God is moving in CR

By Carl Kimbro, member of the Devotional Team at Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery, 3/27/2019 Recently we visited a booth for Nichole House (a  residential house for women recovering from  addiction) where they were selling hand bags they  had made. These were different than any we had seen  before. They were made from prison uniforms that  were worn by countless women who had served time  in Benton County Jail. Instead of throwing them out,  they were professionally cleaned and used to make  the bags by the very women who had worn them.  What a statement for these women: Clothes that had once defined their IMPRISONMENT now instead defines their FREEDOM! They no longer look on these clothes as part of their sinful past. Instead they have been washed clean and are part of their bright future. They are still a piece of a prison uniform. But they no longer offer condemnation and hopelessn...

By Kareena Holloway, Ministry TEAM women's Encourager Coach at Fellowship Bible Church, Rogers, Have you ever been driving in the darkness of a cloudy night without headlights on?  Nah, I wouldn't dare do that either! On a curvy road like the one in this picture, that would be downright scary!  That's why I love headlights to shine in to the darkness of night!   As with many things, I see a lesson in this.  God tells us in Luke 8:17, " For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. " and, for me, this is a fine example!   Another example was when I was deep in my Love and Relationship Addiction, and had so many secrets hidden in darkness.  One day, though, those secrets were brought into the light and I had nowhere to hide.  I confessed my secrets through overwhelming emotion and when I was met with LOVE instead of rejection, I felt relief.  I didn't...

By Eric Hutchinson, Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery Men's Encourager Coach,  03/13/2019 The  Titanic , the largest and the most luxurious ship of its time, was a shipbuilder’s delight. Because the ship featured a double hull that included sixteen watertight compartments, the  Titanic ’s builder boasted that the ship was unsinkable, that “not even God could sink this ship.”    But at midnight on April 14, 1912, the great ship, with 2,224 souls aboard, ploughed into a huge iceberg at twenty-two knots, and two and a half hours later lay at the bottom of the Atlantic. The unthinkable had happened—the unsinkable had sunk. The builders of the  Titanic  had good reason to be proud of their workmanship—but no grounds for their boasting. Majestic though the  Titanic  undoubtedly was, God was more than her match. Sometimes, my pride gets the best of me.  I think to myself, “I have got this recovery thing figured out.  I...

By Susan Nichols, Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery Devotional Team, March 6th, 2019 “ Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to  him, ‘So shall your offspring be. ’ ” (Romans 4:18, NIV) Forgotten.                 Forsaken.   These are the two words I used to describe how I felt during a difficult time of my life. One hardship followed another until I felt absolutely buried by circumstances. Where was God? It seemed as if He had abandoned me. I looked and looked for some sign of Him but saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. Did He even hear my prayers? Why wasn’t He answering me?  I know we all sometimes feel overtaken by troubles. We all have moments when mobilizing our faith is a struggle. Even Abraham at first laughed inwardly at the thought of he and Sarah having a child (Genesis 17:17), but let’s look more closely at A...