As you might recall, a few months back I wrote about my lost Bible and notebook while shopping at McComb’s Wal-mart. Some have inquired if I ever found the Bible or if someone had contacted me. Well, the answer is no. I suppose it is gone forever.

It is difficult for me to believe an item as large as was the Bible and notebook wouldn’t show up somewhere in the store. That is unless it was carried away by someone. And its difficult for me to believe someone would have kept a Bible which had my name imprinted on the front and written on the inside along with phone number and address.

I called the store a number of times and went by the store on one occasion. No one knew anything about it although no one went out of their way to assist me in my search. I couldn’t then nor now complain very much because it was my mistake when I left it . . . I believe by the check-out register.

Well! That’s history. My home church, Galilee 1^st Baptist in Gloster, has called me to serve as their interim pastor. On Sunday, October 22^nd, they observed pastor appreciation Sunday and gave me a new Bible. It is the Holman Christian Standard Bible text. The Minister’s Bible, with wide edges and a single column text, with a good size text for my old eyes, is better than the one I lost. So, everything has turned out well.

I count it a real joy to have the opportunity to come home and serve the Lord where it all started. The task is different from other interims thus far. I’m still not sure how my family and long time first name basis friends will respond to my leadership in the church. To this point, there has been a great deal of affirmation from everyone.

This leads me to the question: Can a preacher successfully go home again to minster. I don’t know the ultimate answer to that question. Seems to me it might be easier to stay near home as a church pastor from the start. By doing that a preacher can develop a firm position and reputation in the local area.

But to come home after forty years, there is a tendency to remember who one was as a young person growing up in the community. That could effect a congregation’s perspective of who he is and not what he is in the ministry.

I must say that since my retirement from the active pastorate in 1998, my home church family, my friends from years past, the community in which I live, and the churches of the area have affirmed my retirement ministry. For that I’m sincerely grateful.

An interim pastor with an open end agreement never knows how long he will serve in an interim’s position. I still remember what the 10 year old girl at the West McComb Baptist Church in McComb said about me. She was introducing me to her grandparents. She was excited to do so and went around the table telling me the names and relationship of each one. Then she turned to me, with her open hand in my direction and said, "And this is Brother Odus Jackson. He is our", and she forgot the word interim. She stumbled a second and then as quickly as she had forgotten said in a big voice, "well, he’s our preacher until we get a real one."

So! That’s what I am in my home church. I’m "our" preacher until the Search Committee can find "us" a real one! For now, I’m enjoying it more than anyone will ever know! So, pray for me because when kinfolk turn against you there is trouble in the camp. Maybe, by the grace of God and the good help from the people we’ll all survive.

How to live a healthy lifestyle is on the minds of multitudes of many individuals along with health professionals. Even the politicians and educational leaders are weighing in on the issue. They tell us that Americans are among the fattest people in the world. And they say something needs to be done about the lifestyles and eating habits in today’s society.

They are most likely correct in their findings and suggestions. But correcting the problem is going to a difficult endeavor for these folk to accomplish. The calendar can’t be turned back to another time when the average person had to labor with more physical energy than today. Modern inventions along with advanced technology has ushered society into a more leisure lifestyle.

Americans have fallen in love with the easy life and there seems to be more pocket change in people’s pockets. One can’t go shopping to a mall or other shopping areas without smelling the wonderful smell of cooked food floating through the air from near by fast food restaurants. Add change in the pocket to a hungry stomach to those good smells in the air and what is a fellow to do? Generally! They eat!.

Some obesity is a problem with most people. And since most every one in a family has an automobile or some other transportation, fewer individuals are using their two feet to go places. It all adds up to a problem about which only individuals can do anything to eliminate.

There is a more serious obesity seen on the horizon, a more dangerous problem of nutrition. This obesity is being abused by people who have been truly saved, that is converted to the Christian faith. Just as physical obesity is dangerous to one’s health, this obesity is dangerous to one’s spiritual health.

This dangerous obesity occurs when Christians fill their minds with the world’s crumbling wisdom, with sinful thoughts, with unwholesome entertainments, with godless lifestyles, and unchristian actions. Instead of growing to love the Lord, who has given His life for the sinner’s salvation, these sinful traits bloat the soul with uncleanliness and snuffs out one’s ability to useful service in the Kingdom’s work.

How can one change their spiritual nutrition habits? It begins by taking in the correct food which comes from the correct food source. The writer of Psalms 1 has some good advice. First of all, he alludes to the danger of flirting with the worldly minded. By walking in the counsel of the wicked a person debates the principles of their thinking. By standing in the path of sinners one participates in some practice with the worldly minded. These things leads to the worst of all possibilities and that is to sit in the seat of scoffers where the sinful world’s ways are enjoined.

The alternative to these three degenerative actions is to study the Word of God so one’s delight will be in His Law. After all, Christians are only pilgrims in this world with a Heavenly citizenship for their eternal future. As such, one’s conduct should be a learned process of doing His will while here on earth.

Daily meditating in the Word of God, talking with the Father in prayer, and practicing what has been taught from the written Word and the inner Holy Spirit’s teaching (which is always according to the written Word) will produce a real spiritual person. That person becomes stable and ever glowing with the love of Christ.

When people out in the world sees a Christian, they should be able to say that they’ve seen Jesus. Most people will never go to Israel and see or experience the feeling of the risen Jesus. But they will observe believers throughout any given day. Hopefully they can say they’ve seen a representative of the living Lord of Glory.

