Speaking @ Mount Calvary BC, Jersey City, NJ

Last night I had the expressed privilege of preaching for the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Preaching for one of my good friends in the ministry, Pastor Barron O. Wilson, who leads the Mount Calvary Church where his father Pastored for many years before him. Pastor Wilson is somebody's preacher! He has a heart for people that allows him to reach into the very consciousness of people, to help them see where they truly belong in the Kingdom of God.

There have been many times when I have gone to him for counsel and he has never failed to provide for me the right information and methods that I needed at that time. It was during my first year of preaching and the invitations were few and far between, when Pastor Wilson invited me to stand in his pulpit and present to the people God put him over, my convictions about Jesus Christ. And ever since that day, he has been a big part of my life and my ministry.

I wanted to deal with something that was not a common text for a Pastor's Anniversary. I lifted a great text from Exodus 3:13-14, which I tagged the Remedy For Our Inadequacies. The reality is that no matter who you are, all of us have experienced a real sense of being inadequate on this journey. It matters not if you have been in ministry for 50 years or 5 minutes, there comes a time in our lives where we feel like we just don't measure up to this awesome task that God has presented for us. Moses, that great emancipator, felt the same way while on the backside of a Midianite desert, he hears a voice crying out from a burning bush, telling him to go into Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let God's people go. Moses replied who is he to go and tell this deified being anything, God replied to him, five of the greatest words ever recorded in verse 14, I AM WHO I AM (ESV). Here is the sermon skeleton:

Thesis: our sucess as servants of God rest totally in our complete trust that during moments of inadequacies God will make up the difference

I. Trust in the Evidence of His Existence

-I AM...this phrase literally is defined to mean God is self-existent
-Pharaoh considered himself to be the direct descendent of the Egyptian sun god Rah...in which he feels that he exists because the sun god exists
-God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh that while he needs the sun to exists, the sun needs God to exist
-how do we know God exists:

a. scripture states it
b. scenery suggests it
c. spirit senses it

II. Trust in the Presence of His Personality

-I AM WHO
-God's personality is expressed to many different people in different ways

III. Trust in the Awesomeness of his Authority

-I AM WHO I AM
-God's has the power to accomplish any and everything

Please pray for the family of my Pastor, Joe A. Carter, who are dealing with the loss of their beloved mother Wynona Hutchinson, who went home to be with Jesus on last night. She was an extraordiarily strong woman who survived plenty of heartache in her life, to exemplify what it means to be a wife, mother and a woman of God.

Watch Night Service 07

On last night we celebrated the Church of Jesus Christ's annual Watch Night Service with a joint worship celebration between the First Mount Zion Baptist Church and the New Hope Baptist Church, where I was honored to be asked to preach the final message of the year for both congregations. My Pastor, Joe A. Carter is presently on sabbatical from the New Hope Church while he is dealing with a bout of stress and anxiety that has actually caused him to miss the last few months of preaching at his church. Words cannot express how honored I felt for him to ask me to be the preacher for the evening when in past years during Watch Night at New Hope, he has brought some of this country's greatest pulpiteers such as: Dr. Joel Gregory, Dr. Eddie McCree and the one and only Dr. C. Eugene Overstreet just to name a few. So for him to ask me to stand on that level of platform when far more experienced and established personalities have been there and are more qualified to "pinch hit" for him, lets me know that the favor of God is great and unfair, but it will work in its own sovereign way.

The Lord led me to deal with an issue that has been plaguing both Pastors and pew all throughout 2007, and that is how do we deal with bad situations. All this year, the church has been dealt one blow after another trying to kill our effectiveness and stifle the growth and development of God's church. But I am grateful that the bible, the complete Word of God, gives us every answer to every question that we face in this life. So the Lord took me to Psalms 46:1-4 and allowed us to take a glimpse of how we are able to handle bad times when they show up in our lives.

This Psalm, though written by an unknown author, deals with a celebration in the Temple because the Lord had just defeated their enemy the Assyrians who attacked Israel following their wicked leader named Sennacherib. This Psalm was sung in the Temple as a celebratory song praising and thanking God for his deliverence in the worst of times. Here is the sermon outline:

Title: Help in Bad Situations

Thesis: our ability to rise above our bad situations rest totally in our complete confidence in a God who can

Transitional Statement: what proof do we have that we serve a God who can

I. God is Our Personal Rescue
-verse 1...God is our refuge and strength
a. We will find our safety with God
-God is our refuge
b. We will find our survival with God
-God is our refuge and strength

II. God is our Powerful Resource
-verse 1...a very present help in trouble
a. he is sufficient
a. he is immediate

III. God is our Permanent Resistance
-verses 2-3...therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea...though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, Selah

a. Though our fears sticken us
-therefore we will not fear
b. Though our foundations shake us
-though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea...though waters roar and be troubled...though mountains shake with swelling