my faith in the reality of Jesus Christ has grown steadily stronger over the years especially since my 40th birthday when I had a time where I could have gone either way in my relationship with the Lord, a sort of crisis of faith where I really doubted all that I had been taught and what I was teaching. It was a second go round for me in this, the first being when I was a Freshman in College. The first time I nearly turned my back on my faith in Jesus took several months to work my way through, in 1989 it took just a couple of days. Since then there has been no looking back or second thoughts or any inkling of doubts. Today my faith is rock solid, very strong and growing at an accelerated rate to the point that most of my thoughts during the day revolve around the Lord, my service for Him and my eternity with Him. The strength of my faith that Jesus is very real and that heaven is very real and very wonderful has fueled my passion to attract more and more people to Him. I grieve over the number of people who have little to no faith in Christ and seem totally unreachable. My main tool it seems that God has given to me to make a difference is preaching, and I have become increasingly obsessed with getting better at this skill, and receiving more supernatural anointing from God. I spend hours every day praying for those I preach to and for myself pleading with God to please speak through me with more power and clarity so that people encounter the living God and know it with out a doubt when I teach His Word. The number of people who visit JBC and then don’t  come back, and the number who have attended for years and then drift away is so depressing to me. If I could just get better, if God would just empower more, everybody who heard the Word of God from me would believe and become fully devoted followers in Jesus Christ. Oh well, I guess not even Jesus was able to pull that one off. But I will keep working hard and praying long that more will happen.