I felt called to preach when I was 17 years old just a few months after converting from Roman Catholic to Southern Baptist. I don’t remember exactly when I preached my first sermon, but am pretty sure it was before I turned 18 that Hillcrest Baptist Church gave me the pulpit on a Sunday night. Brother Don Lastinger, my pastor, kept letting me preach every few months and recommended me to other pastors as a fill-in preacher.

I had a part-time job at Sears and Roebuck while in school and got to know the store manager who was a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Pensacola, Florida. He and his wife came to hear me preach one night at Hillcrest and said in front of Miss Milly, Brother Don’s wife, that I sounded like I had already been to seminary. Miss Milly warned them not to say things like that in front of me because it might give me a “big head.” Miss Milly knew me well, but it was too late. I was already in the habit of thinking highly of myself.

Soon after I began taking Bible and religion classes at Mississippi College as a junior, I figured that my true calling was to be a religion professor in a Baptist college. Soon after I began work on a Master of Divinity degree at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I figured that my true calling was to be a seminary professor.

Maybe you see my pattern. I get started with something new and within a very short period of time am convinced that I am called to be the expert who teaches others this subject.

Today someone asked me to teach them how to study the Bible. No one has ever asked me how to study the Bible before. I’ve been prepping 42 years to teach this class and now that I have a student, I feel more anxious than I’ve felt about almost anything I’ve ever faced in my adult life. Job interviews? No big deal. Being interviewed on television? No big deal. The last time I remember being this anxious was when I was providing expert testimony in a court trial and the judge got mad at me because he did not agree with my conclusions. I could have taught a class on how to study the Bible 35 years ago with complete confidence, but now I feel like I might be in over my head.

In over my head or not, I am going to publish my recommendations for studying the Bible… tomorrow in Part 2.