Some time back my Aunt Olivene taught me a simple, little prayer: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.” This is Psalm 19:14. I think about this prayer a lot and my hope is that it is true today and every day. The first part may seem easy.

James 3:3 says put bits in the horses’ mouth and you control the whole body. The meditation of my heart, my thoughts, aren’t so easy to control. I ask the Lord to help me to be slow to anger and quick to forgive. This helps with both the mouth and the heart. When my heart is in the right plate, my mouth ain’t so quick to respond in anger.

Let’s take a look at where my heart and mind were last night. I may seem to ramble on at times, but the ones that have heard me in Sunday School are used to that. For 18 years I worked for Winston Cup race teams. My thoughts then were on making race cars go fast and winning races.

I would study Nascar’s rule book to find things I could do that the rule book didn’t say I couldn’t do. In a way I helped them with their rule book because if and when they caught me, they would make a rule against whatever it was I had done.

Sometimes they would give fines and call it testing the integrity of Nascar. Hal Needam would tell me: “Keep on looking, I’ll pay the fines.”

I study a different book today, not to get around the rules, but to try and live by them. To try and learn more about the way of life Jesus taught us to live. There are those today that want to teach a watered-down version of the Bible, but just like taking medicine, if you water it down, it just ain’t as effective.

On July 5^th I stood up here and reminded you of a lesson Mike had given us a few months ago. I remind you of that again today about the Pilgrims going to Holland looking for religious freedom. They found this freedom and also round a very liberal way of looking at the Bible.

This caused them to leave Holland, go back to England and then come to America. They were afraid if they stayed in Holland, their children would learn this liberal view of the Bible.

Maybe the Pilgrims were taking heed to Matthew 10:14: “Jesus said, ‘Who so ever shall not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.’”