Trim the worldly fat. Enjoy a good nutritional diet of Christian fellowship and Bible study.

Let’s get real! Is faith which produces little or no Christlike actions and second class church faithfulness really saving faith? James, in his letter near the end of his short New Testament letter, put it this way: "What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him?" (2:14).

A little later he writes, "for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead" (2:26). James correctly remarks, "I will show you my faith by my works" (2:18). And under Holy Spirit inspiration James wrote, "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself" (2:17).

In the real world of the righteous, saved people are recognized, not so much by what they say, but by their righteous acts. Their priorities reveal their faith. They prove that their faith is real while the mouth professing folk proves their faithlessness by producing no righteous living.

The so called Christian game is over. The world no longer possesses the spirit of respect for righteous things. It has drifted too far away from Bible based morality and has a secular agenda. Perhaps in past years, before this drift, people in the community placed the church and Christian profession upon a higher level of respect. In days past, the "profession" of the clergy was near the top of the respect list. Today, it has moved toward the bottom of must respect lists. Christ-likeness, which is genuine faith, is what the lost world is waiting to see.

An unsaved church member, regardless of how often they attend church or how much money they put into the church’s budget, is still lost and on a course of life leading toward an endless Hell.

The gospel must be made clear on the matter. Seeking to make everyone fell good after a church service must be over! This shouldn’t be the pastor’s goal. The desire of every Bible-believing pastor is to present the good news of Jesus’ love in a concise, clear manner so the lost will be converted and the saved people will be convicted to work in God’s Kingdom upon the earth.

Membership in a local church doesn’t guarantee a seat at Heaven’s banquet. Hopefully, most members are also members of the Lord’s spiritual church, the body of Christ. But many of them, it seems, proves their faith is faulty. Their priorities reveals a secular world leaning. Their conduct is influenced more by a world view than by a Biblical view. Their conduct defies their confession. The love for the world cancels out their love for God.

Pretty decent crowds on Sunday mornings walk into many of our churches across our area. That is a fairly good sign. But what happens when night falls? The crowds reduce dramatically in size. Fast speed forward to the mid week services and the crowds are again reduced in number. And where are our young people at those services and our young married couples? If our families continue to teach children, by their absence, that these aren’t important then the future for more than one service a week is pretty deem.

Sound pretty discouraging I suppose. But truth is, there is a concern about the scores of folk who say they are going to Heaven after they die but whose works reveals little evidence.

I don’t believe the Bible teaches a works salvation. Neither do I believe it teaches a salvation without outward evidence to support the mouth profession. Salvation will produce a life of faithful obedience. The plum-line is in your possession. It’s called the Bible. You’ll never be perfect this side of Heaven, but possession of Jesus as personal Savior will produce a changed life. Measure your own life by God’s plum-line, the Bible.

The lion stalks through the jungle in search for food. It quietly goes about the hunt. When a prospective meal is encountered, the lion awaits the best opportunity to strike. It will lie in wait and creep slowly in the food plots direction. At the right moment, the attack is on! When the kill is made the loin will prepare for its meal. Experts tell us that the loin roars, not before the kill, but afterwards. It’s like, I guess, a victory shout as it stands over its prey!

Peter, in his second letter, writes toward its conclusion for believers to be on the watch for the devil. His word of warning is this, "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Pt. 5:8).

Satan, the devil, is today on the prowl in America. No one is out of danger. He seeks someone to destroy. That’s his nature and his hunger is never filled. The dead corpses of his handy work is seen strewn across the face of America’s scenery.

I sat dazed by the television these past days while watching news reports of children being abused and slaughtered by evil minded individuals. "How can anyone line up children in the quiet, untroubled world of the Amish people and execute them" was the thought going through my mind. It made me sick to the stomach just to think about it.

In recent years, and especially in recent days, the school class room seems to be the target the devil is attacking. Other schools throughout our nation have experienced similar disturbing attacks.

Our society is rampant with missing persons. Many of them are discovered to be killed at the hands of some evil individual who takes out their frustrations on another human being. Many of the reports are about children being exploited and women raped and killed. Business establishments and homes are the target of robbers seeking to take what doesn’t belong to them for their own selfish purposes. The traditional marriage is under attack and babies are still being murdered in the womb in the name of the American legal system.

The victory celebration of the roaring loin is being heard across the land at this very moment. And from I can judge the leadership of our nation, from our highest office down through the halls of congress and onto main street American, hasn’t come to grips with the truth. If so, everyone wants to be so politically correct or fearful of the ACLU, and are not speaking the truth as they know it.

Our nation’s problem is a spiritual problem. Write whatever one wants to write, say whatever one desires to say, but the proof is coming to the surface. The more we disregard God publicly and in our private lives, the more evil prevails. Some try to excuse it all away by saying simply that "it is the day in which we live". That is exactly the point! The day in which is live is what it is because God is backing away as people on the street, politicians in politics, news reporters on the news airways, and multitudes of others are telling the world to "go to hell"!

Once again we are going to get to the bottom of all the school attacks by calling secular counselors, psychologist, psychiatrist, and others of like mind to brainstorm and seek what can be done. If the shackles of Christian restraints were lifted from the Christian students, parents, and churches so revival could break out in the public places, things would change for the better.

But I don’t see it happening. So, my Christian friend, let’s hear Peter’s warning and be calm and watchful so our opponent the devil can’t eat our carcass.