OUT OF THE BOX

DRIVING GRANDMA TO THE DEVER FIELD I was ten years old, talking with my grandmother (Ma Ma) in her back yard, when my grandfather (Pa Pa) came walking out the back door. She said to him, “Tharon, I have to do some work down at the Dever field, and I need you to drive me. The field was a half mile away at the end of a dirt road. Pa Pa did not want to drive her to the field and have to wait on her. Neither did he want to leave her there and have to guess at when to go back and get her. He thought for a few seconds, reached into his pocket and took out the car keys, looked at them, looked at the car…and then looked at me. “Son,” he said, “Can you drive a car?” I was 10 years old and had never driven a car, but many times I had sat in Daddy’s pick-up truck going through all the motions of changing gears while pretending to drive it. Without hesitation, I responded, “Yes, Sir. I can drive it.” I was not about to miss this opportunity. Without another word, he handed me the keys and went bac...

Steve was a homeless fellow at Myrtle Beach when one of the hurricanes came through a few years ago. Huddled in a corner alone and frightened he cried out to the Lord for mercy and said, "Oh God, if you will bring me through this thing safely, I will get rid of my cigarettes and my false teeth!” Then having made it safely through the storm, he got rid of his false teeth and went around toothless, but hung on to his cigarettes, profanity and whoremongering. When I asked him about his logic in the matter, he told me that it is a sin to wear false teeth because the Bible warns us about things that are false. He told one of his friends, “You don’t want to be wearing false teeth when Jesus comes back. But then again, you just as well go ahead and smile and look pretty because it will be too late then.” This story is true, and we smile at the ridiculous logic involved. How is it that Steve could think he was doing God a service by laying down his teeth while holding on to his lifestyle ...

Dear Friends I posted this article almost 3 years ago. I am re-posting it now because of its encouraging insights. It deals with the significance of a "boat" and how we should face the "storm" when it seems the Lord has sent us on ahead without Him, and when it feels like the Lord is "passing us by." ---Billy Long LESSONS FROM A BOAT "Immediately He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side...Then He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them. Now about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by." Mark 6: 45-52 “He made His disciples get into a boat.” The “boat” is significant because it represents a context from which we can not easily escape. The disciples, on that small boat in the middle of the sea, could not simply change their minds and walk away from the problems and issues at hand. They could not escape the process; they had to ri...

My mom wanted me to drive her to the store to do some shopping. So I splashed some cologne on my face and went on ahead of her to the car and took my seat. She soon came out of the house and sat in the front seat on the passenger’s side and immediately began sniffing the air. I watched as she leaned forward and started checking the bottoms of her shoes. Turning to me she said, “Billy, check the bottom of your feet and see if you stepped in any dog poop before you got into this car.” I went through the motions of checking my shoes, but I knew it was the cologne. I never used that particular brand again. Smells range from pleasing fragrance to repulsive odor. The sense of smell can strengthen our romantic attraction to someone we love or wonderfully enhance the pleasantness of a room. The sense of smell is vital to our enjoyment of good food, but also senses decay and corruption and warns us to discard that which is unfit for consumption. A bad smell can be repulsive to the point of prod...

BREATHE ON ME When my sister Eva got the mumps, my cousin William saw this as an opportunity to make himself sick so he could skip school. He came over to our house a few mornings before getting on the school bus, went to her sickbed, leaned over with his face right in front of hers, and said, “Breathe on me.” I watched as Eva took a couple deep breaths and exhaled in his face as he inhaled deeply. It wasn’t long before he woke up one morning to find he had the mumps. He was so happy because he knew he would not have to go to school. But to his chagrin, he looked out the window to see that it had snowed, a very rare experience for us at Longs crossroads near the South Carolina coast. He had to stay in bed while all the neighborhood kids were out playing in the snow...and not having to go to school. IT WON’T HURT IF YOU DO IT QUICKLY On another occasion when we kids were playing in the yard, my cousin William came over to the house limping. “What’s the matter with your foot?” I asked. ...

There was a popular song a few years ago that said, “Through it all I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God.” It speaks of standing in faith and obedience in good times and in bad times. We must love Jesus Christ and hold to Him during the good times blessing and prosperity and in the hard times of adversity and perplexity. To be fully trained as God’s servants we need to walk in faithful obedience in the full range of experience from “pit” to “peak” and everywhere in between. Like the disciples we want to see God’s miraculous presence and glory on the mount of transfiguration. But we also need to be tempered and seasoned by the fires, testing, and disciplines of obedience. There is a depth and substance in those who have endured and continued faithful to the Lord in the full range of experience on the mountain, through the valley, and on the plateaus and level places in between. We gain spiritual substance and depth as we walk with Jesus through desert places as w...

Dear Friends, One of my recent posts was a letter I had sent to warn a friend about the dangers of adultery. My friend Leonard Terry, a pastor in Canada, wrote a wonderful follow-up to that letter. He gives us some really good advice on how to prevent unfaithfulness in marriage. I hope you will read his message. He concludes his post with a great testimony in the last paragraph. I think you will be blessed by his comments. Billy Long PREVENTING ADULTERY A Letter from Leonard Terry Hey Billy, Thanks for the letter you wrote to the person who was committing adultery. I agree with everything you said. I agree that it was an act of great love to confront the person with the truth God has given us. The Bible does tell us to correct one another in love. However, an observation I have made about our response in the general culture of the evangelical, charismatic communities is that we have often approached marital relationships to help them only after they are in trouble. Adultery actually be...