Great Quotes from Mike

We ought not to see things like the world does because most of you, probably like me, grew up being tutored in Sunday school. And I don’t know about you, but I never outgrew some of that. I don’t guess I outgrew any of it. You see, I was led to believe that it was a lot better to be with David — that little shepherd boy with five smooth stones– than it was with Goliath with all his heavy armor. I was thought that it was better to be Daniel than it was a whole den full of lions because Daniel would come out better off then those lions. It went to sleep before it was all over. I was taught that it was better to be one of the three Hebrew children than it was to be the fiery flames of the furnace, because with God’s power those flames couldn’t even leave the smell of smoke on the lives and the clothes of those three Hebrew children.

I was taught to believe that it was better to be Elijah with an altar that had been soaked not once, not twice, but three times with water than it was to be 850 prophets of Ba’al screaming and yelling all day long for the fire to fall on Mount Carmel. I was led to believe that we serve a God who stood in the middle of a boat in the Sea of Galilee in the midst of a storm and said for the storm to stop and it did, or a Jesus who took mud and put it in the eyes of a blind man and he could see again. And one who could take two little fish and five biscuits and feed a crowd of 5,000 people and have enough leftovers that it would make the disciples realize that there was never an end to the supply of what our God could do when our people had faith — a savior who in fact could even go to the tomb of a dead man named Lazarus, so dead that the Scripture says he already was stinking — that’s pretty blunt, folks — (laughter) — and he made him live again.

I don’t want ever for us to let expediency or electability replace our principles as the new value. The new value needs to be the old value. We believe in some things. We stand by those things. We live or die by those things.