While You Were Talking, God Was Working

Let them say what they want.

Let them pull up their rankings and their poverty statistics and their lists of everything Mississippi supposedly isn't. Let them mock the accent, the small towns, the dirt roads. We will wait. Because while they are talking, Mississippi has been producing. And it has been producing for a long time.

This book was not written to win an argument. It was written because God told me to — because the phrase Mississippi Mud dropped into my spirit and would not leave.

Here's the truth I set out to correct: there are lies about this state that have been repeated so long people say them without even checking. That Mississippi can't read. That everyone here is poor and living in shacks. That nobody's motivated enough to build anything. That this state is basically a third-world country sitting inside America's borders.

So I dealt with them one by one. With facts. With verified data. Because facts don't perform — they simply stand. And what they show is a people who have been counted out by the world and counted on by God.

And to the critics — to the naysayers — to everyone who has unknowingly been slinging Mississippi in the mud while calling it commentary: while you were talking, God was working. While you were criticizing, He was calling. While you were performing your escape from where you came from, He was raising up servants right where you stood.

What you see as mud, God sees as purpose.

You cannot mock what God has already ordained.

Mississippi does not need to defend itself. It just needs to keep producing. And it will. It always has.

This is one piece of “Mississippi Mud: From the Mud to Divine Purpose,” available soon. If this stirred something in you — whether you're from Mississippi, the South, or anywhere the world has looked down on — this book was written for you too.