Post Year: 1980

Confessions of a Tomato-Hater (Praise the Lord and pass some more catsup.) (January 1980) – There is a fine line between self-centeredness and self-confidence, between egotism and security…

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The Dilemma of ‘Weekend Missionaries’ (Do absolute rules become relative when you’re spreading the Gospel?) (February 1980) – On May 26, 1979, Melvin Bailey, a 32-year-old Christian pilot from Newport News, Virginia, left the USA in a rented Piper aircraft on a mission to Cuba. Accompanying him was a 31-year-old former schoolteacher, Tom White. They were carrying 750 pounds of Spanish-language, pro-Christian, anti-Communist leaflets sealed in plastic which they intended to scatter from the air over the island. Things went wrong…

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Acid Rain (In our craving for comfort and speed, are we destroying ourselves?) (March 1980) – The Middle East isn’t the only section of the globe in trouble. Things don’t look too good around our big cities — where most of us live…

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Moving from Pentecost to Gethsemane (Slow down enough to hear what God has to say.) (April 1980) – Even my wife (especially my wife) knew I was going to fast. Like a speeding train I whistled through grade crossings, roared over trestles just moments before then collapsed (thanking God I had made it just in time — never thinking it might have been my excess speed which caused the thing to fall down), and speed by passenger stations, too busy to even wave at the friendly folk gathered by the track, much less have time to stop and pick them up…

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If Your Pastor Gets a Divorce (Continue to love and minister to him.) (May 1980) – In the last few years at least two dozen well-known ministers — many of the my personal friends — have gone through divorce…

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The Day it Stopped Raining in Melbourne (God still intervenes in the affairs of men when we pray.) (June 1980) – Shortly after I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I received a call from the principal of the high school in the community where we lived, asking me to preach the sermon to the graduating class at baccalaureate. The high school had never had a baccalaureate service before, but since several of the graduating seniors attended our little church, they but pressure on the school administration who agreed. It was to be a big affair in the football stadium the first Sunday night in June…

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Praying and Weeping for America (Some personal thoughts after Washington for Jesus.) (July/August 1980) – Now that the Washington for Jesus rally is history, I want to tell why I did not go…

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“Our Parent Who Art in Heaven” (The push for unisex in faith and fashion is really a latent anger.) (September 1980) – Regardless of what happens to the ERA amendment, the idea of unisex has long outgrown the cute stage and has settled into the ridiculous…

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Marks of Spiritual Maturity (Lessons from my son learning to fly.) (October 1980) – It seem everyone is talking about spiritual maturity these days…

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To Whom Does Christmas Belong? (Is God’ grace just for Christians?) (November/December 1980) – We Christians have a way of acting, well, exclusive, when it comes to our holidays…

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