by A.A. Neale
The maudlin sentiment gets spoken and written here and there among my good brethren.
They ask, Where are the spiritual giants of yesterday? Who will replace people like Cline Paden, Reuel Lemmons, Johnny Ramsey, and Batsell Barrett Baxter?
The names of the giants, obviously, vary with the worrier and his acquaintances.
I suppose I miss as much as anybody many of the spiritual giants who are passing from the scene. And there have been plenty of them.
Many of those I would name you’d not recognize. They don’t appear in the brotherhood eye. I’m tempted to name a few, but that would defeat my purpose.
Now just because we don’t see the well-known giants on the horizon doesn’t mean they’re not there. Maybe we’ll recognize them as such in another 30 or 40 years.
But as much as I respect and give thanks for the marvelous lives of the men named above and for those I would add to the list, let’s remember that our Lord has his own list of spiritual giants.
We know the Lord looks on the heart. We know that only the all-knowing God sees the final results of a life. We know all that.
But we can often forget it.
The real spiritual giants may be people few of us know.
One of them might be you.
But let’s not mourn the passing of spiritual giants and fret over the failure of more appearing to fill the shoes of those passing from the scene.
God gives every single one of us the same opportunity of heroic service in this world, of a gigantic place in his kingdom.
Instead of wailing there are none, let’s hitch up our pants and be one.
“You have also given me the shield of Your salvation;
Your right hand has held me up,
Your gentleness has made me great”
(Psalm 18:35 NKJV).
With God’s power, the meek and humble can be a spiritual giant. There need be no shortage, ever, of their kind.

Continue reading “Where Are the Spiritual Giants?”

General Dwight Eisenhower said, “There are no victories at discount prices.” Churches and Christians win no spiritual victories at discount prices, either. Churches like to cut corners. Go the easy route. Play up the audience. Cater to the common denominator. They may gather crowds, but the victory slips through their fingers. Another discount price is to be happy with what we’ve got. Don’t rock the boat. Take it long and slow. Claim nobody wants to hear the Truth (with a capital “T”). In such places, a ten-year-old Christian is still considered a recent convert. No victory there. Christians, too, pursue … Continue reading Discount Victories

Places mean much to us. Where we were born. Where we got married. The first house we lived in as newlyweds. Where we were baptized. Where we had our first job. Places of memories, of special moments, of important connections between people. When the Jews sought to seize Jesus, he escaped from them to a special place. “And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing at first, and there He stayed” (John 10:40, NKJV). This rugged, isolated place would have made it harder for the authorities to grab our Lord. And in these … Continue reading There