Salem Rd Baptist Church

Salem Rd Baptist Church Preaching the Old Time Gospel In a New Age World. Teaching Families to make a difference in their Community.

09/06/2026

September 6

Looking Up

Neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee. 2 Chronicles 20:12.

Jehoshaphat is faced by a powerful combination of Moabites, Ammonites, and others. In his desperation he turns to God: “O God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us.”
Are we not often in this plight? Do these lines fall under the eye of someone sore beset by an alliance of evil confederates, whether in the flesh or of the unseen world of principalities and powers? You do not know what to do. We never do. We have no might against the Moabites.
But we can take Jehoshaphat’s way out: “Our eyes are upon thee.” We may not know what to do, but God always knows what He is going to do. He is never caught off guard or taken by surprise. Commit your case to Him. You can lie down at night and sleep, although tomorrow the Moabites will arrive. Many a saint has pillowed his head on a promise when all hope seemed gone. And when the dreaded day arrived God had handled the Moabites in His own way.
“Our eyes are upon thee.” “Looking unto Jesus.” We know not what to do, but He knows. No sleeping pill can rest a man like knowing that!

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 187–188.

09/05/2026

September 5

Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Our fathers worshipped in this mountain.… I know that Messias cometh. John 4:20, 25.

The Samaritan woman was living between a golden past and a glorious future, but in a bleak and sinful present. She could look back to great days, when her fathers worshiped God, and to greater days ahead, when Messias would come and tell all things. Yet how little did she know that morning that this day would be her greatest, for then she would come to see and know the Master for herself!
How many of us live looking back or ahead, between a holy past and a holier future, but in a hollow present! Some sigh for the good old days when our fathers worshiped in this mountain. Some long for a better day ahead, when the Great Avenger shall vindicate us of our adversaries. But we need not stand at Jacob’s well with our souls unsatisfied. The Messiah has come, He lives today, and He will meet us now where we are and as we are. We cannot go back to the fountains of yesterday nor drink at the springs of tomorrow. But the Living Christ offers living water today which shall be in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life. And we shall leave our old waterpots which we would fain have filled at earth’s broken cisterns to tell others what we have found in Him today.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 186–187.

09/04/2026

September 4

The Best Promoter

Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. Psalm 75:6, 7.

Promotion in this world is by no means based on merit. Not even in the religious world. Some of the best preachers hold forth in obscure places, while some who cannot and never will preach occupy important pulpits.
God’s system of promotion does not follow the pattern of this age. It may look like anything but promotion, as when the Spirit sent Philip out of a spiritual awakening into a desert. God “hides” some of His best talent in unknown corners and buries some of His ablest servants in the depths of heathenism. He seems to waste some of His choicest men. They get scant recognition in this scrambled church world today, where servants ride on horses and princes walk as servants. Today, as ever, the prophet walks in the steps of his Lord, without honor in his own country. It comes to this: which kind of promotion do we seek? A smart politician who knows the “right” people can attain to considerable eminence down here. But the man who lets God promote him is spared all that fever. God may set him in a high place to the chagrin of some of his contemporaries. If he never gets a newspaper headline he will lose no sleep over it, for any place is a “large place” if it is God’s place.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 186.

09/02/2026

September 2

Double Abundance

God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. 2 Corinthians 9:8.

God’s grace is not only amazing grace, it is abounding grace. He abounds toward us that we may abound toward Him. There is abundance of grace in order that there may be abundance of good works. “Always having all sufficiency in all things”—what could be more satisfying than that? It is another way of saying, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” There is nothing stingy and niggardly about the grace of God. “Of his fulness have all we received and grace upon grace.” Jesus came that we might have life more abundantly.
And as God abounds toward us, we should abound toward Him. Paul was a great example of what he wrote. With all his infirmities, his thorn in the flesh, his opposition and persecution, who ever abounded to every good work as he did?
Our penurious and miserly service today declares that we live cheaply in our souls. We do not lay hold of the riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Our output is small because our intake is small. “My God shall supply all your need,” and beyond that do more for us than we can ask or think.
Let us be doubly abundant, in grace and good works.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 184–185.

09/01/2026

September 1

Second Childhood

Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3.

The crying need with most of us is not so much to learn more as to unlearn much of what we already know. We know too much. We are cluttered with a mental attic full of things we have read and heard, and now we need to get through—not back—to a few elementary simplicities. There is a second childhood, not of childishness but of childlikeness. To reach it requires a conversion, maybe a sort of second conversion with some of us, when we become just simple Christians content to trust and obey. Some great scholars as well as plain souls reach it. It is not a peak so high that only a few rarely endowed climbers can scale it; it is a valley so low that only a few will humble themselves to walk in it. We are straining too hard trying to be profound and deep to let go and be children again in spirit. And we get there heart first, not head first.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 183–184.

