All posts by mjharvell

Welcome, friend—I’m glad you’ve pulled up a chair on the front porch of my little corner of the internet. My name is Michael Joe Harvell, and I live my life with one simple mission: to glorify God, encourage people, and leave this world a little better than I found it. I’m a husband, father, pastor, writer, Jeep enthusiast, and front-porch thinker who believes that life is best lived on purpose. I serve as pastor of Eureka Baptist Church in Anderson, South Carolina, where I get the joy of preaching, teaching, and walking with people through the ups and downs of everyday life. Over the years, I’ve discovered that faith isn’t just about Sunday mornings—it’s about living every single day in the presence and power of God. I’m also an author. My books—including The Grace Exchange: How Forgiven People Forgive People and The Word Works—grow out of the sermons, stories, and lessons I’ve learned on this journey. I write in a style that’s conversational, a little front-porch-rocking-chair, and full of stories, quotes, and Scripture that point us back to the goodness of God’s Word. When I’m not writing or preaching, you might find me sitting outside with my Bible and journal, cruising the backroads in my Jeep Gladiator, or sharing a meal and some laughs with the good folks God has put in my life. I love helping people find peace in their spirit, strength in their body, and encouragement in their soul. This blog is simply an extension of that mission. Here you’ll find devotions, encouragement, reflections, and practical insights for living a life of purpose, peace, and joy. So grab a cup of coffee, pull up a rocking chair, and stay awhile—I’d be honored to walk this road of faith with you.
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Ordinary On Purpose!

Ordinary Is A Good Thing!

What an amazing thought:  The Lord is offering us a chance to literally change the world!  We have been placed in this time and place for a purpose.  We are not here by accident or coincidence.  We have the opportunity, right now, right here, today to live our life on purpose, for His purpose, which is what we were created for.

When I read through the Scriptures, I am often amazed at the extraordinary things that were accomplished in and through the lives of people.  People who chose to live for God’s purpose over their own.  The other really amazing thing is that these people who did extraordinary things for God, were just ordinary people.  Many of them were failures, screw-ups and great big sinners, until the Spirit got a hold of them.

This is one of the reasons I have always loved the church.  The church at it’s best is just a collection of ordinary people, who have yielded themselves to the Spirit of God so that His power might accomplish the extraordinary through them.

Right now as you live your life, whatever you are going through, good or bad, God has positioned ordinary you to be used in an extraordinary way by Him and for His glory.  The key for you are me is to 1.) Wait on the Spirit! and 2.) Yield to the Spirit!

Waiting is hard, but it’s what the Lord told His disciples to do in Acts 1 – “Wait on the Holy Spirit to fill you with God’s power!”  Ordinary can never accomplish extraordinary without the power of our Creator.

Once the power of God is flowing into our lives, we need to make sure that it flows through our lives and this is why the yielding is so important.  It’s not about what I think, want or feel.  It’s about what God created me for, what God saved me for, what God fills me for and what God gives me power for.  And God has done all of this, so that I might be His witness.

Our lives are to be living witnesses of the power of God that flows into and through ordinary lives to accomplish extraordinary things for God’s glory.  Yes you are ordinary, but this is not a bad thing, this is actually a very good thing, because as God fills you with His power, your ordinary becomes His extraordinary and God gets all of the glory!

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Living And Learning!

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Live in the Spirit!

Do you ever have something the Spirit is teaching you and you get it, but you just can’t seem to communicate it?  It’s in your heart and in your head, but you just can’t seem to find the words?

The Lord has been teaching me something pretty incredible lately.  It’s one of those things that I have known what the Bible has to say for a long time.  I could even quote the verse and I may have even gotten the gist of it, but now God is taking me deeper and I still don’t totally have it, but I am beginning to get it after a lot of lessons.

We often work so hard to try to make something obvious in the physical and the harder we work, the more hard work we have to do.  It’s almost as if it is a never-ending battle.  But in the spiritual, you don’t have to make anything obvious, because the Spirit does all the hard work for you.  In the Spirit, the obvious is obvious to those in the Spirit!

When you are working hard in the physical to try to make something obvious, you often can’t see and have no understanding of the spiritual, because you are so focused on the physical.  You don’t want to see and don’t want to understand the spiritual, because it would reveal how wrong and what a waste of time and energy your life has been in the physical.

I know this is all a little complex, but I believe it is a big part of what the Spirit has been trying to teach me over the past several months and what the Spirit was talking about when He said in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”

Sometimes, I find myself trying to explain spiritual things to people and I think to myself, “this should be obvious to them”, but I am assuming they are spiritual, because they say they are spiritual, but if they are really as spiritual as they say they are, then I would not have to explain it, because the Spirit would and is making it clear and obvious.  Many times in my own life, I have missed the spiritually obvious, because I was stuck in the physical.

So many of our conversations and discussions are a total waste of time and energy because we are wasting physical energy, while we should be living powerful spiritual lives or we are wasting spiritual energy on people who are stuck and not budging in the physical.  Jesus said in Matthew 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

Now does this mean that we become so heavenly minded that we don’t do any earthly good?  Of course not.  We will do earthly/physical good, if we are heavenly/spiritual minded, because it just comes natural in a spiritual kinda way.  Galatians 5:16 puts it simply: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

I do not totally have all of this, but the Spirit is giving me new insight almost everyday and this is a very cool thing, because I have found that physically my arms and hands have come down by my side and I am experiencing a peace that words cannot explain, because I am finally beginning to understand what Jesus was saying when He told His disciples in Matthew 10:14 “Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet.”  It’s not your job to convince, but if you are convinced then you will find that living in the Spirit is so much better than anything physical!

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To My Wife!

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God Blessed!

I love you!  It is so much more than words.  I love to make you laugh and see you smile – it really does something inside of me when I do.  I am so glad that we get to do life together and thankful for the two miracles of Grace and Hope that our Creator allowed our love to produce.  You understand my calling and know better than anyone else how real and powerful it is in and upon my life.  When others just don’t or won’t get it, it is great to have at least one person on this earth that does.  And I will die a blessed man, if God, you and my girls get it, even if no one else does.

For 19 years we have walked together as husband and wife.  A team that God brought together and has kept together for His glory.  Thank you for being a loving wife, dedicated mother, faithful friend, willing servant and all around great woman of God.  I could not do what I do without you and have only made it through the struggles of life and ministry because God in His great wisdom placed you by my side.

When we named our daughters, it was the prayer of my heart that they would grow to live out and represent the characteristic of God that their names represent.  I had this prayer because their Mom has done and does exactly that.  You are JOY.  You are my JOY and I love you!  Thank you for 19 years and for always being right where I need you to be.  I love you more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.  I am so glad that together we serve a God, Who continues to grow the love for His glory and our blessing!