A Treasury of Good Things

One of the most difficult challenges being a parent is trusting God with the ones we love. Somehow we can see that he worked through the greatest challenges of our lives for our good and for His glory and yet we are still tempted to bulldoze all the hard out of our children's lives, pray against hardship, and stay awake at night playing the “what if” game. This is not how God would have us love our children: through fear, yet often times that's the way we navigate the world for them. In today's episode, we look at one story in the Old Testament that challenges us to consider what our children's lives could be if we stopped parenting from a place of anxiety and let faith in God's plan and His goodness lead the way.

You've messed up. Maybe really badly. You're staring your sin in the face. In this moment you have one of three options: 1) you can overemphasize and exaggerate the burden of righteous living emboldening yourself to embrace rebellion and bitterness against a God who requires something of you 2) you can down play your actions while simultaneously minimizing your salvation or 3) you can wrench your eyes from your sin and look at the cross, accepting your wretched behavior but also finding life in His free gift of grace. Today's readings focus on these choices either to vilify God, minimize God, or trust God. The readings are extremely rich, interesting, and even though the themes aren't new, my heart heard them in a new way. I hope you have the same experience!

“I believe…help my unbelief!” Few cries of desperation can be so keenly felt and understood than the vulnerable and overwhelmed cry of the father in Mark 9 who clung to Jesus for help in saving his demented son. Hardly a Christian alive has not found immeasurable relief in knowing that both states of being can co-exist in our hearts and that we are not only welcomed but helped as we stumble often but travel upwards if we are clutching to the Father in our humanity. Today's episode is a celebration of those who have walked by faith, not by sight and a reminder that our Jesus, who endured the cross, disregarding the shame, not only made a way for us to go home, but has promised us help with every step we take on earth. No doubt, no fear, no threat, no power on earth or in hell can separate us from that love. May you be encouraged by the readings today, and may the Lord open your eyes to ways you can tangibly live out your faith.

Today's episode is found in Elijah's question to the Israelites as they stood before him and the prophets of Baal: “How long are you going to limp between two opinions?” The Christian life is very difficult. It's hard to remain committed to the Lord when so much of the world is tugging at our attention. It's so easy to reduce our spiritual life to a mode of moralism. We find ourselves, as CS Lewis puts it, hoping that when God has taken what he wants, we'll still have a little left over for ourselves once the taxes are paid. That's all wrong, and though we have a taste for the results of the good thing, we still don't have a taste for the good thing itself. We want the blessing without the sacrifice. We want our way, without the consequences. We want spiritual maturity without the growing pains. And in all that shallowness, we wonder why being a Christian just isn't really doing it for us; meanwhile we're dabbling in all sorts of distractions to keep from hearing God call our name too often. When are we going to stop? When are we going to choose God with our whole hearts? As Elijah said to the people “If The Lord is God, then follow him.”

After listening to a therapy podcast recently in which every episode centered around adults who had been crippled emotionally by an injustice done to them in their childhood, and most often by their parents, I found myself in a bit of a panic wondering if my children would one day find themselves on a therapy couch, broken, alone, and miserable. I was confiding these fears to a friend who said “Who knew we'd find ourselves apologizing so much to our kids. I had no idea I could be so impatient until I had kids.” And it was in that statement that it dawned on me: our obedience to Christ to humble ourselves and ask for forgiveness is what will keep our kids from breaking under the strain of our humanity as mothers. So I've been mulling this topic over in my mind for a while; the fact that as Christians we have a supernatural ability to transcend the instinct to justify our sin against another and courageously admit our wrongs, ignore our ego, and seek reconciliation and in that process neutralize the pain. And even more miraculously, we can transcend the wrongs committed against us and extend forgiveness sincerely and wholeheartedly even if we are never paid the courtesy of an apology. Today's readings center around our redemption in Christ and the power that lives inside us to act supernaturally in the face of pain and pride.

