When I turned 16 I took my newly minted driver’s license and boogied ten miles up the road to attend church in a town bigger than mine. (They had about 1000 people, compared to 350 in the town where I grew up, so naturally their church was somewhat larger, and a whole lot healthier.) My pastor at the First Baptist Church of Crane, Missouri was a man named Hubert Fugitt.

Hubert seemed old, to a 16 year old. I’m guessing he was 60. He and Jessie had children my age, and my parents age!

I only remember one line, from one sermon that Hubert preached, but that one has stuck with me now for over a generation; some 32 years. It was an important lesson I have never forgotten. It was a simple verse from Proverbs 17:22 which says “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a wicked spirit drieth the bones.”

Pastor Hubert exemplified a merry heart, and that simple sermon is still yielding fruit all these years later as the foundation for my teaching on how the act of rejoicing produces the emotion of joy.

That’s good medicine!

What’s the most memorable sermon from your youth? Tell me about it.