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You Don’t Have to be Famous to Have True Influence
In the past 9 days, I have spoken at two funerals. The two services were for two ladies who meant a lot to me. One was in Nashville, and the other in Haleyville. It was a high honor to be asked to speak at each of the services, and in reflecting on the lives of these ladies, I was reminded of a powerful principle that every Christian needs to have in mind throughout our life. See, unless you were near to these ladies, you probably would not have known of their passing. Their deaths did not make national news. No radio talk show is going to talk for hours about…
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Have You Said That You Were Sorry?
This past weekend I received a random text from a number that my phone did not recognize. Here’s what it said, “I’m sorry for everything that happened. I just wanted to wish you and your family a happy holiday season.” This text message literally took my breath away. Who was it from? To what were they referring? I immediately tried to think about anything that had happened that was bad over the last several years. Fortunately, I could not come up with anything I personally had done to hurt someone that was so significant that I would have to have a conversation about it. As I learned of who had…
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Thanksgiving…For the Wrong Reasons
It is not an original idea to suggest that thanksgiving should be much more than a holiday. All people would be much better off and the world would be a much better place if an “attitude of gratitude” would be the norm. This should especially be true of a person who wears the name of Christ and is truly trying to follow Him. As I was thinking about the upcoming holiday and, more importantly, about the mindset that should be ours, my mind went to a passage where gratitude was expressed. It was even expressed to God. Sadly, however, it was expressed for all of the wrong reasons. The passage that came to…
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Episode 67: Our 2016 “Thankful List” [Podcast]
https://media.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/content.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/Legacy_podcast_067.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS(Player not displaying or working? Click here.) With Thanksgiving right around the corner, our little family sat around and counted our blessings. There is no way we could share a full list of all the ways in which God blesses us, so instead, we made a list of 16 blessings from 2016. Below is the list, or you can listen along as Leah, Mary Carol, and Turner all join me for this podcast. Our 16 Things Getting Spot Time with our cousins (including cousin’s camp) Vacation to Chattanooga Painting the living room Pumpkin patch trip (with covered bridge) A good school year Time…
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Thanksgiving Ribbons: A 5-Minute Project to Help Make Thanksgiving Memorable
Next week, we will celebrate a national day of Thanksgiving. So today, to help you prepare, I would like to share a simple idea that our family did a few years ago that really made Thanksgiving more meaningful. And it only takes about five minutes! Before Thanksgiving, we bought some wide ribbon and wrote various questions on the ribbon with a Sharpie. (Make sure the ribbon is wide enough to write on, and thick enough so the Sharpie doesn’t bleed through.) Some questions were fairly simple and some were more contemplative. We then tied the ribbon around napkins and placed them at each plate. By the way, we were careful…
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Make Baptisms Special Moments
[Disclaimer: The “idea credit” for this post goes to David Shannon. At Polishing the Pulpit 2016, he spoke on a very similar topic as this post, and the concepts have been rolling around in my mind ever since.] Someone steps out into the aisle during the invitation song. This is the moment of their decision to put Christ on in baptism. Eternity is changed for that person. The old passes away in those waters, and a new creation comes forth, cleansed by the blood of Jesus. And, as they go to a small room to dry off, someone gets up into the pulpit and announces, “Don’t forget to bring some…
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Investing for Evangelism and Edification
At about this time of year or earlier, leaders in various congregations are involved in working on a budget for the next year. What “line items” would you include for us? How much should be budgeted for each one? What about your own individual or family budget? It seems to me that there is a tendency to begin thinking that evangelism and/or edification is merely a matter of making the right purchases (or as good salespeople like to say – “investments”). A particular speaker, book, seminar, DVD series, etc. would be just what is needed. If we just “invest” wisely, we will experience tremendous growth in numbers and in our individual and collective spirituality –…
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[Quote] Thomas B. Warren on the Value of Suffering
SOURCE: Our Loving God: Our Sun and Shield by Thomas B. Warren. (page 44)
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How Great Thou Art!
O Lord My God! When I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed, When through the woods and forest glades I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees; When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze; Jim and I have recently come back from what we considered to be a dream vacation. We traveled to the West into states we had flown over, but never really seen. We had seen pictures of the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, and Pikes’…
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Counting Everything but Loss
One of my favorite hymns is “There’s a Royal Banner.” It is a wonderful song, meant to instill in Christians a reminder that Christ has already won the victory, so we must go out and do our work to win others, and to do so at all cost. In the chorus of the song, though, some sing the wrong lyrics. Recently, I have sung the song a few times, and noticed that–with the lyrics to one line correct or incorrect–there is a powerful message. Incorrect Lyric, but a Powerful Truth Some sing, “For Christ counts everything but loss.” Now, we’ll get to what the actual words are in a moment,…