As we come off a slow summer and screech into the busyness of the school year I can't help but feel a mix of emotions: excitement at a fresh start, and dread over the spotlight that shines on my inadequacies as a wife, teacher, mother, and friend during the onslaught of this season. I find myself always grasping for that perfect schedule or system that will give me total mastery over my world…except that doesn't exist in my own strength. In today's episode we discuss surrendering our own “common sense tactics” and humbly going to our Father, finding out what He has for us today, and then walking in the full assurance that He will help us get it all done. That might mean we have to take some things off our plates and add other things on—but whatever it is, His strength is sufficient!

Recently I was reading the text of “Oh For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” and this line jumped out at me: “He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He makes the prisoner free” . The word “cancelled” has always passed me by unnoticed and, for the first time I saw that statement for what it was actually pointing out: that Christ released us from our sin AND from the obsession with continuous rehashing of forgiven sins. This led me to ponder why we're always trying to prove our fitness to God. Are we trying to add to our redemption? Perhaps display our superiority over His other children? Maybe we don't know why, and yet we all have this desire to construct our obedience and holiness in alignment with what we think looks like virtue. Maybe it means we make lavish promises about our dedication to Him, constructing spiritual to do lists. Maybe it means we sit down to pray and spend the whole time commiserating with God about all the times we've messed up. Maybe it means endlessly scrutinizing our spiritual gifts and their negative counterparts. However it shows up in our lives, the root of it is self centeredness masked as humility. In today's episode, we discuss the simplicity of what we've actually been called to: simple submission to His will in this moment.

Nothing is more certain than the eventual walk we will each have in the valley of the shadow of death. Some of us walk through that dark place of fear and anxiety daily, and others of us can mark out periods of our lives in which panic of the unknown, depression, and darkness threatened to overtake every thought forever. Today we examine what to do when no amount of rationalization will pull us from our swirling thoughts; today we discuss wrenching our eyes from our frailty and placing our eyes squarely on our Father, focusing not on what we can't control, but on the One who can and is in control.

The Devil won a lot of ground the day he convinced us that the pursuit of holiness is akin to legalism. Somewhere along the lines we embraced grace to such an extent we quit pursuing righteous living, content to imagine our shortcomings as opportunities for God to show us His love through forgiveness. But God commanded us to be holy because He is holy. Today's podcast is a call to securing our breastplates of righteousness and experiencing the joy of our salvation on a completely new level. Let's choose holiness and quit pretending the the pursuit of clean living is some kind of slavery when, in reality, it's freedom amplified.

Success is a word whose definition has morphed overtime. Once meaning a thing completed, it now means the attainment of wealth and status. It's incredibly easy to lay the world's definition of success over God's kingdom and assume that if other people (lots of people) are impressed with your knowledge and spiritual insight, than God is pleased as well. Today we explore another aspect of the Christian life that has gotten muddled by the world and by our own agenda to be known, seen, and admired. If I am going to be a success in God's kingdom, what part of my working definition needs to be changed?

What we don't know about God could fill the Library of Congress and because ignorance feels like vulnerability, we fill in the blanks about God either making him a rather mild, grandfatherly sort bent on only noticing our good points and willfully ignorant of our flaws, leaning in to our passions and making mild suggestions OR we imagine His “love” is full of passive aggression, veiled frustration, and irreparable disappointment at who we are turning out to be. Our difficulty in worshiping a God we can't imagine means we are often engaged in excuse making, hiding, or indifference to His opinion. In today's readings, we examine the ways we respond to this God of our own creation, and seek to set our ignorance aside with prayers that the Lord will reveal the richness of His love, the greatness of His glory, and the fullness of His plan for us.

In Tim Keller's book The Prodigal Prophet he makes the point that there are two ways we run from God: through outright rebellion and through piety designed to position God in our debt. In today's podcast, our readings are focused on the shadowy kind of obedience designed to give us the “upper hand” so we can say “You can't ask that of me, God, because here's a list of things that I did right. You owe ME.” It's en embarrassing and uncomfortable look at the tendency we have to attempt manipulating the Lord, and it was a humbling episode to record. But it also left me loving Him all the more because, despite my foolishness, He still delights in me, even when I can't understand why.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” In today's episode we explore the ugliest thing about each of us: our pride. It is this flaw that kindles every sin and it is this vice that often parades itself as a virtue. Today we discuss what we're suppose to do about this insidious thing called pride, so easy to spot in others but so impossible to see in ourselves.

