In Pursuit of a PhD!!!!

Many of you are asking, praying, and diligently holding me accountable to finish work on my PhD from Mid-American Baptist Theological Seminary. I am grateful to you for doing so. Though some of you drive me crazy, at the end of the day I am thankful. Really.

Having said that and at the same time acknowledging my own desire and need to "hurry up and finish," I have an idea. In order to fulfill all requirements AND write a dissertation, I am going to ahve to read a host of books, ranging from preaching to counseling to first century Christianity. I thought it would be a good idea to include on this blog some good and meaty quotes that I read along with the titles to the books that I am currently reading. This will do several things: (1) Let you know that I am busy reading/researching/studying, etc; (2) Allow your soul to (hopefully) be blessed with a good quote from godly men and women; (3) Turn your attention to some quality books you might know existed; and (4) Give you the opportunity to hold me accountable if you don't see a new quote in a couple of days. So, I will try it and see what happens.

I am about to finish Effective Evangelistic Preaching by V.L. Stanfield. You can order it from Amazon by clicking here.

The second part of the book contains evangelistic sermons from evangelists. The first sermon provided is by Billy Graham. Here is a quote from a sermon he preached called "Freedom Through Truth" from John 8:31-36:

"And Jesus told the truth about conversion. He said, 'Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven' Now is that true enough? Think of it now--except you be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Psychiatrists have told me that they are converting people, pschologically speaking. But Jesus talked about something more profound and total. You must turn from your way of living to a new way of living. You must turn from sin as the road that leads to destruction, to the narrow road that leads to eternal life. This is conversion; it is a change, it is a turnaround."