{"id":7319,"date":"2019-09-30T04:19:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/his-greatest-lesson-in-50-odd-years-of-preaching\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:19:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:19:22","slug":"his-greatest-lesson-in-50-odd-years-of-preaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/his-greatest-lesson-in-50-odd-years-of-preaching\/","title":{"rendered":"His Greatest Lesson In 50-odd Years of Preaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, while watching a little TV on Sunday instead of going to church, I watched a church in Atlanta honoring one of its senior pastors who had been retired many years&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>He was 92 at that time and I wondered why the church even bothered to ask the old gentleman to preach at that age.  After a warm welcome the man was introduced and as the applause quieted down he rose from his high back chair and walked slowly, with great effort and a sliding gait to the podium.  Without a note or written paper of any kind, he placed both hands on the pulpit to steady himself and then quietly and slowly he began to speak&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your pastor asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson ever learned in my 50-odd years of preaching.  I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials.  The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heartbreak and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me&#8230; the only thing that would comfort was this verse&#8230;<br \/>\n     &#8220;Jesus loves me this I know.<br \/>\nFor the Bible tells me so.<br \/>\nLittle ones to him belong,<br \/>\nWe are weak but he is strong&#8230;..<br \/>\nYes, Jesus loves me&#8230;<br \/>\nThe Bible tells me so.&#8221;<br \/>\nWhen he finished, the church was quiet.  You actually could hear his footsteps as he shuffled back to his chair.  I don\u2019t believe I will ever forget it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, while watching a little TV on Sunday instead of going to church, I watched a church in Atlanta honoring one of its senior pastors who had been retired many years&#8230; He was 92 at that time and I wondered why the church even bothered to ask the old gentleman to preach at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[518,1427,5193,5192,5194,3422,5195,2783],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}