Lessons of Faith, Family, and Generosity

But you know my mom taught me how to fry an egg or scramble an egg and toast. And then, of course, after a while I learned that well enough, so I could just fix me maybe some other things. But she taught me to be able to do whatever I needed to do and to trust God that He would help me. And that's the thing that I kept hearing her, just trust the Lord. Just do what you know is right and trust the Lord. So she drilled that into my head and that I could do whatever I needed to do if I would trust him. [00:04:17]

Well, my mom taught me several things. She just drilled them in my head. To obey the Lord, to read the scripture every day even though I didn't understand it, to read the scripture every day and to do what I knew was the right thing to do. So she didn't take the Bible and say, well memorize this verse or that verse. And the only time I remember her giving me a verse to remember is before I preached my first sermon, but I just saw her reading the Bible. I watched, I listened to her pray and I watched how she related to people. So I had a great respect for my mom being a Godly woman. [00:05:19]

Well, I treated y'all the way I wanted to be treated. I think that says it all to me because not having a father and thinking what I would've liked for my father to have done. So when I think of all the places we went and I never worried about spending money on you all, just have a good time. In other words, it just came natural for me because I knew that's what a good dad would do. [00:06:11]

And the way he taught me how to make good decisions was my dad refused to make decisions for me. In fact, there were so many incidents and this began really young. I would say, "Dad, what do you think I should do in this situation?" And he would say, "Well what would you do if I wasn't here to tell you?" And I would say, "But you are here to tell me and I need you to tell me." But that habit or that tendency you had and again, I don't know where you figured that out, forced me to do two things. It forced me to learn how to make good decisions early on. [00:06:40]

And then the second thing was you did such a great job allowing Becky and I to face the consequences of our decisions. You never bailed us out. And I guess, because growing up there wasn't anybody to bail you out. When you made a bad decision, you had to face the consequences yourself, right? [00:07:27]

And I realized all of that would drive you to God. And I wanted you to point yourself to Him. What would God have me to do when my dad's not here? What would God have me to do? Because my father died when I was nine months of age, and I thought you know God can take me off the scene but I wanna be sure whenever He did, you knew what to do. [00:07:38]

And then one other thing, and you just alluded to it, you did a great job intentionally reminding my sister and I, Becky and I that, ultimately, we weren't accountable to you anyway. That, ultimately, we were accountable to God. [00:09:49]

And the way you taught us that, again, we would ask you a question or not advice, but a decision we had to make and you would say have you prayed about it? Have you prayed about it? And that was so frustrating because I'm like I don't need to pray about it. I just need you to help me make the decision. But you consistently said, ask God and you know whatever you feel like the Lord wants you to do. [00:10:06]

And so, as far as the church was concerned it was more important to me for us to be together, regardless of what people thought. And so I enjoyed it and what I tried to do is to give you all the experiences that I wish I'd had if I'd of had a father and to go to all the places we went. And if you think of all the things that we did and the one thing I loved about the travel trailer was we were all together. [00:15:26]

You only have one life. These kids are only gonna be yours at this age. We're gonna live it up in order to enjoy one another and you have not forgotten it. [00:16:38]

I think I'd have to give my mother credit for that. For example, every once in a while back in those days, some little boy, a couple of little kids would come up and knock on the door and ask, "Do y'all have any bread?" My mom always gave them something and sometimes I'd look and I'd say, "We're not gonna have any left, I don't think." She said, "No, we're gonna give them this." My mom taught me to be generous, to be kind and I knew she made $9.10 cents a week for 40 hours in the cotton mill. [00:21:01]

So I just realized that pretty early, I couldn't outgive God. No matter how much I gave, what the motivation was, I couldn't outgive him. He always blessed me over and over and over again. So I wanted to help other people. And I wanted to be sure when I stood up and preached to other people about giving, that I knew in my heart, I gave it the best God wanted me to give however much it was. So, it's not been hard for me to give. Giving is just part of being who I am and I think about how God's blessed me. He said, "Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together." I believe that. [00:23:41]