By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: Matthew 5:27-32 What does being distinct in our relationships look like? We are now living in a world where the relationships of believers have very little differences from the relationships of non-believers. There was once a time when our churches and our families taught us that we have a biblical mandate to live a different life from that of

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: Matthew 5:21-26 Conflict is a word that most of us do not like hearing, but for some they enjoy being in the middle of it. Conflict is something that keeps me up at night. I do not like having it anywhere around me! As a believer in Christ there are people all around us watching to see how we

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: Matthew 5:13-20 Influence, we all have it, but some of us need to use it in a better more godly way! As humans we are easily influenced. Why do you think that companies will spend millions of dollars next week on commercials during the Super Bowl? We want to look and act like others! We have to have the

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: Matthew 5:1-12 When someone looks at you, what do they see. Do they see a person who has walked through life leaning on and trusting in God? Or do they see a person that has tried to walk through life all alone? A person looking at us should see God in us, and that is hard for some believers.

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: Psalms 8:1-8 What does it mean to cherish something? The word cherish means that we hold something dear to us. When we think about cherishing something we often think about our children or grandchildren. Sometimes when we refer to childhood memories we think about those as a cherished memory, because we hold those thoughts so close to us. Have

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: I Corinthians: 12:12-16, 21-22; I Peter 4:9-11 Are you ready to go to work? That was a question that I was grateful to hear, from the head of personnel of a local market. I was a broke college student, living on my own, and I really needed a job! So, when the head of personnel asked me if I

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: I Corinthians 12:4-11 What are gifts? Are gifts the things we wrapped up in shining paper or placed in a decorative bag or maybe gifts are the things we place beautiful bows on! Maybe gifts are the things we shared with others just a few weeks ago! And to answer the question we would have to say yes! Yes,

By Michael Crandall Senior Pastor, Hillcrest Baptist Church, Dyersburg Focal Passage: John 1:1-5, 9-14 Have you ever thought about what life would be like if you never married the person of your dreams or if you never had your children or grandchildren? At times when we think about things such as this, we wonder what life would be like! Now let me ask you this, think about your life before

By Lonnie Wilkey Editor, Baptist and Reflector Focal Passage: John 8:2-11 When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our sins were forgiven by God. What a wonderful feeling that was. The question that we must answer in our own lives is this: Are we willing to forgive others when we feel they have wronged us? Even for Christians, forgiveness can be hard. Though we have been beneficiaries

By Chris Turner Director of Communications, TBC Focal Passage: 1 John 3:1-10 About a year ago, a friend of mine and his wife finalized the adoption of their son who is Ethiopian. The little boy was about five at the time, living in an orphanage with dozens of other children and had little more than the clothes on his back. Mostly, he lacked the love of a mother and father.