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  • Jonathan Edwards: The Sermon That Shook a Village

    Jonathan Edwards: The Sermon That Shook a Village
    Jul 3 2026

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    A preacher with a weak voice. A bored New England town. Twenty minutes of monotone reading. And heaven came down anyway.

    On a warm Wednesday in July of 1741, Jonathan Edwards stepped into the pulpit at Enfield, Connecticut. He never looked up from his page. He read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in a flat monotone. Twenty minutes later, grown men were gripping the pews to keep from sliding to the floor.

    Here is what most people miss. Edwards did not rise to that morning cold. For years he had worn grooves in the floor of his study. He had fasted. He had wept over his people before he ever read them a single line. The fire in that meetinghouse was lit long before, in a quiet room, on a man's knees.

    In this five-minute Take 5 devotional, Pastor Rodney Coe walks through the story of Jonathan Edwards and the Enfield revival of July 1741, and what it tells us about the kind of prayer heaven still answers.

    Scripture: Psalm 85:6 | Acts 1:14 | Deuteronomy 32:35

    📖 Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/jonathan-edwards-sermon-enfield-revival/

    🎙 Subscribe to Lift Up Your Day: https://rodneycoe.com/lift-up-your-day/

    📚 Pastor Rodney's books: https://rodneycoe.com/books/

    Heaven is closer than you think. Lift up your day.
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    5 Min.
  • Fanny Crosby: The Blind Woman Who Wrote 8,000 Hymns

    Fanny Crosby: The Blind Woman Who Wrote 8,000 Hymns
    Jul 1 2026

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    When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a traveling doctor treated her infected eyes with a hot poultice and left her blind for life. He packed up and left town, and no one ever saw him again. She would never see a sunrise or her mother's face. She would never see a single word she would one day write. And she would write more than eight thousand hymns the church is still singing today, "Blessed Assurance," "To God Be the Glory," "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior," "Rescue the Perishing," "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." The part that takes your breath: Fanny never resented the man who took her sight. She said if she could meet him, she would thank him, because her blindness taught her to see Jesus more clearly than most people with two good eyes. She used to say that the very first face she would ever see would be the face of her Savior. A five-minute reminder that what looks like your darkness may be the room where God is writing your best song. Scripture echo: 2 Corinthians 5:7 Key figure: Fanny Crosby (1820-1915), American hymn writer, author of more than 8,000 hymns Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/fanny-crosby-blind-hymn-writer/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair.
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    4 Min.
  • Christmas Evans: The Mountain Where He Got His Fire Back

    Christmas Evans: The Mountain Where He Got His Fire Back
    Jun 29 2026

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    A preacher rode alone through the mountains of Wales, and his heart was cold. His name was Christmas Evans. Born on Christmas Day, 1766, into deep poverty. Orphaned at nine. At seventeen he still could not read a single word. After he met Christ, he taught himself his letters and began to preach. One night his old friends beat him in the dark and he lost an eye for the rest of his life. Then his fire grew dim. So on a lonely road between Dolgellau and Machynlleth, Evans climbed off his pony and up the mountainside, and prayed until the coldness broke. He came down a changed man, and revival followed his preaching across Wales. A five-minute reminder that when your fire has burned low, the road home runs straight uphill into honest prayer. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." Scripture echo: Revelation 2:4, James 4:8 Key figure: Christmas Evans (1766-1838), Welsh Baptist preacher whose covenant prayer on a Welsh mountain road sparked revival across Anglesey and Wales. Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/christmas-evans-mountain-fire-back/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair. "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
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    5 Min.
  • Civil War Revival of 1863: The Unfinished Baptism

    Civil War Revival of 1863: The Unfinished Baptism
    Jun 26 2026

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    In the winter of 1863, soldiers waded into half-frozen creeks to be baptized, too full of new faith to wait for spring, and many of them knew they might not live to see it. This is the story of the Great Revival that swept the Civil War camps on both sides, where Bibles were so scarce a single one served a whole regiment, and around 150,000 men came to Christ in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history. A five-minute reminder that revival rarely waits for comfort, and that God is a very present help right in the middle of the trouble. Scripture echo: Psalm 46:1 Key moment: The Great Revival of 1863, sweeping both Union and Confederate camps during the American Civil War. Approximately 150,000 Confederate soldiers and tens of thousands of Union soldiers came to Christ. Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/civil-war-revival-1863-unfinished-baptism/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair. "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
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    4 Min.
  • Mary McLeod Bethune: Faith, Education, and Detour

    Mary McLeod Bethune: Faith, Education, and Detour
    Jun 24 2026

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    They told her there was no place for a Black missionary to Africa. She called it the greatest disappointment of her life.

    Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875 on a South Carolina cotton field, the fifteenth of seventeen children of former slaves. She trained for years to become a missionary. When the door slammed, she opened a school in Daytona Beach with a dollar and fifty cents, charred wood for pencils, and ink she crushed from elderberries. That ragged little school became a college that still trains young men and women today. The woman who was once told she was not wanted ended up advising four U.S. presidents and helping write the charter of the United Nations.

    A five-minute reminder that the door God closes is never the end of your story. The detour may be the destination all along.

    Scripture echo: Proverbs 3:5-6
    Key figure: Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), educator, founder of Bethune-Cookman College, presidential adviser

    Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/mary-mcleod-bethune-detour-that-changed-everything/

    Five minutes. Pull up a chair.
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    4 Min.
  • C.S. Lewis: The Atheist Who Found God

    C.S. Lewis: The Atheist Who Found God
    Jun 22 2026

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    C.S. Lewis was a brilliant Oxford atheist, certain that Christianity was a myth and determined to keep God at arm's length. This is the story of how the evidence, a midnight conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien, and a quiet ride to the zoo in his brother's motorcycle sidecar brought the most reluctant convert in England to his knees. And it leads to the most personal question Jesus ever asked: "But who do you say that I am?" A five-minute reminder that an honest answer to that question changes everything. Scripture echo: Matthew 16:15, John 14:6 Key figure: C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Oxford scholar, author of Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/cs-lewis-who-do-you-say-i-am/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair. "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
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    5 Min.
  • Eric Liddell: The Olympic Runner Who Gave Up Gold for God

    Eric Liddell: The Olympic Runner Who Gave Up Gold for God
    Jun 19 2026

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    The fastest man in Scotland was about to throw away the race of his life. The 1924 Olympics were in Paris, and Eric Liddell was the favorite to win the 100 meters. Then the schedule came out. The heats fell on a Sunday. And Eric Liddell, who believed the Lord's Day belonged to the Lord, quietly announced that he would not run. The newspapers called him a fool. Some of his own countrymen called him a traitor. He did not budge an inch. So he entered the 400 meters instead. A longer race. One he had hardly trained for. On the morning of the final, someone pressed a folded note into his hand carrying an old promise: "Those who honor Me I will honor." He won gold. World record. Then he walked away from fame at the height of it to become a missionary in China, where he died in a Japanese internment camp at age forty-three. His last recorded words: "It's complete surrender." This is a five-minute story about laying aside the race you trained for so you can run the one God set before you. Scripture echo: Hebrews 12:1-2, Matthew 6:33, 1 Samuel 2:30 Key figure: Eric Henry Liddell (1902-1945), Olympic gold medalist and missionary to China Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/eric-liddell-runner-who-gave-up-gold/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair.
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    4 Min.
  • Lottie Moon: The Missionary Who Starved to Feed China

    Lottie Moon: The Missionary Who Starved to Feed China
    Jun 17 2026

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    She weighed just fifty pounds when they carried her onto the ship. Lottie Moon, four feet three inches tall and fluent in five languages, had given away all her food and money to starving families during a famine in China. She had spent nearly forty years pouring out her life on the far side of the world, and now her own body could not go on. The younger missionaries put her on a ship bound for home. It was too late. On Christmas Eve, 1912, in the harbor of Kobe, Japan, Lottie Moon slipped away at seventy-two. She whispered the words of a child's hymn she had loved since girlhood: we are weak, but He is strong. Here is the part she never knew. For years she had written the mission board, letter after letter, begging for more workers. The letters had planted a seed. The women of her church started a small Christmas offering, and after she died they put her name on it. That offering, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, has now raised more than five billion dollars to carry the gospel around the world. Five billion. Lottie never saw a single dime of it. A five-minute reminder that the seed you bury in faith is never wasted. It is simply being planted. Scripture echo: John 12:24 Key figure: Charlotte "Lottie" Moon (1840-1912), Southern Baptist missionary to China, namesake of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/lottie-moon-last-christmas/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair.
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    4 Min.