Author: Texas Gospel

The living room floor where Paul Lancaster found gospel music

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Long before he was standing on stage with The Guardians, Paul Lancaster was a kid parked on his living room carpet, working his way through his mother’s record collection one album and eight track at a time.

“I sat in front of there and just pulling out albums and eight tracks,” Lancaster remembers, half laughing at himself. “I know that dates me a lot.”

That collection was sprawling and unpredictable. You could jump from Elvis to a Sunday morning quartet without warning. Lancaster wore out one particular Elvis eight track, drawn especially to the gospel side of the King’s catalog. “I loved the rhythmic singing of Walk Them Golden Stairs and Josh Fit the Battle,” he says. “Oh, it’s good stuff.”

From there, the collection opened into what Lancaster calls Jesus Music of the Air: Andrae Crouch, Sammy Hall, Don Francisco, names that shaped a generation of Southern gospel and contemporary Christian sound alike. For a kid on a living room floor, it was less a genre than a whole world.

Then there was the album he avoided entirely.

Southern gospel group The Guardians promotional photo. (Photo courtesy Daywind Records)

Tucked into his mother’s collection was a record by Jerry and the Goffs, its title alone enough to spook a young Lancaster: “God’s Gonna Get You for That.” He steered clear of it for years. “As a kid, I kind of shied away with it for a while until I listened to it, and it was really good, you know,” he says now, the fear replaced by fondness.

Looking back, Lancaster frames those afternoons as something close to formative, not because any single song set him on a path, but because of the sheer range of what he was hearing. “Those were a lot of good memories of sitting on my living room floor at home and listening to just a lot of different things from the day,” he says.

What actually set the hook came a few years later, when Lancaster was ten years old and saw Gold City Quartet perform live for the first time. “Then I was hooked for sure,” he says simply. No embellishment needed. That was the night the music stopped being something he listened to and became something he wanted to do.

Decades on, Lancaster sings alongside John Darin Rowsey, Pat Barker and Dale Forbes as The Guardians, a quartet built on tight harmony and a shared commitment to the gospel that shaped all of their childhoods in one form or another. The group has picked up three Dove Award nominations and multiple number one songs along the way, occasionally welcoming founding member Dean Hickman back to the stage, a man with more than 60 years in gospel music behind him.

Their newest single, “I Know You,” feels like a natural extension of the records that filled Lancaster’s childhood living room, songs built to be sung loud and mean it. The chorus lands with the plainspoken conviction Lancaster grew up on: “But I know you and who you are is holy. Who you are is mighty. Everything that I could never be. Who you are is faithful, merciful, and able. The righteous one that meets my every need. Who you are is great and worthy of all praise. With an empty grave to prove it all was true.”

It is not hard to hear an eight track kid in that chorus, still sitting on the floor, still pulling one more record off the shelf.

Seeking God Through Prayer and Fasting: A Call to Revival

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BOB RICHMOND

The promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 is both simple and demanding: if God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek his face, and turn from sin, he will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. The responsibility falls squarely on believers, not on the surrounding culture. God is not expecting lost people to act saved; he is waiting for saved people to start acting like it.

Fasting Is Not About Earning Favor

Fasting is not a religious performance or a way to impress God. It is a deliberate act of stripping away distractions, intensifying prayer, and humbling the flesh so the spirit can seek God more fully. Ezra proclaimed a fast before leading God’s people through dangerous territory without military protection, and God delivered them. Nineveh turned from its wickedness after fasting and mourning, and God relented from judgment. The pattern is consistent throughout Scripture.

Remove the Noise

Constant anxiety over global events produces no fruit. God created people to handle the challenges of their personal reality, not the weight of every crisis broadcast daily. For many, turning off the noise and refocusing on God is itself a meaningful spiritual discipline.

What God Is Waiting For

Revival does not begin with changing the culture. It begins with honest self-examination, genuine humility, and wholehearted seeking of God. His eyes are open. His ears are attentive. The question is whether his people will respond now, or later, or never.

and My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

Seeing the Signs of False Teaching

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JEFF TURNER

The Bible gives many warnings about false teachers, making it clear that they are a real danger. From the early parts of the Old Testament, there are repeated signs of people leading others into false worship and wrong belief. This continues into the New Testament, where Jesus speaks about it, and the apostles also give strong warnings. The book of Revelation shows that this problem will remain until the end, with false messiahs and false prophets still appearing.

