Sunday School Leadership Conference with Allan Taylor Monday, January 31, 2022

 

The premier leader of Sunday School in the Southern Baptist Convention is coming to Rainsville First Baptist Church Monday, January 31 for our annual Sunday School Leadership Conference.  Allan Taylor, for over 20 years the Minister of Education for First Baptist Church, Woodstock, GA, and once the Director of SS for Lifeway will be our speaker.

 

He will be conducting two sessions beginning at 6:00 and ending at 8:15 and one of them is a MUST for every Sunday School leader (adult, youth, children, preschool, care group leader, outreach leader, secretary) and for every church member – “Sunday School as a Strategy.”  He will give us the basic tools for why SS is the most important ministry in our church and how to see it become that.  It was this session that he gave here three years ago that several pastors said afterward, “I wish every member of my church could hear that.”  Well, we are providing that opportunity again for us to hear that.

 

This conference is free and open to anyone.  Would love to have you, your leaders, and anyone else you want to invite.

The Power and Joy of Biblical Fasting by Bill Elliff

 

Bill Elliff is the founding and national engage pastor at The Summit Church in North Little Rock. He also serves on the Prayer Task Force at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. His passion is to see genuine revival.

If you are a follower of Christ, you carry a deep longing for MORE. More of Christ—more of His presence, His will, His voice, His direction. More fruit and effectiveness; more life change for you and those around you. More revival and spiritual awakening.  

Christ understands this desire because He placed it there! The Holy Spirit is in you if you are a believer, convincing and convicting, drawing you towards God. He does this because He knows your greatest life is found when you are walking in deepest intimacy with Him.  

It delights His heart when you are experiencing Him. He “has no greater joy than this that to see [His] children walking in the truth” (3 John 4). He knows that your soul’s only true satisfaction comes when you are experiencing His presence. “In Your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore,” David said (Psalm 16:11).  

But there’s more…God wants your life to reach its highest effectiveness for His kingdom. He has plans to reach people that no one else can reach except you. He wants you to bear much, remaining fruit for your good, others’ good and God’s glory! This can only happen when you are walking deeply with Him.  

His tools and His means 

Since God has designed you with such longing and purpose, there is a Divine design to make this happen! He has created tools and means by which you can “draw near to God” with the promise that when you do, He will “draw near to you” (James 4:8). Bible study, prayer, worship, preaching, community with other believers, communion, and ministry are all tools God has given you to draw near to Him. But one of the important tools that is often overlooked is the biblical practice of fasting.  

The purpose 

There are multiple biblical examples, exhortations and reasons to fast. It’s important as you approach a fast to determine why God is calling you to fast and what He is wanting to accomplish. Fasting is seen in Scripture . . . 

• As an aid to prayer (Ezra 8:21-23) 

• As a sign of and aid to repentance (1 Samuel 7:6) 
• To beseech God for revival and spiritual awakening (Joel 2:12) 
• To overcome sin and temptation (Matthew 4:1-11) 
• To hear God more clearly or discover His will (Acts 14:23) 
• To humble and quiet one’s soul (Psalm 35:13) 

• To prepare for ministry (Acts 13:1-3) 
• As an expression of deep sorrow (2 Samuel 1:11-12) 
• As an expression of mourning over sin — both personal and corporate (Nehemiah 1:3-4) 
• As an act of pure worship and devotion to God (Luke2:37) 

Read this list again carefully. What are you anxious for God to do in your life and through your life through a season of fasting? Something that couldn’t be accomplished any other way?  

Jesus assumes that fasting will be a regular part of your spiritual life. “WHEN you fast,” Jesus said, not “IF you fast” (Matthew 6:16, emphasis mine). Perhaps a better posture for believers would be that we are to assume (like Jesus) that fasting should be a regular exercise and not a rare experience.  

God wants you to live and minister in spiritual power! But the secret of such power is to walk with God — to lay aside all that is aborting His presence and power. There’s more for you with God if you will humbly, faithfully pursue Him with all your heart through Word-filled prayer and fasting.  

Join other Arkansas Baptists who are uniting in 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting right now. Click here to sign up to receive a daily email reminder.  

For more information, read “The Power and Joy of Biblical Fasting” by Bill Elliff. Copies can be ordered at www.billelliff.org 

"The Nicholson Revival" by Leslie Holmes

 This month our 31 Days of Prayer and Fasting is on Revival.  Each week I am sharing a story about a Revival or Spiritual Awakening that occurred.  Here is another one as told by Leslie Holmes, Contributing Editor of Preaching magazine and the former MOderator of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.

W. P. Nicholson came back home to Northern Ireland in 1923 after a spell in the United States. Nicholson was a straight-shooting preacher who called for an increased zeal among Christians and saw a large number of conversions. What started out as a weekend guest preaching spot in a local congregation ended up being a nine-month nightly preaching marathon in the largest soccer stadium in the country.  Thousands, including my maternal grandfather, were converted. The bars were emptied out and peace that lasted for more than 40 years came to a divided country.