08/31/2026

August 31

“But God Was with Him”

But God was with him. Acts 7:9.

This is one of the many “But Gods” in the Book that spell quite a difference. Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egypt, but God was with him. Joseph himself put it this way: “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” Gen. 50:20). What men thought was overruled by what God wrought. “Man proposes but God disposes.”
“He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” Heb. 13:5, 6). No plottings of men, no combinations of circumstances can defeat the man who has God as his helper. Here is the secret of many a life, conspired against by ill health, poverty, evil men, foes in the household, the world, the flesh and the devil, but victorious, anyway—God was with him. The devil and men often overstep themselves, sell Joseph into Egypt, but God makes him Prime Minister! “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
And even in the last dark chapter we need not tremble at our Adversary, but triumph with our Ally—“I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
But God was with him. What a difference that makes!

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 182–183.

08/30/2026

August 30

Here or Hereafter?

A crown … unto all them also that love his appearing.… Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. 2 Timothy 4:8, 10.

If you love His appearing you are not in love with this present world. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” “Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
Paul had set his sights higher than this passing scene. Demas would have his portion here and now. Paul was a pilgrim and a stranger, not only in love with Jesus but with His appearing. I wonder how many really love Jesus’ return. One does not sense it much in churches building the Kingdom but not really joying in the coming of the King. And fundamentalists who revel in detailed programs of that event do not always seem to “love” it. Their interest is academic but not affectionate.
Demas sometimes lines up with Paul temporarily, but soon forsakes him. You cannot love and live for two worlds at a time. The love of the world and the love of the Father simply do not coexist in the same heart.
Are you in love with this age or with the one to come? It makes a difference!

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 182.

08/29/2026

August 29

Known and Unknown

The world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 1 John 3:1.
I never knew you. Matthew 7:23.

This world knew not our Lord. “There standeth one among you whom ye know not.” So said John the Baptist. “If thou hadst known … If thou knewest … If ye had known”—so runs Jesus’ constant refrain while He was among us.
Because the world knew Him not it knows us not. “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” 1 Jn. 3:13). It not only does not know us, it hates us. “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them” Jn. 17:14). We cannot love the Word and be loved by the world.
But what matters the hatred of this world if He knows and loves us? Most fearful of all pronouncements ever to fall on human ears is that word to those who profess to know Him but whose works deny Him: “I never knew you.”
“The Lord knoweth them that are his” 2 Tim. 2:19). This world makes much of “knowing the right people.” What matters is to know God.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 181.

08/28/2026

August 28

“Jesus, Master”

If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord … Romans 10:9.

In his Journal, John Wesley tells us that, a few days after Aldersgate, he awoke with “Jesus, Master” in his heart and in his mouth. The true believer acknowledges Jesus not only as His Saviour but as Lord of his life. We have a strange species of believer these days, a believer who confesses Christ as Saviour but whose life rejects Him as Master. The New Testament presents no such anomaly as a Christian who “takes” Christ now for salvation and defers obeying Him as Lord until later, maybe never. The initial confession set forth in our text is “Jesus As Lord.”
If this were made clear to our “prospects” these days, and if they understood that a believer is also expected to be a disciple and a witness, it might drive away some, but we would not be embarrassed by a host of church members who call Him Lord, Lord, and do not His commandments.
John Wesley started right with “Jesus, Master” in His heart as well as in his mouth.

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 180–181.

08/27/2026

August 27

Confidence and Care

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 Peter 5:7.
Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. Hebrews 10:35.

Alas, we reverse the process: we cast away our confidence and carry all our care! It is His desire that we roll all our burden on Him and be careful for nothing. But we are so cumbered with ourselves that our minds are never free to be occupied with Him. If we can let Him take care of our problems while we attend to His work, we shall find our hearts free from that friction that cuts down our service to such a bare minimum. We get so little done for Him, our production is so pitiful, because everything goes into “overhead” and oiling the machinery. Most of our time and energy go into carrying what God asked us to cast on Him. And our confidence, the one thing He said to keep, we cast away.
You keep your confidence: He’ll keep your cares!

Vance Havner, Day by Day: A Book of Bible Devotions (Baker Publishing Group, 1953), 180.

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1028 Salem Road
Rossville, GA
30741

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10:45am - 12pm

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