Pastor's Pondering
Read Lead Pastor Duane Mabee's weekly Pastor's Ponderings here!
It's Not Optional
by Duane Mabee on January 26, 2023What’s your reaction when you read the words “spiritual warfare”? For most, those words induce feelings of anxiety. We’ve been conditioned to see spiritual warfare as bizarre supernatural battles that are incredibly dark and seemingly out of control. Since that is so foreign to our experience, we are tempted to dismiss it as fantasy or try...
Read MoreForgiveness is Hard, but Essential
by Duane Mabee on January 18, 2023Jesus taught us to ask God to forgive us in the same way we forgive other people. But what does it mean to forgive? Forgiving will always be hard, but sometimes our understanding of what it...
Read MoreHe Told Us to Ask
by Duane Mabee on January 11, 2023In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught that when we pray, we should ask God to “give us today our daily bread,” Matt. 6:11. The Apostle Paul wrote “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything...
Read MoreThirty Years of Ministry
by Duane Mabee on January 4, 2023Thirty years ago, on Sunday January 10, 1993, North River Alliance Church held its first service in a rented store front in the strip mall at 5741 Hwy 153, Hixson, TN 37343. A seasoned pastor,...
Read MoreA House of Prayer
by Duane Mabee on December 29, 2022According to Jesus, God wants prayer to be such a high priority that His church will be known as a house of prayer. Prayer was so important to Jesus that He got irate when God’s people spurned it...
Read MoreThe Underlying Message of Christmas
by Duane Mabee on December 22, 2022As we celebrate the birth of our Savior this Christmas, I want to remind you of its underlying message by pointing you back to one of the best-known set of verses in the Bible – John 3:16-17....
Read MoreWhy We Celebrate Christmas
by Duane Mabee on December 15, 2022God created us to love us, but we turned our backs on Him and went our own way. Our determination to do things our way combined with our refusal to surrender to His will destroyed our...
Read MoreChristmas Discussion Thread
by Duane Mabee on December 7, 2022I saw an interesting discussion thread about Christmas music and worship. It started with a worship leader admitting that he doesn’t enjoy Christmas music and finds it difficult to worship to. ...
Read MoreGod Himself Absorbed the Loss
by Duane Mabee on December 1, 2022…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood,...
Read MoreI Thank God for You
by Duane Mabee on November 22, 2022I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I...
Read MoreAn Impact Bigger Than Our Size
by Duane Mabee on November 16, 2022We can make an impact much larger than our size would lead you to believe. When we work together with other Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) churches throughout the U.S., we can...
Read MoreChanges in Missions
by Duane Mabee on November 10, 2022We’ve been discussing how missions is different now than it used to be. One of the key differences I’ve noticed in recent years is the number of retirees who are going into fulltime missions...
Read MoreTrained Workers Needed
by Duane Mabee on November 3, 2022In many places around the world, the church is hampered by a lack of well trained, biblically educated pastors and ministry workers. It is hard for us to comprehend, given the number of Bibles we...
Read MoreChrist's Mission is Our Mission
by Duane Mabee on October 27, 2022Over the next several weeks, we will be looking at how we fit into Christ’s mission. God the Father loves us so much that He sent His Son into the world so that the world could be saved through...
Read MoreAll of Jesus for All the World
by Duane Mabee on October 20, 2022A core value of the Christian and Missionary Alliance is expressed as “All of Jesus for All the World”. There is a lot wrapped up in that statement.
First, our message is all of...
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