Posts by Billy Arnold (Page 3)
Knowing God: The God of REST
Knowing God: The God of REST When was the last time you thought to yourself… “I need a break!! I need some REST!… I need a VACATION!” If you are like me, when those cruise ship brochures come in the mail, or those vacation sales to nice warm sunny beaches arrive in my e-mail box, I like to look and dream a little. I think to myself how nice that would be to just relax with no cares and enjoy…
A Wilderness Experience: Off the grid living
A couple of years ago I bought a magazine about “off grid living.” I have always enjoyed that kind of thing as I have done a good bit of backpacking over the years. I love the mountains and I love figuring out how to make life work in a naturel setting. But as for the magazine, maybe I was considering moving off the grid, as it was during the covid lockdown time, and I thought to myself, “if I’m going…
Knowing God: Jesus is Superior to the Angels and the Ultimate Human
I have another Hollywood movie analogy for you this week… “Angels and Demons,” the 2009 film with Tom Hanks as the main character. Last week it was the Truman Show with Jim Carrey! What we know of Angels is usually from a Hollywood movie. (are you thinking to yourself… ‘Billy, you watch too many movies!” I actually did not see Angels and Demons as it looked too dumb for me – but don’t tell Tom Hanks!) This coming Sunday I…
Knowing God: His Final Word
In the 1998 film, “The Truman Show,” that starred Jim Carrey, it was about a man Truman who thought he lived a ‘normal’ life, but it was in a box. From birth to adulthood his life was on camera 24/7. It was the ultimate reality show for the audience as they kept the TV on all the time to see what Truman was up to. Truman had no idea that he was being filmed. The world that he lived was…
The King’s Royal Speech
Knowing God: The King’s Royal Speech In our study series we have titled “Knowing God,” we are now at the place in the story where God gave the Ten Commandments to His people. Moses brought tablets down from the Mountain of God with God’s handwriting on them of these Ten Commands for His people to follow. You will recognize the Ten Commandments at least in part, and we know them in Scripture as the ‘LAW OF GOD.’ But much of…
A Plan for the New Year
Starting the New Year 2023 with a Bible-Reading Plan Maybe you are spending your week cleaning up 2022 and getting your new 2023 calendar all ready. It’s about this time every year, between Christmas and New Year, that we all hear statements like… “I sure hope ’23 is better than ’22!” “I’m ready to turn the calendar over to 2023, because I was disappointed in 2022!” “I’m determined to make the new year better than last year.” “I’m starting healthier…
The Dawn of the Incarnational God
Christmas Eve, Candlelight, and Silent Night John 1:14 (NIV) The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. This coming Saturday evening is Christmas Eve. My favorite service of the entire year is the 11 p.m. candlelight service at our church building. (We will hold this service once again this coming Saturday. Please realize that we have a 7…
Doesn’t Anyone Know What Christmas is All About?!
Remember the old Christmas cartoon from Peanuts? Charlie Brown is going crazy with all the confusion of a Christmas tree that isn’t working out, a play that’s going badly, and life somehow just falling apart. Frustrated with the chaos of the Christmas season, he yells out to the crowd, “ISN’T THERE ANYONE WHO KNOWS WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT?” It is his young friend Linus who stops in the middle of all the hectic activity and, in his innocent little…
Three Portraits
Three portraits to understand the incarnate God we find in John 3 As you may know, Patty and I have been in eastern Europe for a couple weeks, visiting our daughter and son-in-law and, of course, Pollyanna, one of our precious granddaughters (now 10 months old!). While in three eastern European countries—Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland—we attended a significant missions conference (which I will tell about later), but we’ve also visited some amazing tourist sites, namely medieval castles and majestic church…
Preparing for Our LifeWay Thanksgiving Service
This Sunday morning, November 20, we are dedicating our normal 10 a.m. service time to giving thanks: to one another, for our daily provision and, most of all, to God! There will lots of wonderful musical worship, but each of us is also to play an important part in this service. How to prepare for Thanksgiving worship For example… Psalm 106:1 Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. This Sunday morning service will be…
Stand Firm and See the Deliverance of the Lord!
