Pentecostals of Bourbon

What if the spiritual gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12 were never meant to be confined to a church stage or a dramatic moment, but were instead tools designed for everyday life, the workplace, the grocery store, the school hallway? That is exactly the lens through which this message from Joe Lake on Sunday, November 8th 2026 invites us to see them. The nine gifts of the Spirit, ranging from the word of knowledge and word of wisdom to gifts of healings and the working of miracles, are not circus entertainment or measures of spiritual superiority. They are a practical toolbox given to every believer, and the key word is every. The apostle Paul makes it plain that the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. That means these gifts were never meant to elevate a few; they were meant to equip us all to connect hurting people to a living God. The real challenge is not whether God is speaking. He is always speaking. The challenge is whether we are looking, listening, and willing to act on that first, gentle nudge before our own fear and shame talk us out of it.

What does it really mean to go through hard times? That question cuts deeper than we might expect, especially when we hold our everyday struggles up against the lives of those who came before us in the faith. This message from Pastor Matt Cottrill on Sunday, November 1st 2026 challenges us to examine whether our definition of hardship has been quietly shaped more by comfort and convenience than by the reality of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. Drawing from Matthew 24, we are reminded that Jesus himself warned his followers of coming affliction, hatred, betrayal, and a falling away of love within the church. The word he used was not survive or manage, but endure. Endurance is not something we need when life is pleasant. It is what is demanded of us when our faith is tested, when our convictions are challenged, and when walking away would be the easier path. The sobering truth is that if our commitment to God cannot survive an offense from a fellow believer, it will never survive genuine persecution. This is not a message meant to discourage us but to awaken us to the kind of deep, rooted faith that does not shift with every change in circumstance. We are invited to ask ourselves honestly whether we are building a relationship with God that will hold when everything around us begins to shake.

What does it mean to truly see someone the world has written off? In Mark 1:40-41, we encounter a moment that cuts to the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. A leper, an outcast by law and by society, approaches Jesus with a desperate plea. The response is not hesitation, not disgust, not a polite dismissal. It is compassion in motion. This message from Assistant Pastor Dillon Meadway on Sunday, November 1st 2026 draws us into that scene and then turns the mirror on us, asking whether we are people who are moved by the needs around us or whether we have grown comfortable and numb. The story of a student named Dennis, who looked around a crowded lunchroom and chose to act on his own loneliness by reaching out to others, gives us a vivid picture of what it looks like when one person decides that compassion is not just a feeling but a choice. We are reminded that divine appointments are real, that the people we pass in ordinary moments may be the very ones God has placed in our path. The call here is not to a program or an initiative, but to a posture of the heart, one that refuses to let anyone eat, sit, or struggle alone.

What does it mean to truly focus on the fallen? In Acts 20, we encounter a young man named Eutychus who drifts into a deep sleep while seated in a window and ultimately falls to his death from the third floor. On the surface, it reads like a dramatic interruption to an evening service. But when we dig into the original Greek, something far more profound emerges. His sleep is described as a spiritual torpor, a state of mental inactivity and apathy. His fall is described as going all the way to the bottom. And his death is described as being lifeless and destitute of power. This is not just the story of one young man in one upper room. This is the story of people we know, people who once worshiped beside us, who have gradually drifted toward the window, drawn by something in the world outside, until they fell. James Archambeault's message here from Wednesday, October 28th 2026 is urgent and personal. God is not only calling us to evangelize the world around us but to turn our attention to those who have already tasted faith and have since gone silent. They are not beyond reach. They are waiting, often convinced that no one cares or that God has forgotten them. The response Paul modeled was immediate and physical. He went down to Eutychus, got on his level, embraced him, and declared life over him. That is our calling too.

What does it truly mean to be a witness? Acts 1:8 gives us a mandate that goes far deeper than we might first realize. When we receive the Holy Ghost, we are not just given a feeling or an experience to keep to ourselves. We are given dunamis, a Greek word meaning the power to make a difference, to influence others, to change situations. This is the same root word from which we get our word dynamite. That is not firecracker power. That is world-shaking, life-altering power. And Acts 1:8 tells us exactly who we are meant to reach with it: friends, backsliders, enemies, and strangers at the uttermost parts of the earth. The message from Bishop Mark Cottrill on Sunday, October 25th 2026 challenges us to look honestly at the people in our lives, the coworker who rubs us wrong, the neighbor we have drifted from, the family member we have not spoken to in years, and ask a simple but piercing question: do they need to be saved? Romans 13:1-2 reminds us that resisting this power is not a small thing. When we let our flesh talk us out of witnessing, out of reaching out, out of turning a conversation toward Jesus, we are resisting something God has ordained. The early church did not grow by staying comfortable. Persecution scattered believers out of Jerusalem, and wherever they landed, they told people what they had seen and heard. That is all a witness does. We tell our story. No one can argue with what we have personally experienced.

