Savedthroughfaith.com

Please note: The essays and poems posted now will be some of my personal favorites from FlowerDust.net. I hope you enjoy the “best of” my five years of blogging. (*Originally posted November 13, 2009) It had been a really long day. 6 am came too soon, and as usual, I was running late to the airport. Due to the extra few minutes I spent taming my hair, I was unable to stop by Sonic for my habitual Diet Cherry Dr. Pe...

Welcome readers to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’re going to be continuing our look tonight at the Jehovah’s Witness booklet “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” I don’t see much difficulty with the section where the Trinity is defined, so let’s skip to the section with the head title of our blog title tonight. The Watchtower says there is much confusion when it comes to the Trin...

Do you see the young, good looking guy in the picture? No? Well, you do see the guy in the picture, right? Well, that guy – whether he is young and good looking or not – can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. At times, he can teach and lead in a way that is contrary to God’s will. It’s true. He’s not perfect. That guy in the picture is one of the reasons that I’m glad that our church has recognized (appointed...

Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching is such a gift for preachers. I can’t think of a book that has had more impact on the day to day life of ministry. This quote is another great reminder of the priority of redemptive preaching. Without a redemptive focus, we may believe we have exegeted Scripture when in fact we have simply translated its parts and parsed its pieces without reference to the role they have in God’s eternal pla...

I’ve written another article for Examiner.com as the Raleigh Practical Christianity Examiner. The article is called “Raleigh resident plants churches around the world.” This article is about Tim Bunn. I was introduced to Tim by my friend Art, who often comments here. It seems that Tim’s desire is to take “church planting” out of the realm of logistics and demographics and methodology and put it back in the hand...

A few weeks ago, when I was updating my blogroll, I added Jeremy’s blog “Till He Comes.” I’ve greatly enjoyed reading Jeremy’s posts as well as his comments here on my blog (and comments on other blogs that I read). If you haven’t checked out “Till He Comes” yet, here are some great articles to get you started: “Are Bedbugs the Modern Day Leprosy?“ “The Heresy in Debates about Jam...

In his latest post, Eric from “A Pilgrim’s Progress” presents another article in his series on house church: “House Church – Teaching.” (By the way, it should be mentioned that Eric is presenting a particular form of meeting as a “house church.” All house churches do not follow what Eric is describing.) In his post, Eric presents scriptural evidence that elders should teach, those gifted as teachers...

I’ve confessed before that parenting is the greatest challenge I’ve ever faced. If there is any challenge that even compares, it would be marriage, but that’s a topic for another post (I love you Brandi). Among my many challenges is teaching my kids to lose well. Two of my kids are incredible competitors who don’t like to lose at all. They get it honestly. Brandi and I both share that attribute. One time, about a year afte...

The emotional and mental combustion that occurs after preaching is tough to explain. There is the overwhelming captivation by the truth of the passage and the hovering reminder of your own weakness. There is the reminder of God’s faithfulness to use you and your realization of your own sin that gets in the way. Then there is that issue of human falleness called clarity. After preaching yesterday my wife gave me a kind look and aimed to enco...

Typically, when we meet together as the church, we study through Scripture. For example, back at the end of October, we completed a long study of the Book of Genesis. Before that, we studied the Gospel of Matthew together. Between long studies of specific books of the Bible, we often take breaks for topical or shorter studies. This is what we’ve been doing since November. March is the last month for one of these shorter studies, and I’...