Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Today we speak with

pastor O.S. Hawkins is the president and chief executive officer of

guidestone financial resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hawkins also served as the senior pastor of the historic First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas,

and is the author of more than 25 books, including the best selling, the Joshua Code, 52

scripture versus every believer should know.

He talks to us about his journey to becoming a pastor and a writer, and also about his new books, the Believers Code and the Christmas Code.

Hello, I'm O.S. Hawkins, and primarily I've spent my life as a pastor,

first as a young man out in those sweet fields

and Oklahoma down to the East Coast,

down on the Gold Coast of Florida

at the First Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale

for 15 years, and then finally back in the

concrete canyons of downtown Dallas at the historic First Baptist Church in

Dallas but primarily I like to look about myself as a husband and as a dad, as a grandfather to six grandchildren that I love a whole lot.

I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, had a great mom and dad. They were married a long time before I was born.

They were in their 40s, actually. When I was born, didn't think they could have kids.

They were great moral people. I never played in a

ballgame from Little League on. My dad wasn't there. But they weren't church

people. I was 17 years old and never

hearing a prayer in my home or seeing the Bible opened in my home.

When after a basketball game one night, a young man witnessed

...