Author: Texas Gospel

Surrendering your whole life to God opens the door to whatever he wants to do through you

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

God is not looking for partial commitment; he is listening for the kind of surrender that says, “Here I am, Lord, do whatever you want with my life,” and that kind of openness can come at any age or stage of life. Giving most of yourself to God is not the same as giving all of yourself, and it is the full surrender that he is after.

When a person reaches that point of availability, the possibilities of what God can accomplish through them are wide open. He has a purpose and a plan for every life, and surrendering to him is the starting point for seeing that plan unfold. You may not know what he will do, but you can trust that what he does with a willing life will be far greater than anything you could arrange on your own.

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

Luke 9:23

Les Butler marks 50 years in Southern Gospel music with a Nashville celebration

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AMY TURNER

Perhaps he wasn’t expecting a crowd. But then again, Les Butler has never quite understood the depth of his own reach.

When REAL Southern Gospel Radio threw open the doors of its Nashville-area studios to honour the man who has spent half a century shaping the sound, the stories, and the soul of Southern Gospel music, people came from everywhere. Florida. Michigan. Places in between that don’t always make it onto the itinerary unless something genuinely matters. And for the community that calls this genre home, Les Butler genuinely matters.

The Open House was billed as a celebration, and it delivered on that promise. There was food, laughter, and a commemorative cake decorated with a caricature of Butler himself, the kind of small, affectionate detail that tells you everything about how people feel about someone. Industry leaders, recording artists, radio staff, and loyal listeners filed through the studio, each one carrying a version of the same story: that Les Butler changed something for them, opened a door, championed a career, or simply kept the music playing when it needed someone to keep the music playing.

Among those who showed up were Tom and Rebecca Peck, Eddie Crook, Nick Bruno, and Lem Kinslow, names that carry weight in Southern Gospel circles. Their presence underscored what the occasion already made plain: this wasn’t a courtesy appearance kind of crowd. These were people who meant it.

“Fifty years of service is an extraordinary accomplishment,” said attendees throughout the day, a phrase that sounds simple until you start thinking about what fifty years actually looks like. It looks like thousands of broadcasts. It looks like artists who needed someone in their corner finding one. It looks like an audience that might never have discovered this music being handed a reason to love it.

Butler’s career spans broadcasting, publishing, artist development, and ministry, a range that speaks less to ambition than to a particular kind of restlessness that comes from caring deeply about something. Southern Gospel has always occupied a specific, sometimes underestimated corner of American music, rooted in faith and community and a vocal tradition that goes back generations. Butler understood that corner, respected it, and spent five decades refusing to let the world overlook it.

In the week leading up to the celebration, he received a wave of messages and videos from across the industry, congratulating him on the milestone. The volume of it said something that no single tribute could.

Some people become indispensable to a world not by dominating it but by serving it consistently, quietly, and with genuine conviction. Southern Gospel has that in Les Butler. And on a warm afternoon in Nashville, with the cake cut and the stories still going, fifty years felt like both a long time and, somehow, just the beginning.

Understanding God’s sovereignty and the role of temptation in the life of a believer

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A passage in 1 Corinthians 10 promises that God will not allow believers to be tempted beyond what they can bear, and some have read this as suggesting that God is the one sending temptation into people’s lives. The Book of James addresses this directly, making clear that God does not tempt anyone, because he cannot be tempted by evil himself. These two passages are not in conflict; they are describing two different things.

The Greek word behind “temptation” simply means to test or prove, and it carries no negative weight on its own. When a believer encounters a difficult situation or a pull toward sin and rejects it, that is a test that has been passed and made them stronger. If the person gives in, it becomes a temptation that leads to sin. God allows his people to live in a fallen world with all its pressures and difficulties, but he does not personally engineer situations designed to make them fall. What he does promise is that no trial will be so great that there is no way through it.

No one is to say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.

