Years ago Dr. Lewis Foster, my favorite college professor, was a guest teacher at our church.  Dr. Foster had graduate degrees from both Yale and Harvard and had served on the translation team for The New International Version of the Bible.  He was a brilliant man.

But Dr. Foster had a unique way of teaching the Bible so that the common man could understand it.  As he lectured the first night I watched my five year-old son sitting on the front row obviously enthralled with the lesson.  On the way home I asked, “Rusty, how did you like Dr. Foster’s teaching?”  He bubbled over with enthusiasm.  “Dad, that was great!  I could understand every word of it.  Dad, I got to thinking, maybe you should preach more like that.  Even a little child can understand it.”

I went home that night and wrote the gospel message in one-syllable words:

“God made man and loved him.  Man sinned and fell from God’s will.  God, in His great love, sent His Son to die for man’s sin and then raised Him from the dead.  Now if we yield our lives to Him, He will cleanse our sin and give us life for all time.  What great news!”

The Apostle Paul wrote, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).

Merry Christmas from our home to yours. – The Bob Russell family

The Bob Russell Family, June 2015. (Pictured left to right: Andy, Corrie, Lisa, Phil, Judy, Bob, Chapman, Rusty, Kellie, Charlie, Johnny, Tommy, and Kimberly)

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