Telling the Story of Tennessee Baptists Since 1835
March 17, 2025
By Troy RustMission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: I Peter 2:11-17, 21-25 Most transient people have one thing in common – they travel lightly. How often have you seen a hitchhiker pulling a wagon? They tend to have the clothes on their backs and only a few very portable possessions, because they know they […]
March 17, 2025
By Mike DawsonRetired Tennessee pastorFocal Passage: John 6:1-15 “Little Is Much When God is in It.” Those are words from a song that goes way back in my memory. But they’re more than words in a tune; they’re the truth. And they are the underlying truth of this week’s focal passage, John 6:1-15, from the […]
March 10, 2025
By Troy Rust Mission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: I Peter 2:1-10 Have you ever noticed the singular focus of a baby’s diet? While we as adults are scarfing down pizza, cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese and an endless list of other foods that are not good for us, newborn babies simply want milk […]
March 10, 2025
By Mike DawsonRetired Tennessee pastorFocal Passage: John 5:1-11, 17-20 Today’s study is one of my all-time favorite stories from the life of Jesus, especially because of the question He asks. Out of one-hundred and thirty-five questions Jesus asked in the New Testament, this story contains one of His most startling! Our series is entitled All […]
March 3, 2025
By Troy RustMission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: I Peter 1:13-25 I learned a hard lesson on conformity before I reached the age of ten. However, I was past twenty before I realized that conformity was the problem. It happened one day when I was pushing my toy tractor through our gravel driveway. Between […]
March 3, 2025
By Mike DawsonRetired Tennessee pastorFocal passage: John 4:46-54 If you put “Signs of Christ’s Return” into an online search engine, you’d find many sites like “Eight Signs of Jesus’ Soon Return,” and “12 Signs …” and “6 Signs …” and “5 Signs …” and “SEVEN Signs …” and lots more. Obviously, people today are very […]
February 24, 2025
By Troy RustMission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: I Peter 1:3-12 An earthly inheritance is simply the reception of someone else’s stuff, usually after their death. An inheritance can be so highly valued (either real or perceived) that people build their lives in anticipation of receiving it. I grew up near a family that […]
February 24, 2025
By Mike DawsonTennessee pastorFocal Passage: John 2:1-11 Today marks the beginning of a series of lessons called All Signs Point to Jesus, from the Gospel of JOHN. Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, John tells the story of Jesus by highlighting seven of His many miracles, each being a sign of who Jesus was, each pointing […]
February 17, 2025
By Troy RustMission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: Leviticus 26:1-13 When I was young the Coca-Cola company created a contest that challenged customers to find four bottle caps with each having a word that created the phrase, “Coke the real thing.” As you might imagine, my older sister and I examined every Coke cap […]
February 17, 2025
By Mike DawsonTennessee pastorFocal Passage: Hebrews 10:19-25; 13:12-15 I remember reading an anonymous piece called ‘It’s Time to Plant our Gardens,’ that appeared in a number of church newsletters 20 or so years ago. The idea was this: in our ‘spiritual gardens’ we should ‘squash’ our differences, and ‘turnip’ for church services, and — one […]
February 10, 2025
By Troy RustMission strategist • Holston Baptist AssociationFocal Passage: Leviticus 16:1-10, 29-30 Liberal theologians reject the idea that God would sacrifice His own Son as our substitute (II Corinthians 5:21) to appease His own wrath toward sinners, calling it “slaughter house religion” that is beneath the loving God of the Bible. Yet even a cursory […]
February 10, 2025
By Mike DawsonTennessee pastorFocal Passage: Colossians 3:1-5, 12-17 The Apostle Paul was put in prison for preaching the Gospel. While there he wrote letters to encourage the faithful; one of those four ‘prison epistles’ is the New Testament book of Colosssians. This letter was written to exhort believers in the town of Colossee not to […]
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