James 1:13

Living with courage and joy when life is uncertain

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NELSON NOLAND

Life rarely comes with guarantees, and yet many people find themselves waiting for certainty before they take the next step. The ancient wisdom found in Ecclesiastes 11 speaks directly to this tendency. Just as a merchant sends cargo ships out to sea not knowing if a storm will destroy them, or a farmer plants seeds not knowing if the harvest will come, ordinary people are called to act wisely and boldly even when the outcome is unclear. Spreading your risks, working hard, and refusing to be paralyzed by the fear of what might go wrong are not signs of recklessness. They are signs of a faith that trusts God enough to move forward anyway.

The second half of Ecclesiastes 11 turns from courage to joy, and it is just as practical. Joy is not something you manufacture on your own. It is a gift that you choose to unwrap by paying attention to the good things already in your life. The writer encourages people of every age, young and old, to genuinely enjoy their years while they have them. This is not an invitation to chase sin or live carelessly. In fact, the text is clear that joy must stay within the boundaries of what is right, because choices made in younger years carry consequences that follow a person for a long time.

What holds these two ideas together, courage and joy, is the practice of remembering God. Not just thanking him in a general way, but actively paying attention to how he has been faithful in the past and choosing to trust him with what is ahead. Just as a bee takes even bitter things and turns them into honey, a person rooted in their relationship with God can take hard circumstances and find something good in them.

These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

John 16:33

Ministry, entertainment, or something the Booth Brothers settled long ago

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AMY TURNER

The question has been asked in sanctuaries and greenrooms, on fan forums and theology blogs, with the kind of fervour reserved for things of extreme importance. Is Christian music ministry or entertainment? It is the sort of question that sounds profound right up until someone like Michael Booth gets hold of it.

“I don’t think that’s a good question at all,” says Booth, one third of the Booth Brothers, the Southern Gospel trio that has spent decades doing something that defies easy categorisation. “I think it’s divisive and I think it’s distracting.”

He is not being dismissive. He is being precise, which is a different thing entirely.

The Booth Brothers, consisting of Michael, Ronnie, and Buddy, have collected GRAMMY nominations, Dove Awards, and Singing News Fan Awards the way other people collect regrets. Chart-topping songs, industry recognition, a reputation among listeners and peers alike as one of the finest acts Gospel Music has produced in a generation. And still, inevitably, someone in the crowd or the comment section wants to know: what exactly are you doing up there?

Booth’s answer reframes the whole conversation. He reaches for 1 Corinthians the way a craftsman reaches for a well-worn tool. “Whether we eat or we drink, whatever we do, we do unto the glory of God,” he says, quoting the passage with the ease of someone who has lived inside it. “And I believe that goes for… whatever we do, that’s everything. So that means if you’re a gospel singer, a preacher, a teacher, an evangelist, a comedian, a plumber, whatever it is, we’re to do it for the glory of God.”

The logic is elegant and it cuts straight through the debate. Ministry or entertainment? The Booth Brothers do both, without apology, and they do them simultaneously. Audiences leave their events with something harder to quantify than a setlist, hearts and minds refreshed, having moved through inspiring songs and genuine laughter in the same breath. It is a combination that sounds unlikely on paper and feels inevitable in the room.

For Booth, the binary question misses the point so completely it almost becomes a different question. “The question is not whether it’s ministry or is it entertainment,” he says. “The question is motive. Is my motive to glorify God?”

That single word, motive, does a lot of heavy lifting. It shifts the responsibility away from genre labels and industry taxonomy and places it squarely with the artist, in the quiet space between intention and performance, before a single note is sung.

The Booth Brothers have built their career in that space. Every note carries what their biography describes as “the utmost desire for each song and lyric to minister to audiences, touch souls, and ultimately point others to Jesus Christ.” That is not the language of people trying to win an argument about categories. That is the language of people who settled the question a long time ago and got on with the work.

“I’m not going to be able to solve this for everybody,” Booth admits, with the candour of a man who has no interest in pretending otherwise. “I’m not even going to try. I’m just going to share with you my thoughts.”

It turns out, that is more than enough.