Imagine being an 8- or 9-year-old kid and playing basketball with your grandfather. It’s an image that you wouldn’t expect to see every day, especially if he’s 82-years-old. But the Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry, a slim, elderly man who is the national presiding minister of the House of the Lord Churches, mentioned that he is still able to challenge even the most spirited of ballers.
This is the kind of inner fire that inspires readers to pick up his just-released book written in the prime of his struggle, “Made to Master.” The famous social activist penned the manual for building faith in 1976. “We do different things when we are challenged, and I write. I love solitude and I write to get focused and to get solace. The book is a personal sermon. It’s about how to stay encouraged when God seems to be giving you the opposite of what you prayed for,” said the pastor at his book release party this past Sunday, April 28, at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. He said he was inspired by a book that a man gave him, “Riches within Your Reach” by Robert Collier. He thought he was going to read an instruction manual on how to get monetarily rich, but it was more about acquiring wealth of a spiritual nature.
Daughtry’s book, he said, serves as sort of a time capsule that was written during a difficult time in his life spent working a temporary position for one month in the Catskill Mountains.
One wowed man at the book signing said he was struck by the blending of the intellectual with the spiritual, and how the author seems to draw from many sources other than the Bible. To that, the pastor responded that the original title was “How to Build Faith,” but he felt that it had too much of a religious tone to it. Masterfulness is more of a wide-reaching notion. The book seems to bridge the gap between the Bible and what are known as “Universal Laws.” Daughtry says that’s what Jesus was getting at with the Sabbath question.
Taking a rest, not necessarily on a particular day, but respecting the cycle and the universal laws of working and resting is the purpose of the Sabbath. Lack of sleep and work-related stressors, along with poor diet and other factors, are known to have negative affects on health, and that is another major issue for Americans, especially in the Black church community.
He is mostly a vegan and believes the human body isn’t made for eating meat. He became a vegetarian at 55, but he wasn’t yet one when he wrote the book. He said that when making choices about food, ask not if you like the food, but “does this food like me?”The pastor has published five other books and several other volumes. He went on to share more practical tips: keep affirmations and reminders around your home or job to remind you of your goals and that you have all that is within you to master any situation.
The book is chock full of tips and inspiring stories, and then there are other chapters on strategies and the laws of the universe pertaining to combining faith with action.
“You were made to master!” proclaimed Daughtry.