By Mark Proctor Pastor, Highland Park Baptist Church, Columbia Focal Passage: Joshua 24:14-28 I have a treasured book in my study containing some of history’s greatest speeches. I often read them finding myself wishing that I could compose and deliver such stirring homilies. What made those speeches great was not the composition but the passionate soul of the speaker. In Joshua 24, we hear the passion of the retiring, elderly Joshua

  By Mark Proctor Pastor, Highland Park Baptist Church, Columbia Focal Passage: Joshua 22:1-8 An experienced backpacker will tell you in chilling detail of the dangers of reaching the summit after a long ascent up a mountain. With muscles weakened by fatigue and clothes soaked with sweat, the high country winds above the tree line can bring on hypothermia quickly. The top is no place to forget the rules. In

By Mark Proctor Pastor, Highland Park Baptist Church, Columbia Focal Passage: Luke 1:26-38 Twenty years ago, on the same week God called me from the engineering business into the ministry, my wife delivered another announcement:  we were expecting our third child. I was terrified — a career change and an unexpectedly expanding family.  At once, natural, human emotions threatened to eclipse the sovereignty of God. That balance is the struggle

By Mark Proctor Pastor, Highland Park Baptist Church, Columbia Focal Passage: Joshua 10:6-14 Remember the old western movies with their dramatic musical scores? You could watch with your eyes closed and tell when the plot was about to change. The music became louder and more intense, the action slowed, and everyone prepared for a shoot out. Justice was at hand. The Bible contains those same pivotal moments. One such moment

By Mark Proctor Pastor, Highland Park Baptist Church, Columbia Focal Passage:  Joshua 6:12-25 Teachers, look at your students. Pastors, look at your congregants, and parents, look at your children. Those are warriors, battle-weary with hearts hurting from skirmishes in a mean, merciless world. What will we tell them? Joshua faced the same dilemma. As God’s leader he had to tell God’s wearied children how they were to move ahead to

By Hoyt Wilson Pastor, Flatwoods Baptist Church, Holladay Focal Passage: Joshua 1:1-9 Before Gordon Bethune became the CEO of Continental Airlines in 1994 he said it was the worst of the worst. Of the nation’s 10 biggest air carriers, Continental was worst in on-time arrivals, worst in baggage handling, and worst in customer satisfaction. With a stock price near $3 per share, a history of bankruptcies, a string of ten

By Hoyt Wilson Pastor, Flatwoods Baptist Church, Holladay Focal Passage: II Peter 3:3-13; 17-18 “Arise!” Will that be the loud command of Jesus when the trumpet call of God announces His return in the clouds (I Thessalonians 4:16)? The response to that command will either be “Wow” or it will be “Woe.” For those who have rejected Him it will be “woe!” For those who have received Him it will

By Hoyt Wilson Pastor, Flatwoods Baptist Church, Holladay Focal Passage: II Peter 2:1-3; Jude 16-25 An atheist is a person who denies the existence of deity. A practical atheist is a person who says God is, but lives as if God isn’t. A believer is a person who is committed to God in a personal relationship which determines the spiritual and moral direction of his life. In II Peter 1:19

By Hoyt Wilson Pastor, Flatwoods Baptist Church, Holladay Focal Passage: II Peter 1:12-21 Had Simon Barjona not taken a chance on Jesus, he would have missed a purposeful life and a grand eternity. Simon did cast his life with Jesus and became Simon Peter who first became a follower, then a disciple, and finally an apostle of Jesus. During three short years of being with Him, he became firmly convinced

By Hoyt Wilson Pastor, Flatwoods Baptist Church, Holladay Focal Passage: II Peter 1:3-11 Only God is indispensable, but every person has practical usefulness. I have never forgotten a sign at the second floor landing of a church. The sign said: “God don’t make no junk.” In the worst of us and the best of us there is potential for usefulness. I Peter was written to God’s elect who were exiles