Passion For Jesus!

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Well, it is a very exciting church, and our goal is to be a place for the family, everyone in the family, and people not in families. God says he sets the solitary in families, so we have these fantastic buildings that our people have given sacrificially over the years. There's a couple of locations, actually, and so we do things always to exalt Christ and to preach and teach the Bible and to provide an atmosphere where people can be discipled and grow in their faith, and where kids and their parents and grandparents can enjoy life together. We're very committed to being a cross-generational church, so if you just look around here today in this room, you're going to see people of all generations, from younger to older.

In fact, I just passed a World War II veteran out there who's 102 years old, who was up here with friends having coffee. So we do all this to exalt Christ, to evangelize, and then build up the church and strengthen one another in our faith. So if you haven't figured it out yet, we are in Preston Wood Baptist Church, and that is Pastor Jack Graham, who has just been preaching the Word for so many years and bringing so many people to Christ. I was in your baptismal, and it's a baptismal that's actually being used every week, Pastor. A lot of dunking going on in Dallas, and we're not talking about the Mavericks, right? Or the Donuts.

Well, the Mavs are doing okay. But no, the baptismal is very central to what we do. We don't believe that baptism saves in any way or even helps to save, but as Jesus commanded us, we baptize new believers. And thank God we're seeing a lot of new believers. People come to Christ, and even in this last year, a couple of years, the pandemic period, we've just seen there's such an emptiness and loneliness and searching and seeking, and again, we're on one thing really, and that's preaching Christ and teaching the Bible and then growing God's church.

You just need to see this happening. I mean, I saw a lady with not one, but like two Bibles. She has these own custom-made stands out in your cafe here, having coffee, studying God's Word. There's all kinds of fellowship. And Pastor Graham, you talked about COVID. This has been one of the most difficult trying times. You hear all these stories. You hear about pastors resigning. You hear about churches folding.

You hear about struggles, people dying. I mean, this has been real. Of course, there's this overly inflated political thing that's run through, but you almost can't win, right? You mask, no mask. Vaccine, no vaccine. You know, I've had my 15th shot, and I'm kind of shaking, but I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

See, you can't even joke about it. But Pastor, how have you been able to navigate through that? And what's God done here amid all that? Well, you've got to start with the fact that we have incredible people here at Preston Wood, and they love God. They love their church. They're supportive of me, their pastor.

I've been here 33 years now. So it's just a great love story of the pastor and the people working together. And so we made decisions back when the pandemic hit. Nobody knew.

There was no playbook to navigate this. So we were like Indiana Jones in that scene. We're making it up as we go along, getting through this crisis. If you remember that scene in the movie with the little guy, Andy, what are we going to do now?

He said, I don't know. We're making it up as we go here. And so that's what we did. But we did pray a lot, of course. And again, great people that said we're not going to allow the political world or the culture to dictate what we do. And we were blessed here in Texas and in our region by a governor who proclaimed that the churches and codified that the churches were essential. So we weren't fighting like in other other states to just try to stay open. We went down for nine weeks and then came back, came back strong.

And we actually grew during the pandemic. Over time, we just saw several thousand people come to Christ during this period. And so our church is coming back united and reignited with a lot of the power of God. I've been meeting with Scott, your amazing leader for the broadcast ministry PowerPoint. I've met all your staff. There's one common thread, and that is that you're a pastor.

And it's kind of neat. And Scott said it this way. He said, how did you say it, Scott?

You said, I haven't put you on the spot. You said something about we want him to be the pastor. And he lets us do all this other all this other fun stuff. He preaches on Sunday. And what we do on Monday is, you know, take it out and see people coming to know Jesus through it. Praise the Lord. And what they do is curate and put together an amazing program called PowerPoint.

You have TV, you have all the social media. Lifting Up Jesus, that's been your passion with these books. I'm going to have some great reading on the way back to North Carolina from Texas. Pastor Jack Graham, Prestonwood Baptist Church, each of these books, I know it's near and dear to your heart.

Can you give me a sentence on each one of these? This is the 30-day prayer challenge book, Lord Hear Our Cry. Ask and it will be given unto you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened unto you. Ask.

Okay, ask. And then all things new, the revelation, what it means and why it matters, how timely. Yes, it matters because in the midst of darkness, the promise of God is that he will make all things new.