Because of this ongoing risk, it is important to understand how to recognize such people. One of the first ways to do this is by looking at their lives. Jesus taught that a person can be known by what their life produces. This means watching their actions over time and seeing the direction they follow.

Another helpful step is to observe those who listen to them. The behaviour and desires of their followers can reveal much about the teaching they are receiving. If those who follow show patterns of wrong living or focus on things that do not honour God, it raises concern about the one leading them.

A strong desire for money is also a key warning sign. The New Testament explains that false teachers are often driven by the goal of gaining wealth. They may take advantage of others in order to increase their own resources. This focus on personal gain stands in contrast to the spirit of service taught in Scripture.

Above all, their teaching must be tested. Every claim they make should be measured against the truth found in the Bible. If what they say does not match Scripture, it should not be accepted.

In simple terms, three areas should be examined carefully. Look at how they live, consider their attitude toward money, and test what they teach against God’s Word. These steps help protect believers from being misled.

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 7:15

The lasting legacy a mother can leave through passing on faith to her children

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JEFF TURNER

One of the most powerful things a mother can do is pass on a living faith. Timothy’s grandmother Lois, his mother Eunice, planted the word of God in him from his earliest years. This spiritual investment does not require a woman to step outside the proper order of the home; it is a divine calling that fits beautifully within it. The intimate bond between mother and child creates a sacred space where truth about God and salvation can take deep, enduring root.

Paul also wrote that women are saved through childbearing, a statement sometimes misread as suggesting motherhood earns heaven. What Paul meant reaches far deeper. The shame connected to Eve’s role in the fall is reversed, redeemed, when a woman pours herself into raising a godly generation. When she continues in faith, in love, in purity, she becomes part of something that pushes back against the long shadow of sin in the world.

Consider the mathematics of influence. Lois poured into Eunice. Eunice poured into Timothy. Timothy carried the gospel across the ancient world. One faithful mother. Generations transformed.

For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelled in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well.

2 Timothy 1:5

Mark Bishop is still writing songs about second chances

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AMY TURNER

Mark Bishop knows something about second chances, and it comes through in every corner of Where Do Blessings Come From?, the singer-songwriter’s new project for Sonlite Records. “This album, if it has a theme, seems to be about recognizing the good in life,” Bishop says, describing a record built around healing and hope rather than nostalgia for what’s already passed.

That distinction matters to him. Bishop isn’t interested in looking backward. The songs here argue, again and again, that the best is still ahead: joy that hasn’t arrived yet, peace that’s still being written. One standout track leans into a simple, defiant promise, that no matter how far gone someone feels their happiness is, there’s more waiting for them. It’s a small idea stated plainly, but Bishop sells it with the conviction of someone who’s lived it.

“God gives us hope,” he says. “This world most often promises much more than it can deliver. But God promises our greatest joy is yet to be experienced.”

The focus track, “Over and over again,” takes a different approach, tracing familiar Biblical figures (David, Daniel, the Exodus story) as evidence for a larger pattern: a God who shows up, repeatedly, across generations. The chorus hammers that repetition home, turning history into reassurance.

Between the half dozen singles that have carried Bishop through the better part of 2025, starting with “Grandkids,” and the newer material rounding out the collection, the record moves fluidly between the domestic and the divine. It’s a range that’s become something of a signature for him, and it’s part of why Where Do Blessings Come From? plays less like a collection of singles and more like a sustained argument.

For Bishop, that argument starts at the very beginning. “There was no love before God,” he says, “just an empty void.” In his telling, creation wasn’t only the physical world, it was the invention of an entire emotional register: love, peace, joy, all of it as new then as the mountains and the seas.

Blessings, in Bishop’s framing, are the residue of that act. “Little nods and kisses from an eternal plane,” he calls them, artifacts of a love too large for heaven to fully hold, occasionally spilling down into ordinary life.

It’s a big theological claim wrapped in an unpretentious package, which is very much the point. Bishop has built a career writing songs that carry weight without ever sounding heavy, and Where Do Blessings Come From? keeps that streak alive. Ask him where the title comes from, and the answer loops back to something close to a thesis statement: “The God who created you, that’s where your blessings come from.”