Smyrna Baptist Church

06/04/2026

There is something honest about a rainy day. It does not pretend. It does not dress itself up in blue skies and tell you everything is fine. Rain simply comes, and it asks something of you, patience, stillness, trust that the clouds will not last forever.

On the evening of June 4, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower sat in a stone manor house in southern England as a violent storm shut down the D-Day invasion. His chief meteorologist came to him the next morning with a carefully worded forecast: there would be a narrow window of tolerable weather on June 6. Not perfect. The rain had not full passed. But there would be a window. Eisenhower looked out at the storm, was quiet for a long moment, and said simply, "OK. We go."

The rain did not stop for D-Day. But the window was enough. And because one man trusted that a break in the storm was sufficient to move forward, the course of history turned.

We do not always get to wait for perfect skies. Sometimes life asks us to move in the middle of the rain. The storm is not a sign that God has forgotten us. It may be the very place where our most important steps are taken.

Whatever rain you are walking through this week, the window is there.

And you are not crossing it alone.

Reflection:
What is one step you have been waiting to take until the skies clear, and what would it look like to take it today?

26 MAY
"Rainy Weather"
VA HOSPITAL CHAPLAINCY
By Chaplain Elliott

05/29/2026

Dear Church Family & Friends:

Is our pain & suffering supposed to cease BEFORE we find joy & peace? That’s the question that this article addresses. Please take the time to read this; it’ll be time well invested. We all need to take our anxieties and happiness seriously! This article addresses itself to both. It’s online as well at Desiring God. You’ll be blessed and strengthened.

God richly bless you all,
Pastor Dave

Ask Pastor John
Don’t Wait for the Pain to Stop

Episode 2255 May 18, 2026
Interview with John Piper
Founder & Teacher, Desiring God

[Italics-his; bold print except for headings-mine DRN]

Many people believe joy must wait until suffering ends, but the Bible tells a different story. In this episode, we look at Paul, the saints, and God’s surprising promise to us that joy can exist even inside an aching heart. Today on Ask Pastor John: don’t wait for the pain to stop.

The question is from an anonymous woman: “Pastor John, hi. I am writing to you from Indonesia. Your ministry has been a huge blessing to me for the last seven years. After waiting ten years for a child, my husband and I were overjoyed when I became pregnant late last year. But at the same time, I discovered a lump in my breast. At eleven weeks, our joy turned to sorrow when we learned our baby no longer had a heartbeat, and I had to undergo a D&C procedure. Just one week after losing our long-awaited child, we received the devastating news that the lump was stage-2 breast cancer. I have just had surgery and am now facing this new battle, and my heart is overwhelmed. I often wake up in the morning consumed by anxiety. My questions for you are: How can I possibly have a heart full of joy and peace during such profound loss and fear? How can I continue to believe that God is good, and that I will see brighter days again?”

Perhaps I could share a couple of means by which God has kept me from the paralyzing discouragement or bitterness over various disappointments, afflictions, and sufferings in my own life over the past eighty years. One is that he has taught me — from experience and from the Bible — that the presence of great sorrow and great grief in my heart does not mean that there cannot be great joy and peace at the same time, in the same aching heart. That seems strange, contradictory, and paradoxical, but it has been so important to learn.

Holding Joy and Sorrow

I got the impression in listening to our friend’s question that maybe she has not yet learned this wonderful truth. I don’t know, but maybe not. She said she doesn’t see how joy and peace can be in her heart during such profound grief and loss. It seems like she has the sense that as long as she feels profound loss, sorrow, and grief, joy and peace have to wait. They can’t be there in her heart.

I want to encourage her and others not to back themselves into a corner of hopelessness. If we persuade ourselves that grief and sorrow and loss must cease before we can have joy and peace again, we will be trapped in a life of hopelessness or hypocrisy — hopelessness because there’s always going to be sorrow, or hypocrisy because we’re constantly trying to deny it.

The fact is, the more we serve others like Jesus, the more pain we will have to bear — either our own or others’ pain. In this fallen world, there is no escaping sorrow and affliction. Through many afflictions we must enter the kingdom (Acts 14:22).

“You don’t have to wait until the season of sorrow is
over in order to know the sweetness of joy.”

One great lesson to learn is that you don’t have to wait for the absence of grief and pain in order to know the presence of joy. We must learn this. It is a deep and wonderful discovery. It has rescued me many times. I saw it in my twenties, in Romans 9:2, where Paul said, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” I was just blown away by that word unceasing. Are you kidding me? You’re the great apostle of joy. You have unceasing anguish in your heart? Because his kinsmen are cut off from Christ and cursed (Romans 9:3).

