Cyle Clayton

Read the first chapters of Romans, and you'll see very clearly that all people are under the wrath of God and equally in need of redemption. Because of God’s universal revelation of Himself in creation and mankind’s universal rejection of Him, all are under His wrath. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." (Romans 1:18-20 NASB)   God's wrath against "all godliness and unrighteousness of men" will be finally expressed on the day of judgment but is currently expressed in his turning sinners over to their sin. "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passion...

God’s wrath against all sin is the reason there is a Gospel. For some time, a wind has been blowing through evangelicalism, emphasizing God’s wrath. This wind is a reaction to the partial gospel that emphasizes only God's kindness without preaching His wrath. If you’ve never heard about your sin, God’s wrath upon you, and the certainty of spending eternity in hell, you’ve only heard a partial gospel. You’ve also only heard a distorted Gospel if the wrath of God has been preached as the primary motivation for your repentance. Escaping God's wrath through repentance and confession is not the Gospel. God’s wrath leads us to fear Him, but it can also lead us to fail Him. Repenting and confessing our sins is not enough. If that’s all we ever do, we’ll spend a lifetime sinning and repenting, failing, and trying to be good. We may even deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve done that successfully, looking at others who are not as “righteous” as ourselves in judgment. That’s why Paul wr...

Given the approval of a Southern Baptist resolution ( read the resolution here ) regarding IVF and the mass of media and social commentary regarding that resolution,  I wanted to clarify my stance as the pastor of a local church in partnership with the SBC.  At the very least, this is important for the people I serve with as pastor at  Calvary .  IVF is a reproductive process whereby the ova (egg) of a woman is combined with the sperm of a man outside the womb to form a viable human embryo that is then implanted in the womb. The method is used for people who have difficulty achieving pregnancy. According to  HHS , in 2021, 2.3% of children born were conceived utilizing some form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) like IVF: 86,146 children in this country.  Why would the SBC resolve to oppose the birth of children?   Did the SBC resolve to ban IVF?  The answer to the second question is no. The SBC did not outright oppose it but urg...

Tommy Culwell, the pastor at First Baptist, Seymour, had scheduled a revival with a pastor friend. The pastor had to back out but recommended a Ft. Worth evangelist, John Karl Davis. John Karl came to FBC that year and the next. He came back to Calvary in Seymour, where I had pastored.  First Baptist churches in county (or parish) seats, have a unique reputation amongst pastors and evangelists. They're not known for being flexible and excited about the changes that true revival brings. FBC was a typical county-seat Baptist church, which means there were more noteworthy people at that church than at the others in Seymour.  I was told that the evangelist was a little scary because he addressed sin directly, and often personally. I was skeptical about evangelists in general and what I had been told about this one in particular. I was told he was blunt about sin, even personal sin, and that he could "read your mail." (Later, I came to believe he had the gift of discernment.) ...

Did God use the Cross Country Emmaus community and the Walk To Emmaus from 1990-1997 as a tool of revival and renewal in the church in West Central Texas?  God used it to change my Walk with Him radically and, in turn, the trajectory of my life. I know dozens, if not hundreds, of people who faithfully follow Christ and make Him known today who would say the same. My last post gives details about the Walk itself. Let me tell you about what I saw, not what I heard God do in those years.  I was baptized at 8, raised in the church, rebelled against God, became an agnostic, and spent at least 10 years increasing my alcohol intake to deal with the resentment and chaos in my heart and mind. I tried to stop drinking but could not until September 1, 1990, when I sobered up through AA. A year after that, I believed in Christ. 6 months after that, at my mother's and wife's insistence, I went on a Walk to Emmaus. Before the Walk, I was a believer but was scared to read the Bible (because ...

I've been trying to write this article for about two weeks. It's taken so long because I wanted to explain the Walk To Emmaus, what it was all about, and how it was uniquely conservative, evangelical, and spirit-filled in the days God used it in my life. One reason is that some will dismiss it since its roots are in the United Methodist Church. They will have a "can anything good come out of Nazareth" opinion. Another is that I have sponsored people on a couple of other Walks in the last few years in this area and found them to be more liberal and less impactful. Well, I'm not going to worry about any of that. I'm still going to do this thing in two parts. The first is the facts about this thing in those days. The second is what I experienced, the lives I saw that were changed. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do with these articles. I'm going to tell about a several-year move of God that was an ongoing revival experience for me. God didn...

"When God intends great mercy for his people, he, first of all, sets them praying." ~ Matthew Henry "There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer." ~ A. T. Pierson If there is revival, there is prayer, but what kind of prayer? God is always at work in the lives of His people, sanctifying, teaching, encouraging, and transforming them into the image of Christ. Jonathon Edwards and others have distinguished between the ordinary and the extraordinary work of God. Revival is an extraordinary work. It is extraordinary in the number of people affected and the work's speed and depth.   The Bible makes a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary prayer. Jesus had an ordinary pattern of prayer. He prayed with others, but He tended to pray by himself, away from others, late at night or early in the morning (Mk. 1:35; Lk. 5:16; 6:12). On the night He was betrayed, He did what He ordinarily did. He went to a p...