at which time I became leader of the 130 churches of the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. It was an amazing ministry for a lot of reasons. But was this a “place of abundance”? The Lord had to show me this.
In many respects there was no abundance. I took a severe cut in pay. We lived in a rented condominium. And we put up with a handful of members who did not “like our style” and were constantly trying to remove us. And then one day, the Lord showed me.
We were reading Romans 5:20. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
That was it. Abundant sin in metro New Orleans. Abundant grace.
From time to time I returned to Psalm 66 to relive what God had done. And then, I saw the rest of those verses.
Psalm 66:13 says, I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings; I shall pay You my vows.
I had not noticed that before. And now I asked myself if I had made any vows to the Lord. Clearly, I had not.
So, prayerfully I made three vows. Vows which are still important to me today, all these years later.
I would live simply. I would give generously. I would encourage pastors.
One day around the year 2000, a friend who edited Leadership Journal in Carol Stream, Illinois, called wanting to tell the story of our struggles in that church of the 1980s. I resisted for a time, and he called back more than once.
And then I saw it. Verse 16 of Psalm 66 says, Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what He has done for my soul.
The Lord wanted the story told.
So, editor Eric Reed and I told that story. Broken Pastor, Broken Church ran in the Winter 2001 issue of Leadership Journal. Before my copy arrived in the mailbox, my phone began to ring.
A pastor in Springfield, Missouri called to say he read it and wept, then called his wife and read it to her and they both wept. It described what they were experiencing in their church situation. So I wept with him.
This went on for weeks. People were reading it and God was using it.
In time, I had a collection of emails and letters people wrote. The Leadership Journal team asked for copies. “We don’t get this kind of response,” said one editor.
To this date, nearly four decades later, Psalm 66 is precious to me. And the Lord is still near, still speaking and still blessing.
Oh, I need to tell you. In October of 2025, the pastor of that church in North Carolina had me back. That Sunday morning we sat on stools before the congregation, each of us with mics, and talked about what my wife and I had endured there in the late 1980’s. And I told them something God taught me about all that.
“Until I came to this church I had pastored four congregations that had spoiled me. Every church I pastored grew and prospered, and the wonderful response made me think I was something special. The Lord needed to toughen me up. And He sent me here.”
“He had a bigger job for me, and needed me stronger than I had been. So, for fourteen years I pastored a broken church in New Orleans, after which He made me the Director of Missions for all His Southern Baptist church in a five parish area just before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and destroyed entire neighborhoods.”
“The Lord does not like to waste suffering.”
“He knows what He is about.”
“We do well when we trust Him.”