Blog
Devotional
Be Respectful to Your Employer (Good or Bad)
Over the last 40+ years, I’ve worked for countless employers and managers. It’s a little difficult for me to figure out when I actually started working. When I was a teenager, I worked on various fruit farms picking apples while spending Friday and Saturday nights...
Full of Faith – what does it mean?
There’s a popular contemporary Christian song where, with much excitement, deep expression, and a building crescendo, the singer sings, “I am a child of God!” It is an exhilarating and encouraging song that I love to sing alone in my truck – and trust me – you want me...
Peace With God, Peace From God
There are many things that are wrong with the world. We certainly don’t need to be reminded of that, do we? Spend just 15-minutes on any news channel and you’ll find all kinds of things that are wrong in the world, enough so that it can be very unsettling. This...
Discipleship
Another Brick in the Wall
We’re in the first few days of 2021 – a brand new year – after a difficult and tumultuous 2020. However, as I reflect, my mind is not drawn to last year, but much farther back, even four decades. It’s hard to imagine that on this day 40-years ago, 1980 had just ended...
Mary Sets the Example
Christmas Day ended a few days ago. The presents have been opened. The holiday dinner (so good!) consumed. The family has gone home. No more Christmas music playing on the radio. The unusual TN snow giving us a white Christmas has melted. Holiday cheer is now a...
For Whose Glory: A Glance at People-Pleasing
I am a people-pleaser. There, I said it. For me, it stems from early periods of life where I felt the need to fight for approval. Tragically, even today, I feel the need to. It is ridiculous when I think about it, however. As my wife has lovingly reminded me, not only...
Missions
#OP2BLESS: Christ Transformed Lives in a Rapidly Changing Culture
Recently, our church adopted a new mission statement. The purpose of which is to succinctly state our primary means of fulfilling the Great Commission. Our mission statement reads: First Baptist Powell exists to invest in and equip the next generation to live...
Testimony
My Grace is Sufficient
My Grace is Sufficient 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take...
Pandemic & Prayer
Recent research has shown that Google searches for prayer have increased to the highest level ever on record during the current pandemic. Looking at data across 95 countries, searches for information on prayer rose dramatically regardless of income and other...
Exposing + Breaking Down Idols
The first half of this new decade has been unordinary, to say the least. We’ve experienced a pandemic, societal unrest, breaking news by the minute, murder hornets, dust storms, and toilet paper shortages, just to name a few. When COVID-19 started to escalate and the...
Wednesday’s word for women
My Sheep Hear My Voice and They Follow Me
We are living in a generation filled with voices … too many voices. It seems to me the last 3 years have filled everyone’s life with an overabundance of conflicting, divisive, gut wrenching information. All this commotion coupled with a world that is upside...
Help With My Bible Reading: Poetry As An Aid
Thanks, Mom Though I love to read, I wouldn’t have called myself a lover of poetry in the past. It seemed a little esoteric and beyond reach. Little did I realize how much I needed it. My latest interest in poetry has come to me, as many things do, by my mother....
Lesson Learned (Again)
Have you ever been in a situation where God taught you a valuable lesson in an unconventional way? I find myself in these situations often, and it always makes me praise the Lord that I serve a God who is greater than the box I often try to fit Him in. God is able to...