Jeff Arnette – Central Haywood Church of Christ

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Jeff Arnette

Can a Leopard Change Its Spots?

Jeremiah 13:23

There is a question tucked inside the book of Jeremiah that is easy to read past. It sounds almost like a riddle. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” (Jeremiah 13:23). Jeremiah was speaking to a people who had drifted so far from God that their rebellion had become second nature. They weren’t just breaking rules; they had broken their covenant, the deep, binding promise they had made with the Lord Himself. And the honest answer to the question was no. You can’t change what you’ve become.

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The Secret Nobody Wants to Hear

Jeremiah 7:23, ESV

Most of us have spent a good portion of our lives looking for something. Not always sure what it is, exactly, but something that would make us feel like we had finally arrived. The next job, the bigger house, the right car — maybe then we would be content. Maybe then we could breathe.

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The Danger of Looking Good

Jeremiah 5:28, ESV

We are pretty good at keeping up appearances. Most of us have learned how to look put-together even when things are falling apart inside. We smile at the right moments, say the right things, show up when we’re supposed to. And the world rewards that. A polished image opens doors that a messy, honest one sometimes doesn’t.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 10

John 20:19–29

Every scar has a story. The one on my finger is from a knife I was told to leave alone. I didn’t listen. The one on my leg is from a bicycle crash I’d rather forget. And the one on my stomach is from a piece of metal that chipped off a steel chisel at exactly the wrong moment.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 9

John 20:11–18

A man I read about was adopted at birth and grew up with no knowledge of his biological family. In his forties, a DNA service connected him with a half-sister he had never known. They exchanged careful, tentative messages for weeks. Then one afternoon she called him, and the moment he heard her voice, something unexpected happened. She said his name, and he wept.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 8

1 Corinthians 15:12–24

A historian I read about spent two years trying to disprove the resurrection. He was not a believer, he was a skeptic, and he approached the accounts of Easter the way a detective approaches a crime scene: looking for inconsistencies, alternate explanations, reasons to dismiss. He catalogued the evidence on both sides. He interviewed scholars. He traced the manuscript traditions.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 6

Exodus 2:23–25

For eighteen months, a woman I know wrote weekly letters to her estranged adult daughter who refused all contact. She never knew if the letters were read, returned, or thrown away. The silence was total. She kept writing anyway, because the love didn’t stop just because the replies did.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 5

John 14:1–10

Maybe you’ve been there. You’re hiking a trail, the fog rolls in thick, and suddenly you can barely see five feet ahead. Your map is useless, all the landmarks you’d been following have disappeared. You’re standing at a fork in the trail, genuinely unsure which way leads back to the trailhead and which leads deeper into the backcountry.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 4

John 13:6–20

A master woodworker once described the most discouraging phase of any project: the middle. “The beginning is exciting,” he said. “You have vision, you have energy. The end is satisfying, you can see the finished piece. But the middle? The middle just looks like a mess of sawdust and mistakes. That’s when most people quit.”

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The Hope of Easter: Day 1

Luke 19:1–10

When my son was five, he slipped away from me at a local county fair. One moment his hand was in mine; the next, he was gone. I pushed through the crowd, heart hammering, calling his name above the noise. Four long minutes later, I found him near the funnel cake booth, perfectly calm, watching a pig race. He had no idea I’d been searching frantically. But I had come for him, because he was mine, and I was not leaving without him.

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The Call That Changes Everything

Jeremiah 1:5

Most of us have been chosen for something at least once. A team in high school, a committee at work, a seat on some board nobody else wanted. You remember that feeling, right? Somebody looked at you and said, “We want you.” It felt good. But then Monday rolls around, and whatever we were chosen for starts to feel pretty ordinary. The excitement wears off. The responsibility doesn’t.

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The Name He Chose for Himself

Isaiah 64:8

There’s something about finding an old coffee mug your dad used to drink from every morning. You pick it up and it all comes back, the way he’d sit at the table before anyone else was awake, the quiet steadiness of his presence. A good father doesn’t announce himself. He’s just there, reliable and close, even when you weren’t paying attention.

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The Guide Who Walks With Us

Isaiah 58:11

Have you ever been completely lost? Not the kind of lost where your phone reroutes you in thirty seconds, but the real kind. The road ahead unfamiliar and nothing behind you looking right either. Maybe it wasn’t a highway. Maybe it was a hard conversation, a medical decision, or a week where every option felt wrong. We’ve all stood in that fog, hoping somebody could point the way.

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Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Isaiah 53:4-7

It’s a question I’ve been asked more than a few times, usually over coffee, sometimes in a hospital room, occasionally from someone sitting in the back pew with tears they’re trying to hide. Why did Jesus have to die? The truth is, it’s not an easy question to explain. Not because the answer isn’t there, but because the weight of it is almost too much to hold in a single conversation.

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February 22, 2026

When the Dark Won’t Lift

Isaiah 50:10

There are stretches in life when you do everything right and still feel lost. You read your Bible. You pray. You show up on Sunday. And yet the fog stays. The confusion lingers. Some of us are walking through one of those stretches right now, and the hardest part isn’t the darkness itself. It’s wondering whether we did something wrong to end up in it.

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February 15, 2026

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