Pray and Choose a FastAfter praying and asking for guidance from the Holy Spirit, I will be abstaining from _______________________ for Lent 2026. Daily Content This guide includes a daily time of reading, response, and prayer starting on Wednesday, February 18, 2026 (Ash Wednesday) and ending on Easter Sunday. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, for which we will have additional resourc...  Read More

Traditionally, participants use the Lenten season to fast during the weekdays and feast on Sundays. This is true all the way through Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday (March 29, 2026). Whether it’s abstaining from food, technology, social media, spending, entertainment, sleep, or something else, we can’t talk about Lent without talking about fasting. But…why fast? This is where we need to exa...  Read More

Lent can be an intimidating season for a lot of us. Some of us grew up hearing that it was a Catholic tradition. Some of us envision harsh days of fasting and long, uninterrupted hours of prayer. Some of us have never heard of it at all! No matter where you fall when it comes to Lent, we see you…and we get it! We’re willing to bet that if you picked up this guide, you’re at least curious about it....  Read More

The fall of 2022 was a very difficult time for our family. My husband Sam and I had recently moved to Marion after stepping away from a ministry position that we loved. We were dealing with deeply rooted church hurt, fractured relationships and broken trust, and the death of the vision we had for our early twenties. On top of it all, I was growing sicker by the day from an undiagnosed illness that...  Read More

Friends and family are hands down what keeps me steady in this crazy life—other than God, of course. Over the years many have come and gone, but the ones who have remained all have one character trait in common: they know how to love. Not just by their words, because that is a very simple thing to master. No, these friends love first with their actions, and their words are a confirmation of who th...  Read More

Gardening runs in my family. My grandparents had big gardens. My dad also had a garden every year until he passed. My mom has such a green thumb; she loves trying to see what she can grow and is working on having a garden in her yard, as well as helping my grandparents with their garden this year. I also share in the enjoyment of having plants around. I love watching plants grow and produce things...  Read More

Chances are that if you have ever been driving your car and waved at me, I didn’t notice. Now, that is not because I am oblivious to what is going on in traffic—quite the opposite. I can get so hyper-fixated on observing vehicles that the people sort of fade away. But this is not because I’m a car-nut either. Honestly, I care so little about what a person drives, I barely know what kind of make or...  Read More

Last Sunday morning, I was all around church as the service was happening. I ended up with my two little girls in the Family Room as Pastor Michael was nearing the end of the message, and what he said really caught my attention. I knew that I wanted to go home and listen to the rest of the sermon he preached on Psalm 51 and about David’s sin preceding his confession.For years I have struggled with...  Read More

Discipleship: It’s for Everyone!I spent at least thirty years of my life wishing I could be discipled. I don't think I'm alone in this desire. For many years, there were older women that I wanted to sit beside in the hopes that what they had would rub off on me. Unfortunately, I never had the guts nor the vocabulary to ask them. Yes, I was timid, but along with that, I was not in a church where I ...  Read More

Connection within Community: Church Small GroupsNoah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary, defines connection as “a state of being knit or fastened together.” In this definition, a bond is formed. All the way back to Genesis, we learn that human beings were not created to be alone (Genesis 2:18). When God created Eve, it was so that Adam would have a helpmate and not be alone. God knew community was vi...  Read More

Connection: How to Resist the Winter Blues I leave work at 5:00 p.m. It’s already dark, it’s raining for the fourth time this week, and the trees are bare and shriveled. I pull out the weather app, and it says the low is 6 degrees. As someone who was born and raised in Florida and Alabama, this does not bode well with me. Overall, I feel the weight of an inexplicable melancholy permeating everythi...  Read More

Love God. Love Others.One of the great take-aways that I have received from Cornerstone has been the “Up, Out, and In” principle of love. Loving God is upward, loving others is outward, and loving ourselves is inward. These are intrinsically tied to one another; loving God requires loving others, and loving others requires a love of self (not to be confused with worship of self, which is sinful). ...  Read More

1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most well-known and quoted passages in the entire Bible. It’s often read at weddings or taught at youth events. It reads: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believe...  Read More

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him...” Genesis 12:1-4a ESVIn the fall ...  Read More

New beginnings can be exciting and overflowing with anticipation, yet simultaneously intimidating and steep with challenges. As followers of Jesus, we are blessed with a different perspective on the new year than most. The world tells you that January 1st is the big opportunity to get your life together. To make it happen, rewrite your life and rewire your habits. From a surface-level view, it can...  Read More

“Like a drama unfolding, the curtain was opening; / an audience of angels was holding its breath; / a census, a manger, two travel worn strangers; / the stage was finally set; / Angels folded their wings at the throne, worshiping; / As God whispered, I love you, my Son; / Jesus took off His crown and laying it down; / Said, Father, Thy will be done; // The time had now come for God's only Son; / T...  Read More

Welcome to Advent week 2! As I read the texts leading up to the Birth of Jesus, I try to place myself in the shoes of those that God is interacting with. Sometimes that takes a lot more cultural and historical context to sort out all the nuances. But there are always aspects that we can relate to more readily. These are real people with real problems and experiences, just like us.For example, it t...  Read More

I grew up as a true Southern Baptist—I’m talking a monthly-potluck-eating, wooden-pew-sitting, Alabama-boondocks-living Southern Baptist. I thought I knew everything there was to know about church by the time I got to grade school. You can imagine my surprise during my junior year of high school when my youth pastor introduced our church to a season called Advent. I had never heard of this traditi...  Read More

Reading the Bible, Hearing the Voice of God  As I am writing this, I look as shelves of books. Hundreds of books, ranging from classic novels, to systematic theologies, scores of Biblical commentaries, books on church growth, and Christian living. Each of these books are noteworthy, having contributed to the field of literature, theology, ecclesiology, or living the faith.  I am reminded of walkin...  Read More

Don’t Skip the SunscreenThe Temptation of Jesus. We often pass over the first few verses of this experience and jump straight into stones becoming bread, the promise of kingdoms, and some sort of angelic trust-fall. As if the only thing we need when Satan shows up with wild and bombastic ideas is to say “no” and spout off a few Scripture references. First of all, the texts from Mat. 4, Mark 1, and...  Read More

In the first of three The Lord of the Rings movies, Frodo and his closest hobbit friends (the Fellowship), along with three humans and a wizard (Gandalf), embarked on a journey to Mount Doom to destroy an evil ring. During this journey, the Fellowship lost Gandalf in a battle with a wicked demon. This event took the wind out of the sails of the Fellowship, and Frodo was in a dark place, as he had ...  Read More

Joshua was afraid to take on the task God called him to do. And who can blame him? Moses, the friend of God, was his predecessor, and he left Joshua with impossible-to-fill shoes. Sure, Joshua had been groomed for his task by Moses and by God. He was a warrior with a proven track record. But this job—this was more than leading battles and military campaigns. This was leading the nation of Israel, ...  Read More

I love the fact that Cornerstone encourages personal expressions of worship. While our leaders often encourage expressive forms of worship - raising hands, bowing in God’s presence, even silence during the weekly worship gathering, these leaders acknowledge that no single form of worship is uniform among God’s people. This is how God designed worship, a personal expression of one’s relationship wi...  Read More

Face to Face with Jesus John 4:16-26In Olivia Lane’s song, Woman at the Well, she sings, “I heard a story from the Bible, When I was just a little girl, About a broken-hearted woman, Who met the Savior of the World.” In this poignant story, the Apostle John tells us about an unnamed Samaritan woman coming to collect water at Jacob’s well in Sychar. John is the only gospel writer to tell this story...  Read More