Amazing. Now this is a book called Choices, Life-Changing Wisdom from the book of Proverbs by Jack Graham. What did you say, Pastor Graham, about this book? We tackle all the issues biblically from abortion, sanctity of life, capital punishment, alcohol, any issue you want to name. The Bible addresses it and we take that and make choices that are honoring to God. You haven't shrunk back from these issues out there. When it comes to life, when it comes to marriage, you stood up strong.

And people will accuse you, oh, you're being political. Well, maybe life does matter to God. Amen?

It does. And we've been in that battle a long time, since my days down in West Palm Beach, Florida in the 1980s. And here for these last 30 years, we established pregnancy centers to save babies every day, overcoming evil with good. Praise the Lord. Now this next book, Unseen by Jack Graham, Angels, Satan, Heaven, Hell, and Winning the Battle for Eternity, that looks like an amazing book. Well, that's one of my favorite books because it deals with the invisible war, talking about the culture war, the battles that we're facing in our country. Ultimately, we know there is a heaven, there is a hell, there is a devil, and there's a spiritual battle going on. And the battle is the Lord's and it's an unseen battle, but it's very real. That's what that book's about.

And I love this one, Powering Up. The Fulfillment and Fruit of a God-Fueled Life. Jack Graham, tell us the sentence on this book. That's about the work of the Holy Spirit and the life of the believer. The filling of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. And then finally, and if you hear the noise, by the way, we're in a cafe.

This is beautiful. Tell us where we are. What does this place mean to you? This particular section, where we've got these amazing lattes and hot chocolate staring at us, and these brownies and this food. Well, most churches have a fellowship hall, right?

From the smallest Baptist churches and Methodists, wherever. So this is a fellowship hall on steroids. It's a big food service and we do buffets here.

We have a coffee shop. But it's the same mission. You want to get people together around Christ. So much of the fellowship that Jesus had with his disciples and followers was around tables.

And I say you learn something on sitting in rows in church, but you probably learn more sitting in circles with fellow believers. So we'll call this a sanctified ambient noise. How does that sound, Scott?

Okay. Then reignite. I really love the name of this book.

I can't read. This is your most, I believe you're one of your most recent books, Fresh Focus for an Enduring Faith. Reignite. Yeah, I would call this my COVID book, if you will, because when we begin to see just the emotional struggle of people everywhere and the mental health issues that people are facing, loneliness, anxiety, depression. I realized that we needed to help people reboot and reignite. And I really set out to write this book about perseverance and resilience and to tell that kind of story is almost like a kind of a life perspective for me of how to keep on keeping on. But as the COVID and the pandemic hit, I felt like telling my personal story would be important. So the first 60 pages of this book describes my battle after cancer surgery in 2009 that I had with anxiety and depression. And so I open up about that and how God healed me and brought me through. Thank you for all these books. I know there's even more books, but I was I was overwhelmed. I walked back in the resource room with Scott down there, the PowerPoint World Headquarters. He says, let me share a book with you.

Next thing you know, I'm walking out with a stack. And so I've got a lot of reading and I'm going to let family members read these as well. At a time, Pastor Jack Graham, we're at Prestonwood Baptist Church, where you fill the pulpit every week.

You're on the radio, you're on television. Your passion at the end of the day is what? To exalt Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and to proclaim the good news, the gospel to the nations. What's your word to pastors out there about the importance of preaching the word and to people out there about the importance of being under that kind of biblical preaching? Be bold, be courageous.

It's like Paul said to Timothy and Timothy was struggling as a protege of Paul just with his timidity, his his his lack of boldness. And Paul said to him, look, don't have a spirit of fear, but with love and a sound mind, preach the gospel of Christ. And so I would I would just say to pastors everywhere, this is not a time to huddle up.

This is go time. And we need to go in the name of Jesus with the word of God, the sword of the Spirit in our hands and with love, reach our neighbors. So many churches have abandoned evangelism and personal witness and training people in personal witness. And and the baptismals are dry and invitations often public invitations are not even often given. And it's not the only way to invite people to Christ, of course.

But I'm just saying a culture of evangelism in the church is greatly needed. That is Pastor Jack Graham, author, pastor, family man and just radio minister also on TV. God bless you.

Thank you. Look, look, look him up. PowerPoint dot org, PowerPoint dot org, Jack Graham dot org. There you go, Jack Graham dot org. And you'll find him in and then push play as soon as you get to the site and hear the man of God bring the word of God. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Great to see you, Stu. This is the Truth Network.