What if the most radical thing we could do for our faith was to stop treating it like a checklist and start treating it like a deep, unquenchable thirst? This message from Joe Lake on Sunday, October 25th 2026 takes an unexpected and fascinating look at the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and uses it as a mirror to reflect something profound about the early church. Those first believers were not known for their theological precision or their organized programs. They were known for acting so strangely, so full of something beyond themselves, that onlookers assumed they were drunk. Acts 2 places us right in the middle of that moment, where the outpouring of the Holy Spirit landed on a gathered people with the force of wind and fire, echoing the very imagery of God descending on Mount Sinai. The parallel is not accidental. It is a signal that something of cosmic, covenantal significance was happening. The message invites us to ask ourselves an honest question: have we allowed our faith to become a set of correct beliefs we carry in our pockets rather than a living, flowing experience that shapes how we speak, how we forgive, how we love, and how we face the hardest moments of our lives? The Spirit was never meant to be a doctrine alone. It was meant to be an encounter.

What happens when we believe God's promise but grow tired of waiting for it? The story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis gives us one of the most honest and relatable portraits of faith under pressure that Scripture has to offer. We explore the moment when impatience overtook trust, and a well-intentioned decision produced consequences that no one anticipated. The birth of Ishmael was not a random mistake. It was the result of people who genuinely believed in God's promise but decided to help him keep it. And that distinction matters deeply for our own lives. This message from Nathaniel Stroud on Sunday, October 18th 2026 challenges us to examine the difference between trusting God with the destination and trusting him with the process. It is one thing to believe that God can do something. It is another thing entirely to wait on him without taking the wheel ourselves. Through a striking real-world parallel involving a NASA spacecraft lost due to a small but catastrophic miscalculation, we are reminded that even well-resourced, well-intentioned efforts can go terribly wrong when the method does not align with the plan. The spiritual lesson is clear: wanting the right outcome is not enough to overcome a flawed process. If we are waiting on a promise today, this message speaks directly to where we are and calls us back to a posture of surrender and trust.

There comes a moment in every believer's life when standing in the middle is no longer an option. This message from Pastor Matt Cottrill on Sunday, October 11th 2026, takes us to one of the most dramatic confrontations in all of Scripture, where the prophet Elijah faces a nation that had not abandoned God entirely but had simply made room for other things alongside him. The haunting question posed to Israel that day still echoes across the centuries and lands squarely in our own hearts: how long are we going to remain undecided? What makes this passage so striking is not the boldness of the prophet but the silence of the people. They had nothing to say. And sometimes our silence reveals more about our spiritual condition than our words ever could. This message challenges us to examine the areas of our lives where compromise has crept in quietly, not through dramatic rebellion but through small adjustments, softened convictions, and boundaries that have slowly moved. The call is not to arrogance or self-righteousness but to a wholehearted, settled, and fearless devotion to Jesus Christ. We are reminded that we can love people deeply without agreeing with everything they do, that grace is not permission to remain unchanged but the very power that transforms us, and that the church was never called to blend in with the surrounding culture but to stand apart from it as a light set on a hill. If we have been drifting, this is an invitation to draw a line and declare once again where we stand.

What does it truly mean to keep the gospel marching forward in our lives and in our communities? This lesson from Assistant Pastor Dillon Meadway on Sunday, October 11th 2026, draws from Acts chapter 4, where Peter and John stood boldly before the most powerful religious authorities of their day and refused to be silenced. The central truth they declared was simple but earth-shaking: they could not stop speaking about what they had personally seen and heard. That same principle challenges us today. There is a profound difference between knowing about God and actually knowing God. Like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time, no photograph or description can substitute for the real experience. We are invited to ask ourselves whether our faith is built on inherited words or on genuine, personal encounters with the living God. The lesson draws a striking parallel between the intimacy of marriage and our walk with God. Just as a spouse can speak about their partner with unmatched depth and passion because they have lived life together, we can only speak about God with true conviction when we have been in real communion with him. The early disciples were recognized not simply because they were bold, but because others could tell they had been with Jesus. That distinction matters enormously for how we carry this faith forward.

What does it mean to hold the line when everything around us is pressing in? This message from Matt Harvey on Wednesday, September 20th 2026 draws a striking parallel between the infantry lines of historical warfare and the spiritual battles we face every day. Just as a single gap in a military formation could collapse an entire army, a single unguarded compromise in our spiritual lives can open a door that we never intended to leave cracked. The core lesson is sobering but empowering: the enemy rarely destroys us all at once. He thins the line one inch at a time, through unforgiveness we did not take to the altar, through thoughts we allowed to camp in our minds, through small agreements with sin that we told ourselves did not matter. Drawing from Ephesians 6, we are reminded that our battle is not against people or circumstances but against spiritual forces that are strategic and patient. The armor described by Paul was not decorative. It was combat gear, and the command attached to it is not to charge or retreat but simply to stand. For those of us who feel the weight of the fight right now, this is the word we need: the ground beneath our feet was purchased at a price too great to surrender.