This is the same Paul who said, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Always. He not only said it but did it:

In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. (2 Corinthians 7:4)

[We are] sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. (2 Corinthians 6:10)

His anguish over lost loved ones never goes away, and his afflictions are relentless. There are always reasons for sorrow. We will always have reasons for sorrow in this world, or we’re loveless. And instead of thinking, “This means I must wait for joy,” he says, “No, I don’t have to wait. I’m not going to wait. I’m going to crowd joy into my broken heart and make it exist alongside my sorrow.”

What a crucial lesson to learn. And I thank God for it. I would encourage everybody to just settle it: You don’t have to wait until the season of sorrow is over in order to know the sweetness of joy at the same time.

Fellow Suffering Servants

Here’s the other lesson I’ve learned in trying to keep from being overwhelmed with disappointments, losses, and afflictions. For many years, I have considered the example of other Christians to be essential to my survival. Some of these have been living examples, but most have died, and I read about them in the Bible or in biographies.

For example, for 27 years I focused on one dead person each year and read a couple biographies and then wrote my own little biography of each one and gave a lecture on it at our pastor’s conference. And then we published them in 27 Servants of Sovereign Joy [great book to buy!]. You know what I was looking for in those years, in those lives, those biographies? How did they endure? That’s what I was looking for.

How did they endure the hardships and losses of life? John Owen lost eleven children — that’s more than Job — and never broke. He wrote beautiful books on how to be spiritually minded in such situations and how to have sweet fellowship with Jesus.

William Carey saw twelve years of his life’s work burned up in a fire, not to be recovered. And he knelt down in the ashes and rededicated himself to start over again. You read that, and you just want to say, “Yes, Lord, please make me that kind of person.”

William Tyndale was hunted down, driven out of his homeland, put in prison, and killed. Near the end, in the cold prison cell, he asked for warmer clothes and a Hebrew dictionary — a Hebrew dictionary, bless his heart, so he could keep pressing on with his work of translating the Bible just before they killed him.

How did they do it? They didn’t become bitter. They didn’t lose their joy, and they overflowed in love for Christ and his people.

But my point here is not to say how they did it — you need to read it for yourself — but to say that this was a lifeline for me to read story after story, in the Bible and in biographies, of men and women who suffered far more than I have and did not give up but maintained a life of peace, love, joy, and usefulness.

I still do this. Downstairs right now, as I’m talking to you, beside my chair is a little paperback by Dick McLellan titled Warriors of Ethiopia: The Extraordinary Story of How the Gospel Came to a Remote Region of Africa. Each chapter is about a different faithful, suffering evangelist. I read about one chapter more or less each evening (because they’re very short) simply to remind myself of the incredible sufferings of indigenous missionaries and evangelists in Ethiopia and around the world who have paid ultimate prices to get the gospel out.

These are people who had virtually none of my advantages or my comforts or my protections or my healthcare. They endured beatings, sleepless nights, dangers, torture, and martyrdom because they loved Jesus Christ and his wonderful news of the forgiveness of sins — or, better, because they knew they were loved by him.

My point is this: The sheer fact that there are people like this in the world today, and that there have always been people like this, has been one means that God has used over five-plus decades of ministry to keep me enduring and rejoicing alongside my sorrows — not instead of them, but at the same time.

Joy in Endurance

So, I would say very gently to our struggling friend who has lost her child and is dealing with cancer, let the example of Paul in the New Testament and thousands of ordinary saints through the centuries give you a fresh confidence. With God’s enabling grace, you can endure this season of your life. In fact, God will help you discover the secret that you don’t even have to wait for this season to be over. He will help you drink the cup of sorrow and, at the same time, feel the sunshine of his love and his sustaining grace and his promise to bring you through.

John Piper () is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.

05/21/2026

04/17/2026

Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Here is a brief but powerful description of temptations Jesus faced, the same ones that we too face as you will read. The Lord richly bless you this day!

Pastor Dave


Church & Culture

April 17, 2026
Understanding Our Temptations
James Emery White

The Bible tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way and, from that, He can understand our weakness. But do we understand the nature of those temptations that Jesus faced and, from them, understand our own weakness?

The clearest portrait of the temptations Jesus faced can be seen in the wilderness, where He faced four – yes, four – direct seductions.


Stones to Bread

First, Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread. For Jesus, this was the temptation to use His supernatural power for His own personal needs. To be motivated by selfish desire.