As a result of the "Nicholson revival," as local historians call it, a warehouse needed to be built on the grounds of the Belfast Shipyard of Harland and Wolff to accommodate the stolen tools and materials that newly converted and repenting shipyard workers returned, confessing their sins and asking forgiveness.  So much material was brought back that Harland and Wolff finally ran a one-page announcement in the Belfast Telegraph saying, in effect, that workers should not return any more materials and tools because there was not enough room to store them.

"If you have tools and materials that you took without permission, you are forgiven," the advertisement said. That building, still standing today, is called "The Nicholson Shed" after the preacher. I've seen the Nicholson Shed.  My father-in-law, a shipyard employee, was in it on a number of occasions when he worked at the shipyard. Not long before he died, told me about the things that were in there.

That is what I mean when I say our country needs revival.  America needs a revival of Scriptural knowledge, genuine repentance, practical obedience to the Word of God, and vital piety. We need to see preachers become bolder in their pulpits, church members become more faithful in their living, and a country that understands we will not be truly the United States until our "God is the Lord" as the psalmist says in Psalm 33:12.

New Sermon Series Beginning This Sunday - "Heaven: Our Eternal Home"

 

Death is a reality that we hear almost every night on the news.  How many have died since the Pandemic started?  There was a time the news channels had a chart with the running totals of deaths.  

No one, no matter the condition of a person, ever welcomes death because those cold hands of death take away our loved one and our earthly lives will forever be without their presence and love.  

Dr. Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, died in 2007 at the age of 87.  In his book “Nearing Home” he says, “She is better off, but we are not.”  How true.  

But as followers of the Resurrected Lord Jesus, how are we to face death and more importantly, what is life on the other side like?  Heaven…what do we know about it?  What does the Bible say?  

We will not talk to those who died and “saw Heaven” and have written about it.  I don’t need their stories and for the most part, I don’t believe their stories.  We have a “more sure word of prophecy (II Peter 1:19)” that will tell us all we need to know about Heaven.

As I recently shared, there are so many in our church family that have lost loved ones in the past 15 months that my heart just breaks.  I feel compelled to do a short series of sermons on the subject of “Heaven: Our Eternal Home.”  In this series we will deal with:

Death: Friend or Foe?

Where are the Dead in Christ Now?

What About the Resurrection?

“Heaven Our Home”

“Heaven: The City”

I heard Joseph Garlington say many years ago, “We are not human beings having a temporary spiritual experience, but we are spiritual beings having a temporary human experience.”  What will it be like when we are no longer having a “human experience.”

Resources for Fasting

 Saturday we kicked off our "31 Days of Prayer and Fasting" around the theme of a devotion that I have written "Fan the Flame" The devotional guides are available in the foyer and will be on the church's website in pdf format.

"Fasting is refraining from food for a spiritual purpose."

Your Level of Participation:

Enter into time of prayer and fasting at whatever level you can.  Prayerfully consider your limitations as you determine your level of participation. Some cannot participate in a food fast due to health reasons, pregnant, or other reasons.  However, even those limitations can find a way to participate in this time of fasting;  or a part of it.  

If your fast cannot be food-focused, then seek to fast from something else that is a regular part of your life:  social media, TV, internet, sports, hobby, etc. Whatever activity that you sense is exerting too much influence on your heart or time and we need to fast from it to regain a more biblical perspective. 

Abstaining from food is the most powerful, but fasting from other things can have powerful benefits.  
Remember, the details are not as important as the spirit in which you participate.

Primary Purpose of Fasting?

The fast is a spiritual discipline designed to better connect us with God.  As a church, we are fasting in order to deepen our relationship with God, to better hear His voice, and to walk with less distractions in obedience.  

Fasting is not some kind of hunger strike that is forcing the hand of God to move.   

You use the time you would normally eat to pursue God.  Fasting is a biblical practice and a spiritual process that God anoints powerfully.  Fasting is not a diet;  it's a spiritual discipline.  As you neglect yourself to pursue God, you are winning the war against the flesh.  The walls come down when you approach God with this kind of focus, intentionality, and passion.

There is no mandate in the Bible to fast except on the Day of Atonement.  But fasting is assumed just as is praying and giving (Matthew 6).  Biblical fasting takes a lot of discipline and strength.

Types of Fasts:

*  Absolute Fast (no food/drink)  Ezra 10: 6; Esther 4:16; Acts 9:9

*  Normal Fast (no food, drink only liquids such as water and juices).  This appears to be what the Lord did for 40 days.  This is the most common type of fast.

*  Partial Fast (certain foods are given up).  This is what Daniel did in Daniel 10:3.  One could give up a meal or a particular kind of food.  Daniel fasted for 21 days.

Online resources helpful for fasting:

Jentezen Franklin - great resources and a free e-book
Daniel Fast
Ronnie Floyd - Fasting and Prayer as Your Spiritual Worship - GREAT article - a MUST read

Donald Whitney article on Fasting