First Baptist Family of Asheboro, NC

We are thankful today for the volunteers who made this soft reopening possible.   We have many more tech volunteers than before and we’re thankful for their hard work.   It’s good for our hearts to be together cautiously and carefully.   We are in times of uncertainty and fear.   We wonder what things will be like.   One thing that reopens every year is the pool.   We wonder and fear if the water will be too cold.   We wonder how we should enter the pool.   Should we just jump in or should we slowly ease in?   We don’t know what to expect.   There’s lots of uncertainty in events over this past week.   We are facing a lot of challenges in this world.   As we go throughout Genesis we see we all people are made in the image of God.   God breathed His breath into us.   We as a church stand for all people equally.   We take the Gospel to all nations. We believe Jesus Christ died for every single person.   We join together with our brothers and sisters who have different skin color.   We

The more time I spend around my niece the more clear it becomes that God gifts us with the tremendous blessing of children, grandkids, or in my case a niece, not from what we can teach them, but more importantly what they teach us especially about life and our relationship with God. God continues to bless our family with my niece, MaryKatherine, who celebrated her 8th birthday last month at our family’s house. As many other households did when Sunday morning arrived, we began to prepare to worship in our family’s living room with the rest of our local church remotely through a streamed worship service over the internet. As our family began to gather for worship, MaryKatherine, when told to get ready because our family was having church that morning, responded that we couldn’t go to church that morning due to the virus outbreak. She even asked for her grandmother to quit saying that we were going to have church implying that her grandmother was saying something that wasn’t true

We are thankful as we remember this morning as this is Memorial Day Weekend.  As we celebrate this weekend we remember those who paid a high price, those who have given their lives so we can gather together today.  We can worship.  Most of us are gathering at home this morning.  We are starting to hear about things reopening and returning to normal.  Things haven’t been normal for quite awhile for us.  I I want to remind you thought that this is the kind of weekend to remember and to think about such things as those who have given their lives for us.  It’s time for us to do the things that we’d do on a normal Memorial Day weekend, to think about those who paid such a price because here’s what’s happening.  As we begin to reopen and do some things that feel very good to us it can also bring some other thoughts to our minds as well.  While remembering those who paid this price, they are not forgotten.  Somewhere along the way you can also feel forgotten in all of this.  Here’s what ha

At 47 yrs old Valerie French had 2 massive strokes.  She couldn't walk or talk and was bedridden.  A lot of prayers went up for her.  Valerie wants everyone to know that God works miracles.  She couldn't talk but she worked in therapy and started walking.  She'd walk and walk.  She'd walk a mile a day.  Even though she could walk she still couldn't talk very well.  She also couldn't write.  Every day she'd try to write the alphabet for hours to practice.  Her strokes resulted in the non-use of her dominant right hand. She'd have her husband go to the library to get elementary school spelling books to learn to spell words again.  She said she lost the ability to do everything.  She had to relearn a lot.  She didn't even remember the names of her own children.  She relearned everything: how to eat, bathe, walk, talk, etc.   "God gave me the strength to keep working and working.  I couldn't pray like everybody else.  All I could do

God knows how to rescue us, to keep us.    Sometimes God keeps us from things that are happening in this world.   Other times God allows us to go through things, through the storm.   Sometimes God does both.   As we look at Genesis 14 today we encounter this idea of rescue.   Abram is about to rescue Lot.   Lot made a choice of where he wanted to go.   You have to wonder if Abram is thinking Lot made a bad choice to begin with but he let him do it anyway.   Did Abram do what you and I do?   When someone goes against us we have the opportunity to say, “I told you so!”   We have these moments in our lives as well. In this passage we have the idea that God rescues us.   Sometimes God even uses us as a part of the rescue.   Sometimes we see this perspective of what God does.   One thing we learn from Abram is there’s a time to be silent. There is a time to be silent. We don’t have to speak into every battle.   If you have a dog that barks at everything all the time if someo