Scripture has always been a part of my life. My dad was a pastor. My mother was a speaker, writer, and teacher. I memorized Scripture from the time I was little.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My father was a Baptist preacher, and he used to read the King James Bible to me every single morning. He made me memorize it and repeat verses at night before I went to sleep.
Throughout my life, the scriptures have been a way for God to reveal things to me that are personal and helpful. When I was a little boy, I was given a small Bible. If I remember correctly, it was only the New Testament.
By the time I went to college, I knew the major passages of the Bible pretty much by heart.
I used to have Bible studies at my house. I was in the choir. I was mischievous but also a real mama's boy. It was a pretty happy childhood.
Scripture is the thing I like to share with people more than anything. My prayer reality is quite kooky. I have this very unique dialogue with the Lord. I utilize my own sort of street vocabulary - nothing slang that would be unacceptable.
I went to a Presbyterian college, you know, I was in... all the way, and so I remember doing my first sermon when I was 17, I was in high school. It wasn't a full twenty-five minute sermon, but for like ten minutes I got up and they let me do that, and it was on faith.
On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
My father was a no-nonsense, dedicated, and focused minister, and there was usually a sermon he needed to prepare for or a Scripture he needed to study, and that always came first.
When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.
When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.
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