Earlier in life, I had a brief stint in sales just long enough to convince me that I am no salesman. However, I did learn some interesting maxims from my sales training, like “The Rule of 250.”

It is Wednesday, August 16, my wife and I are in Mooresville IN having just buried her father. Russ Lambert was 106 years old. Recently, I was thinking about all that he had witnessed in his lifetime. He was born in Indianapolis in March of 1917. In April of that same year, the United States entered World War I.

A friend recently asked me what I was reading in my “daily devotions.” Some of you are now waiting for my answer but others of you are wondering what we are talking about. I remember as a new convert wondering that very thing.

Guest preachers have an advantage over the resident preacher. A guest preacher can drop in, speak boldly to a congregation on some controversial issue, then go home leaving the resident preacher to deal with a brewing firestorm.

“You do not have because you do not ask,” says the New Testament letter of James as it chides its readers for their prayerlessness, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people!”

With all the rain we have been having this summer on the Florida panhandle, I am giving serious consideration to building an ark! Anyone who knows me knows that me building anything is a disaster waiting to happen. My failed work projects are legend.

I am crazy about aircraft of all kinds but get particularly excited over military aircraft. Living in Navarre nestled among the many military bases and airfields, I’m three-for-three in the real estate maxim, location-location-location.

These days, there seems to be a credulity gap between what people say and what they do. The credulity gap to which I am referring is when a person or an institution champions an ideal but acts in a manner contrary to it. The technical term for this credulity gap is “an issue of plausibility.”

I don’t fly as much as I did earlier in ministry when I traveled to speak at various conferences. My most recent flying experience has not made me eager to fly more. I was traveling to the Evangelical Free Church of America’s biennial conference at Fullerton E-Free Church where well-known pastor Chuck Swindoll ministered for several decades.

Occasionally, I meet someone, who, upon learning my name, says, “Oh, you’re the guy that writes that column.” For the record, this only happens locally since my column is not syndicated, but I am nonetheless thrilled to meet anyone who reads it.