God is moving in CR

By Sarah Bryant, with Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery Devotional Team 5/29/19 I really struggle to keep my car clean. The outside usually looks pretty good, but the inside…not so much. Specifically the passenger floorboard. This is my catch-all area for tossing things that I can’t deal with while I’m driving. The trash piles up until I’ve had enough of driving around in my own garbage, and I clean it out. I tell myself I’ll keep it cleaner this time, but it never fails, within a few days I’ve started accumulating the trash again. I’m not exactly sure when I picked up this habit, but the cycle has been going on for several years.  A couple of months ago I got a new car. I saw this as my chance to start fresh. I told myself, “I’m going to keep this one clean.” But this time I didn’t just decide to keep my car clean, I started changing my habits. Over the past years I had unknowingly trained my arm to just toss things into the floorboard without even thinking about it. ...

By Eric Hutchinson, Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery T.E.A.M Men's Training Coach,  05/22/2019 Recently, my business had a long dry period which yielded very little income for me and my family.  I’m in sales , so dry periods are just a part of my business.  However, a three month dry period in sales is VERY unusual and almost unheard of for an experienced salesperson.  Thoughts of career change and even bankruptcy began to enter my mind. On top of this I have been struggling with how to parent my 18 year old teenager well. Needless to say, I was feeling the stress and pressure lately, and  it just felt like I was traveling through a low valley in my life.  In the Old Testament you may remember hearing the word “wilderness” a lot.  The Israelites went through 40 years in the wilderness, Moses saw the burning bush in the wilderness, and Elijah ran out of fear into the wilderness. In Hebrew, the wilderness is called the...

Written by Kareena Holloway, Women's Encourager Coach at Celebrate Recovery, Fellowship Bible Church, Rogers  5/15/19 There were many times when, in the midst of life's struggles, I wondered "Why am I here?"  "Why am I going through all of this pain?"   I didn't know much about God as a child, but one thing I did know was that God wasn't the cause of my pain.  I knew even then that people make bad choices.  People make mistakes.  People are capable of really messing things up,  and when I became  an adult  I was no exception.   I remember that helpless feeling w hen I hit rock bottom,  and how  I had no idea of how I could possibly come back from the choices I had made.  I reached up for God, pleading for him to help me!   It was then that  my husband grabbed my hand and pulled me in to his arms.   He told  me that if I was willing to do the work  we'd get through this together!...

Written by: Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, Fellowship Bible Church, Rogers 5/8/19    “ I f a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off .” Matthew 18:12-13 (NIV) I have have had a chronic illness for over 20 years. Whole body and mind fatigue are something I often battle. The Enemy uses this to tempt me to compare myself to others, slide into depression, and follow him into a spiritual wasteland. When this happens I can backslide in my ways of thinking, and there have been days I give in to mental “wandering”, when I really need to stick extra close to God for rest, renewal & strength. The other day I experienced a flare up of my condition. Although I had actually been struggling for weeks physically, spiritually I’d really been growing and ...

By Carl Kimbro, with Fellowship Bible Church Celebrate Recovery Devotional Team 5/1/19 Are you a leader?  Prior to stepping up to lead, you may have covered the necessary bases to lead but there was still doubt you could do it.  Maybe you felt unqualified. Maybe you felt you weren't good enough.   Whatever it was, you recognized those as lies from the enemy and  you saw your new identity in Christ and the desire to step up and give back.  I want to encourage you today, that you were not alone in these feelings, that God has great plans for you and to help you help others as you serve. Let's take a look at Isaiah, someone who also doubted he was good enough to serve. From what has been learned about Isaiah, it is thought that he was a priest serving in the temple when he received his calling to be a prophet with a vision of the Messiah upon His throne. In his own description in verses 1-7, Isaiah was in awe of this vision. He immediately saw himself as...