Exodus 14:13 (NIV) “Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” In 1998 my wife, Patty, and I had accumulated a bunch of airline miles, so we took our two children on a wonderful adventure to Europe for four full weeks! We did a lot of camping and last-minute, drop-in bed and breakfasts. We’ve got lots of fun stories; our kids to this day refer to this as the most memorable family trip we…
Escape from a Trapped Life
Knowing God the Deliverer For Christmas a few years ago, our kids bought us one of those escape room events. The whole family went into a locked room, and we had to work together to figure out the clues on how to get out. It was very fun, but I found it very frustrating! I can promise you that if I had been put in that room by myself, I would likely still be in that room even now. I…
Annual Family Meeting: An Invitation
This Sunday at 5 p.m. we will have our annual all-church Family Meeting. I am asking as many of you as possible to attend this gathering time. What is the big deal about an annual church meeting? We will affirm new LifeWay elders. Over the last few months, three new names were submitted as possible elders. An interview team has independently vetted these three candidates and is now recommending their acceptance into the Council of Elders. The three recommended…
Knowing God—The Great Deliverer
The Denzel Washington movie from 2000, “Remember the Titans,” portrayed the true story of an underdog high school football team coached by an African American man who took them to the state championship. It is an inspiring story and worth a watch, for sure. But the center of the movie was that they, as a whole team, had to have confidence in what the new head coach was doing with them and where he was leading them. They had to…
Global Impact Celebration: A historical review
Where have we been and why do we do this? Eleven years ago at LifeWay Church, we began dedicating one week of the year to a Global Impact Celebration, or GIC. It is a week on our calendar, but if that is all the annual GIC is for you, then you’ve totally missed the entire point. Let me explain. Why did we start this, and what’s the history of GIC? To be honest, most churches, when they are involved in missions,…
A Global Mandate from Our Global God
If you had a dream of going somewhere in the world where you have never been—seeing something with your own eyes instead of seeing just tourist photos—where would it be? It’s a bit of a “what’s on your bucket list?” question. A cruise through the inside passage to Alaska? The tropical islands of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean? The fjords of Norway? The glaciers and penguins of Antarctica? The Gobi Desert of Mongolia? The Great Wall of China? Machu…
Asking “What If…?” of the Great I AM
Exodus 4:1Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Does God—the Great I AM, YHWH—take questions? In the classic 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and the band of misfits that she had collected along the yellow brick road finally come into the throne room of “Oz the Great and Powerful,” she begins to ask him basic questions. The first questions are met with anger, fury…
Awed, Not Overwhelmed
Be in awe of God more than overwhelmed by anything else that comes your way! This was the essential theme laid out last Sunday as we launched into a year of study we are calling, Knowing God. Just contemplate that for a minute: Be in awe of God. The story from which we are launching our year is Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3). Essentially, Moses was just minding his own business, tending the sheep. He…
Knowing God: The Great I Am
This Sunday, September 11, we are launching into our third year of study and sermons to help us grasp the whole of Scripture. To remind you… Year 1 (2020-21) — The Book of Jesus We explored the idea that ALL of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is ultimately about Jesus and God’s rescue plan. Do you remember our memory verse? Colossians 1:15Christ, the visible image of the invisible God… Year 2 (2021-22) — Building His Church We sought to…
Gospel, Meet World
This Sunday I’ll be teaching again on the overall theme of the gospel and our culture. I’m going to be laying out some practical things from scripture about raising up a church family with the identity that we can find in Christ. I’ll teach some practical ways in which the body of Christ relates to the rest of the world and helps the world discover their identity as a creation of God. This is a bit challenging, because the church…
LifeWay and the Desna Cup
The Desna Cup story and LifeWay’s long connection with it This coming Sunday, we are closing our building, leaving our church property, and heading to join a handful of local churches for a group worship service at an event called the Desna Cup. The worship time is at 10:30 a.m. and the basic instructions are highlighted for you in this week’s newsletter. Some of you, for the last several years, may have driven by Saghalie Middle School on a mid-August…
The Gospel in Our Culture
During the month of August, we are taking a few weeks to explore how to take the gospel into the very complicated culture that surrounds us. We are hopping around a little bit: On July 31, I launched the series by beginning an unfinished message about sexual identity. Last Sunday, Chris Berry taught about our government—and more importantly, how we should navigate our own relationships when we disagree politically. This Sunday, I am picking up where I left off on…
God and the Government
“My country, ’tis of thee…” From an American background, those words sound so patriotic and wonderful. We (especially those of us who are a little older) grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school and singing the national anthem for ball games. I even remember taking a patriotism class when I was young; such classes can be helpful, and they’ve come to us historically in our American culture because we grew up being taught to love and support our…
The Gospel and the Sexual Identity Crisis
Last week, I began a series of teachings wrapped up in the subject of the gospel and our culture. The plan is to address on Sunday mornings a few issues with which we all seem to be faced, and about which we are often confused. The intent is to deal with a few specific topics this August, and from time to time pick this theme back up and deal with a few more. This Sunday, July 31, I am addressing the gospel…
Good News!: Our Missions Pastor Goes Full-Time
The Council of Elders at LifeWay, including Pastor Billy Arnold, are proud to announce that Heather Althoff is moving to full-time status as Missions Pastor at LifeWay, beginning August 1. Heather has been part of our pastoral staff team for over 14 years, having been on mission with her husband, Matt, in Germany for 5 years previously. During those 14 years, she has served LifeWay both as the Discipleship Pastor and also in her current role leading our mission work, which…