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Author: Talbot Davis

Talbot Davis ~ Hidden Heroes: The AWOL Hero

And yet look at what Paul says in Philemon: “was useless; is useful.” And then he grows much more intimate by the time of Colossians 4 – faithful, dear brother, one of you. And I wonder: how do you go from that to that? From outside to inside? From failure to brother? From deserves death to becomes family? I think of how easy it would have been for Onesimus to lurk in the shadows of the church even after his conversion, to stay detached, uninvolved, excluded, to be and get what he deserved. And get this: it would have been so tempting to use his past and use his failure as an excuse. They won’t accept me. I’m AWOL and a thief.

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5 Ways to Encourage Diversity in a Church

How can a church grow in diversity? Talbot Davis shares insight on how churches can become diverse by understanding cause and effect in terms of the goal of the church. He also includes 5 ways we can encourage diversity in a church.

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Talbot Davis ~ Lost Trust

“Every time you think you’re the only honest person left, every time you think there are no good men or no good women left, God who is the One and Only whispers back: You’re NOT the only one. The One And Only has the ideal number of people to surround you, to advise you, to walk alongside you, to make you realize that there are a lot more trustworthy people than you realize because God is at work in every life on the planet!”

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Talbot Davis ~ Lost Hope

“The answer to this painfully large prayer is massively small: bread, water, and a bed. Elijah wants a snap answer, a quick fix, and God grants the start of a slow process – bread, water, bed. As if recovering hope can never be a matter of great leaps, but always involves small steps.”

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5 Things I Do Before Preaching

As a tennis player and fan, I recently read an article of some of the most unique superstitions of the sports superstars. What, if anything, does all that have to do with preaching? Quite a lot, apparently.

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5 Things I Do Before Preaching

In this article, Talbot Davis walks us through the 5 things he does every week before preaching where he serves at Good Shepherd. See which ones you resonate with, can learn from, or do things differently.

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Talbot Davis ~ Lost Religion

“When God feels distant and you’re losing your religion, something else is going on. He’s like the sun. When it gets dark, that’s because the earth turns, not because anything happened with the sun, and it’s the same with God. We lose our religion when we turn, not when he does, and when we turn, our hands get busy making our own gods. The same gods who invariably, inevitably disappoint…”

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Talbot Davis ~ Lost Relationships

Because of a stand he took and a truth he spoke, Elijah is suddenly cut off from his family. From his hometown. From his kosher diet. From everything and everyone. And this is at a time in human history when there was no “you” apart from your group. In his exile the loss of relationships for Elijah was all-encompassing – a moment of courage, followed by season of loss.

And a lot of you know what that’s like…

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Talbot Davis ~ Doubt’s Big Bang – Psalm 14

I have known for several years that on some level behavior precedes doubt.
In other words, we don’t arrive at our shadow of doubt by objective analysis of relevant facts; instead, most of us begin to act a certain way and then circle back around and develop some doubts to substantiate that behavior.
We don’t think our way into doubting. We (mis)behave our way into it.

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Talbot Davis ~ Laughing Doubt – Genesis 18

Is anything too supernatural? Too mystical? Too great for God to do? Nope. Is it too hard for him to bend the laws of nature? Nope. He wrote them. You know what? You, too, have continual reminders in your life of not underestimating God. We have those reminders, items large and small, global and personal, to urge us not to underestimate God. To celebrate the ways in which he has the last laugh.

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