As always, once we get have these colder months, many get sick with various problems. It seems that nowhere has been able to avoid these flues and strong colds that have gone around. It has certainly touched our attendance a bit here, and I’ve heard from many others saying the same thing. I’m not a doctor (and I don’t play one in the blogosphere), but the weather over the past month or so has been unbelievable. Just in the last few days, we have gone from a high of 70 on Wednesday, to a high of 38 on Thursday. That’s been the pattern this winter. In one seven day period,…

NOTE: After yesterday’s post, I got a special email from my dear friend Todd Clippard. Todd preaches for the Burleson church of Christ near Hamilton, Alabama. He read the post and sent me an article he recently penned for the local newspaper. It will also appear in a newspaper in Mississippi. I asked for his permission to post it here, and he graciously agreed. Enjoy Todd’s article. ——————— I Witnessed the Greatness of Sports in Sulligent, Alabama I have witnessed many great individual and team feats in my short lifetime. I’ve been privileged to see the careers of greats like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Dale Earnhardt. I remember the…

In a time when all we seem to see are players being arrested, charged with things, going to jail, and admitting to cheating, we can fail to see the good stories that occur in the world of athletics. Milwaukee Madison High School basketball captain Johntell Franklin was late to the February 7 game for the Knights against the Barbs of Dekalb, Illinois. The reason is tragic: his mother, aged 39, had died after a five-year battle with cancer. Johntell felt, as a captain, that he needed to be there for his team, but he arrived late. He went to the locker room, suited up, and came out to the court.…

I’m trying a new site (to me) and I’m planning on putting some of my PowerPoint presentations on here after I have preached the sermons. I hope you find this feature to be helpful. Here is the PPT for yesterday morning’s sermon: When Moses Made Excuses Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid service moses And here is the PPT for last night’s sermon…which I got from my dad (thanks!!!) Why Pharaoh Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid moses Old Testament NOTE: I apologize if you cannot read some of the text on the slides. I use a lot of different fonts (and wordart) in…

What an uplifting day! Our attendance was down just a bit, but we enjoyed having a great number of visitors and we also had some great periods of fellowship. We were blessed to have 345 yesterday morning for worship, and 248 last night. Those are down a bit, but we are going to work hard to get them back up! (And you can help!!!) It was a joy to welcome another new member yesterday. Julianne Johnson has been visiting with us for some time, and she decided to “officially” become a part of the Lebanon Road family. We are blessed have this wonderful and sweet young lady as part of…

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day (guys, do you need to read that part again???). I’m looking forward to going to eat with my family for lunch at our favorite restaurant. You Haleyville folks know where that is! We are going to take the leftovers home and eat them as a picnic for supper. On Sunday, after our morning worship and Bible classes, we are having a Valentine’s brunch. Also, there will be a game. Leah and I have been drafted to be one of the couples in the Newlywed Game. We are looking forward to this fun time. Don’t worry, there won’t be any self-incriminating answers like this given! The reason…

As most of you already know, today is the 200th birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. While Lincoln was nowhere near perfect, his legacy will be the holding together of a nation in complete crisis. He also delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, which set free African (and other) slaves. Simply put, this is one of the most important events in American history, and a moment for which we should be grateful. Charles Darwin’s legacy is what we think of more often, though. Darwin’s Origin of the Species is one of the most important books ever penned. To be honest, I’ve never read it cover-to-cover, but I have read quite…

One of my goals each year is to read a book that corresponds to the annual Freed-Hardeman University Bible Lectures book of study. Last year, I read Coffman’s commentary on John. With the book this year being Psalms, I knew there was no way I would have time to read an entire commentary on Psalms in time, so I decided to purchase and read a book that deals with how to preach this massive book. I bought Preaching and Teaching the Psalms by James L. Mays and finished reading it just before the lectures began. Upon purchasing this book, I was excited. I was hoping for several tips as to…

Last weekend, we came to Kentucky with two purposes in mind. We drove up because my mom’s birthday was Saturday. We are glad to live close enough to where we can be there for certain days like that. It was great to get to see mom on her birthday! We also came up, though, because my grandmother was doing poorly. She had been going downhill for quite some time, but in the last couple of weeks, she had really gotten bad. While she didn’t really know us, we could tell that she knew someone was there, and we all got to talk with her, hug her, and tell her how…

If you have not been on the blog lately, you might have missed all the brief updates I posted from the Freed-Hardeman Lectures. I could not send out the usual email updates, and you probably wouldn’t have wanted me to anyway, since there were so many updates. Hopefully, you will take the time to look at the 18 updates. Each is brief. Some are just pictures, while others are brief notes or interviews from FHU. There is also one recording of a song. I apologize if the quality isn’t that great, but I wanted to give you just some of the “flavor” of the week so you might be more…