Pastor Buddy’s Blog

Journal,

The Lord has been so good to me, even when I wasn’t as good as I should have been. But one thing I’ve found out above all else is that I need Him, every hour I need Him.

So, in view of all this, think I’ve truly discovered the real key to triumphant faith. The key is to do your best to live a life that is constantly being surrendered to the Lord. Which for me means pretty much ‘constantly surrendering’ every time I look around. 

Guess my nick name should have been ‘Constantly Surrendering.’ But this is why I dearly love so many of the old gospel songs that talk about our walk with the Lord. Here’s a good one…

This calls to mind my early surrendering days…

Stay with me as I retell a story.

Guess I was bout 12 or 13 years old. Don’t even remember what kind of trouble I was facing, but I sho nuff didn’t want my ma and pa to know about it. So I went to the outhouse, and there I made me a solemn bargaining with God. What I told God is that if He would get me out of trouble, that I’d preach the gospel the rest of my days.  Course in those days I’d get baptized ever so often jest to make sure things were right between me and the Lord.

Well, that outhouse promise lasted jest a short time. I do recall getting some of my cousins in an outhouse, and made them sit there while I stood in the door and preached. Don’t think my preaching saved anyone. They jest wanted to get out of there.

Now you know how things go. Wasn’t long before I forgot all about the outhouse promise. Course my praying days weren’t near about over. Seems like I’d find myself back to those ‘Constantly Surrendering’ days every time you looked around.

What bothers me the most is that God never seems to forget…

Now I remember reading in the Bible where God said, “For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

Seems like that Scripture about God not remembering, had nothing to do with solemn bargaining promises made with God in the outhouse. Yup - The Lord never forgot that bargain that we struck.

So after I’d sowed some wild oats, here comes the Lord a knocking at my door. It was about ten years after I made the solemn promise, that the Lord comes to claim His part of the bargain. There I was, at age twenty-four, preaching my heart out, trying to tell folk how to live their lives and I didn’t hardly know how to live my own life.

In fact my first two sermons were nothing less than a mess. What an embarrassment for me to find out that the word ‘charity’ in the King James Bible really meant ‘love.’ I jest preached my sock off on people giving to charity. Course my face turned quite red after I found out jest how dumb I was.

And I’m not going to tell you what the other message was that brought redness to my ears.

But they survived and so did I…

Been preaching now for nigh forty-four years. Less see — I began at age twenty-four and now I’m marking on sixty eight. Yup, thats just about forty-four years.

But you know the greatest thing about the out-house promise? The greatest thing is that I never had to walk the preacher trail alone. The Lord has never failed me. He has been there each step of the way.

Like I said at the beginning, ‘The Lord has been so good to me.’ Why, He gave me a fine lady to be my wife, and a whole passel of childrens, grand-childrens, and a soon to be great grand-child.

So, is there a point to all this? Sure there is. Go back up the page and listen to Randy Owens and the Isaacs. The song they sing pretty much tells the tale.

And remember,

There is much love coming your way,

Buddy