In other words, the temptation related to motives.

Why you do what you do.


Temple

Then came the temptation to stand on the top of the Temple and cast Himself off. This was the temptation to force a large following through the sheer display of who He was. Bypassing their will, even their hearts, it would have been doing something so spectacular it would have forced belief.

This was the temptation related to methods.

How you do what you do.


Kingdoms of the World

Then there was the invitation to be in control of all the kingdoms of the world. This was no empty boast—Satan could deliver it. “Okay, you love this world so much,” Satan said, “you can have it.” Jesus could have set up the Kingdom of God on Earth in all its fullness.

This was the temptation related to mission.

What you do.


The Fourth Temptation

But there was actually a fourth temptation.

“If you are the Son of God...” (Luke 4:3, 9).

If.

The temptation of self-doubt. The temptation of merit. You are not worthy, not deserving, not cherished, not prized, not special, not... anything.


The Only Possible Response

So how did Jesus respond? The only way possible, and the only way needed.

With the truth of God’s Word.

“Jesus answered, ‘It is written...’” (Luke 4:4, NIV).

“Jesus answered, ‘It is written...’” (Luke 4:8, NIV).

And after Satan caught on and tried to use Scripture as part of the temptation, Jesus said,

“Jesus answered, ‘It says...’” (Luke 4:9-12 NIV).

Jesus withstood temptation for two reasons: first, He knew what the Scriptures said; and second, He submitted His life and will to them.

How are you going to be tempted? Where are you going to be vulnerable?

In the same ways.

You will be tempted in the areas of motive, method, mission and merit.

You will be tempted to make it about you – your gain, your fame, your advancement – instead of becoming more like Jesus.

You will be tempted to take shortcuts, to have the ends justify the means.

You will be tempted to pursue agendas other than the primary one God has for every life.

You will be tempted to listen to the voice that would shame you, discredit you, place you outside of God’s grace and forgiveness.

The question is whether you will meet each and every one of those temptations with the truth of God’s Word.

Like Jesus did.


James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at .

04/13/2026

Dear Church Family:

Here’s a new, brief word that you can sign up for and get in your email, if you wish. Read it and find hope. And if you’d like more of this (and don’t want to depend on me sending it to you occasionally, then go to Desiring God online and search out Solid Joys and subscribe. It’s free, but worth much!

The Lord richly bless you all this week.
Pastor Dave

SOLID JOYS

APRIL 13

Talk to Your Tears
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

PSALM 126:5–6
There is nothing sad about sowing seed. It takes no more work than reaping. The days can be beautiful. There can be great hope of harvest.

Yet the psalm speaks of sowing “in tears.” It says that someone “goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing.” So, why are they weeping?

I think the reason is not that sowing is sad, or that sowing is hard. I think the reason has nothing to do with sowing. Sowing is simply the work that has to be done, even when there are things in life that make us cry.

The crops won’t wait while we finish our grief or solve all our problems. If we are going to eat next winter, we must get out in the field and sow the seed, whether we are crying or not.

If you do that, the promise of the psalm is that you will “reap with shouts of joy.” You will “come home with shouts of joy, bringing [your] sheaves with [you].” Not because the tears of sowing produce the joy of reaping, but because the sheer sowing produces the reaping, and you need to remember this even when your tears tempt you to give up sowing.

So, here’s the lesson: When there are simple, straightforward jobs to be done, and you are full of sadness, and tears are flowing easily, go ahead and do the jobs with tears. Be realistic. Say to your tears, “Tears, I feel you. You make me want to quit life. But there is a field to be sown (dishes to be washed, car to be fixed, sermon to be written).”

Then say, on the basis of God’s word, “Tears, I know that you will not stay forever. The very fact that I just do my work (tears and all) will in the end bring a harvest of blessing. So, go ahead and flow if you must. But I believe — though I do not yet see it or feel it fully — I believe that the simple work of my sowing will bring sheaves of harvest. And my tears will be turned to joy.”

03/25/2026

Join us this Sunday 3/29 for Palm Sunday.

What is Palm Sunday? Do you know?

