"You Are a Winner!" ... God Told Me to Tell You!

By Xlibris US

We all live in a fallen world. In the words of my grandmother, IF IT AINT ONE THING, IT IS ANOTHER. We are confronted with problems, pain, and persecution. We are also confronted with burdens and brokenness. These challenges sometimes cause us to feel down, disgusted, disenfranchised, and even depressed.

This word is written to encourage people to look up and be a positive people. It is intended to encourage people to focus on the positive and not the negative. In the words of our forefathers, Behind every dark cloud, the sun is still shining.

The people of God are a victorious people. We walk in victory. This collection of sermons is designed to help us to go THROUGH the not-so-good times to get to the good times. We go through the valley and the shadow of death.

It is my hope and prayer that this collection will help you to build your faith and remind you of who we are. We are conquers!!! We walk in VICTORY!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499007008

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Bishop Lawrence L. Kirby.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014907710

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-0702-2

                Softcover         978-1-4990-0703-9

                eBook              978-1-4990-0700-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

NKJV—New King James Version

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 06/13/2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Preface

Sermon #1

Sermon #2

Sermon #3

Sermon #4

Sermon #5

Sermon #6

Sermon #7

Accomplishments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks be to God for allowing me to be a winner in ministry for Him! Thanks to my wife, Dr. Renee Sartin Kirby, for her timeless support during my ministry. Special thanks to the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church family for their unwavering support during the past thirty-three years.

Finally, special thanks to Minister Della Buckley for the transcription of the audio sermons and to Dr. James Kinchen and Sister Minnie Brye for their editing of the manuscript. To that end, the reading of the publication does not portray the manner in which the sermons were delivered.

FOREWORD

When I was a young man, still in my teens, I began playing for and leading choirs for churches in my hometown of Jacksonville on a per Sunday/per service basis. On a couple of Sundays each month for a while, I played for a large Methodist congregation. This was right about the time that I was dating a young woman who attended the other large black Methodist church in town. On some Sunday mornings, I would make a brief stop by Ebenezer United Methodist to see Nellie for a couple of minutes before driving to Simpson Memorial, where I played. Sometimes I would see Ernest Newman, the Ebenezer pastor, who would later become the first African American elected Bishop by the United Methodist church in the southeast. One morning, he told me, with a twinkle in his eye, to carry a message to Pastor S.S. Robinson at Simpson. I waited for the important, serious message that I was to be emissary of. Tell him, the Reverend Newman said, to feed the people this morning. Don’t give them spiritual swill! After seriously pondering whether or not I should convey such a message, I decided to do as I was told. The two were, after all, friends. When I told the Reverend Robinson, he chuckled with his deep bass voice and said, Oh, did he now? apparently enjoying the moment of a bit of inside humor that probably only the two of them truly, fully shared.

From time to time in the years that followed, I have thought about this message. While I did not know the underlying context of it, I understood the swill bit. Most of my boyhood, my father raised hogs—usually not a whole lot of them, but anywhere from a pair to seven or eight. He would slaughter one or two at a time in the dead of winter on a cold day, when the meat would be least likely to spoil, give some of the pork to the men who helped him, and then cure and smoke the rest, so that our little smokehouse had hams, shoulders, and sides of bacon well into the end of summer. We collected most of our table scraps each day in a big bucket by the back porch door. To those remnants of our meals, Daddy would add mash and water, and even overripe produce from a fruit and vegetable stand that saved it for him, and create a big mess of something that we called slop or swill. The hogs, ravenously hungry for their evening meal, could hardly wait to be fed, often threatening to tear the swill bucket from my father’s hands. They were so glad to get that stuff, but, while it suited and soothed the swine, it was clearly not fit for human consumption!

People need the word. They need it for their spiritual health. Believers need it so that they can grow and mature in Christ. Non-believers need it so that they can acquire a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul, in his Roman epistle, reminds us that Faith [saving faith] comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17) It is faith in the essential fact of the Gospel—For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16)—that is at the core of salvation. People need the word for spiritual survival. That is why Paul, in his strong, but loving second letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, challenged him to Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15) People need the word rightly divided—in digestible portions, prepared with skill, served so that it tastes good enough to eat, yet sticks to the ribs long after it is consumed. And they need the real deal, the unadulterated word. Johnson Oatman was right in his hymn, Lift Him Up: Oh, the world is hungry for the Living Bread… . Preach the Gospel simple, full, and free. This is the urgency behind Paul’s exhortation to Timothy later in the same letter: I charge you therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:1-2) People do not need spiritual appetizers that whet the appetite, but provide no real substance, sustenance, or staying power. They do not need spiritual junk food, attractive to the taste buds, and good for temporarily quelling hunger, but utterly devoid in nutrition.