Palm Sunday is the day we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, one week before His resurrection (Matthew 21:1–11). As Jesus entered the holy city, He neared the culmination of a long journey toward Golgotha. He had come to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and now was the time—this was the place—to secure that salvation. Palm Sunday marked the start of what is often called “Passion Week,” the final seven days of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Palm Sunday began with Jesus and His disciples traveling over the Mount of Olives. The Lord sent two disciples ahead into the village of Bethphage to find an animal to ride. They found the unbroken donkey and the c**t, just as Jesus had said they would (Luke 19:29–30). When they untied the donkey, the owners began to question them. The disciples responded with the answer Jesus had provided: “The Lord needs it” (Luke 19:31–34). Amazingly, the owners were satisfied with that answer and let the disciples go. “They brought [the donkey] to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the c**t and put Jesus on it” (Luke 19:35).

As Jesus ascended toward Jerusalem, a large multitude gathered around Him. This crowd understood that Jesus was the Messiah; what they did not understand was that it wasn’t time to set up the kingdom yet—although Jesus had tried to tell them so (Luke 19:11–12). The crowd’s actions along the road give rise to the name “Palm Sunday”: “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matthew 21:8). In strewing their cloaks on the road, the people were giving Jesus the royal treatment—King Jehu was given similar honor at his coronation (2 Kings 9:13). John records the detail that the branches they cut were from palm trees (John 12:13).

On that first Palm Sunday, the people also honored Jesus verbally: “The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ / ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ / ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’” (Matthew 21:9). In their praise of Jesus, the Jewish crowds were quoting Psalm 118:25–26, an acknowledged prophecy of the Christ. The allusion to a messianic psalm drew resentment from the religious leaders present: “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (Luke 19:39). However, Jesus saw no need to rebuke those who told the truth. He replied, “I tell you . . . if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Some 450 to 500 years prior to Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, the prophet Zechariah had prophesied the event we now call Palm Sunday: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! / Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! / See, your king comes to you, / righteous and victorious, / lowly and riding on a donkey, / on a c**t, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). The prophecy was fulfilled in every particular, and it was indeed a time of rejoicing, as Jerusalem welcomed their King. Unfortunately, the celebration was not to last. The crowds looked for a Messiah who would rescue them politically and free them nationally, but Jesus had come to save them spiritually. First things first, and mankind’s primary need is spiritual, not political, cultural, or national salvation.

Even as the coatless multitudes waved the palm branches and shouted for joy, they missed the true reason for Jesus’ presence. They could neither see nor understand the cross. That’s why, “as [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies . . . will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:41–44). It is a tragic thing to see the Savior but not recognize Him for who He is.

There is coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The worship will be real then. Also, John records a scene in heaven that features the eternal celebration of the risen Lord: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9, emphasis added). These palm-bearing saints will shout, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (verse 10), and who can measure the sum of their joy?

03/25/2026

Take note: Choir practice will now be on Friday evenings at 6:30!

03/23/2026

Shepherd’s Notes – March 23, 2026

Dear Church Family:

Greetings on this overcast, but potentially sunny, Monday!! Spiritually, we can be overcast as well, but always with the “potential” for a sunny disposition as the Son shines on us. Here is a good reminder from A. W. Tozer that the Lord is with us in all things, but especially during the not-so-sunny times!

The Lord richly bless you all!
Pastor Dave

December 29:
Underneath Are the Everlasting Arms.
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.

—Deuteronomy 33:27

Surely Bible-reading Christians should be the last persons on earth to give way to hysteria. They are redeemed from their past offenses, kept in their present circumstances by the power of an all-powerful God, and their future is safe in His hands. God has promised to support them in the flood, protect them in the fire, feed them in famine, shield them against their enemies, hide them in His safe chambers until the indignation is past and receive them at last into eternal tabernacles.

If we are called upon to suffer, we may be perfectly sure that we shall be rewarded for every pain and blessed for every tear. Underneath will be the Everlasting Arms and within will be the deep assurance that all is well with our souls. Nothing can separate us from the love of God—not death, nor life, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature.

This is a big old world, and it is full of the habitations of darkness, but nowhere in its vast expanse is there one thing of which a real Christian need be afraid. Surely a fear-ridden Christian has never examined his or her defenses. TWP007–008

Lord, I’ll go today in the power of these awesome promises. I’ll rest in these strong assurances. I’ll face this “big old world” and its “habitations of darkness” in complete peace as I trust You completely today. Amen.

TWP This World: Playground or Battleground?

A. W. Tozer, Tozer for the Christian Leader (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2015).

03/20/2026

Owner loctaed ***

Do you recognize me? I’m a neutered male Spaniel mix who was found running around Fairgrounds Rd near Lanes End. I had a large black mixed breed dog with me, but they ran away. I’m wearing an orange alligator collar and I’m microchipped, but the chip isn’t registered. Goochland Pet Lovers