I have noticed this summer that I have a big, fat, bad attitude about serving the needs of my family. Serving simply means blessing others by doing what they could do themselves. Often the one serving is taken for granted and it's exceptional ground for the weed of bitterness to take root. If you're finding yourself in a season of annoyance, also known as “Summertime” and “school is out”, I hope today's readings will inspire you to turn to the Lord in your frustration. He has tools to help us, if we will humble ourselves and take them.

As Christians and people who value life, this historic overturning of Roe v Wade is cause for celebration. Far from being a political issue, this is as simple as life vs. death. In today's podcast our readings are focused on the celebration of this good thing and a call to courage in a society that would seek to shame our joy, confound our peace, and focus solely on what is ahead rather than taking a moment to praise God for answering our prayers. If you have felt alone in your joy or tried to hide it to keep from drawing fire, please be blessed and encouraged by today's conversation and readings!!

There is in each of us a longing for a place we've never been, a home we haven't known, a holy sorrow at not being somewhere we can't describe. In short, we are all homesick for heaven. In today's episode we discuss how that ache becomes more acute as we grow older and less committed to the promises of this world and how heaven is the only experience we will ever have that cannot be exaggerated. Our Scripture reading today is taken from Revelation 21, our liturgy for “Inconsolable Homesickness” is from Every Moment Holy, our literary excerpt is a short story by Charles Dickens, we are continuing in Tortured for Christ, and finishing with the hymn “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light”. May some line from today's readings lodge in your heart and comfort, encourage, and sustain you.

Tim Keller has a fantastic quote that essentially says sin is born in our hearts first with the character assassination of God and then our scramble to be the Almighty wherever we deem He has failed us. While it was never lost on me that my greatest temptations are born from a desire to place myself at the center of the story, it was lost on me that the selfishness of that behavior comes from mistrusting God's good intentions for me. If you have ever found yourself flirting with the idea of sinning however greatly because you don't see God's design and only feel pain or confusion where you think you should be experiencing clarity and love, be encouraged: You are hardly the first to be tempted by this old lie of the Serpent's and today's readings will shed light on the lie and the battle plan, so that when you are attacked again, you will have weapons of defense.

One of the unavoidable parts of being a Christian is battling doubt. Is this all true? Am I wise or am I a fool for believing this? Do I just accept Jesus because I believe in him or just because my family does? Today we address those feelings through our liturgy, scripture reading, literary excerpt, saint story and hymn. May God encourage your heart if you are in a season of doubt or if you have struggled to hold your head high as you face a culture that mocks Christianity relentlessly.

If everything were simply great joys or dramatic tragedies, we imagine life would be much simpler. The energy of the moment would carry us on to great heights of courage, valor, joy and expansive love, but life is shot through with small, uninspiring tasks and duties that call us always away from heights of joy or bravery born from hardship. Often it seems that it is not the big things in life that call our attention away from God, but rather the dullness of everyday life, when our Adversary leans in and whispers “what does it really matter?” This episode addresses the question: how does a Christian remain vigilant in the monotony? Through the liturgy, scripture, story of one Christian girl who stood up for right in the face of great danger, our continued readings from Tortured For Christ and our hymn, we will find encouragement together that what we do matters greatly, especially when no one sees.

We live in an age where, thanks to the internet, we live physically unconnected lives though we have instantaneous access to everyone by means of that little computer in their pocket. Because our solitary lives mean we don't often face the immediate consequences of our language and expression, people have become emboldened to be unkind. Couple that with the mistrust brought on through the pandemic, and our interpersonal skills are sorely lacking. Today's episode highlights the often forgotten fact that there are no ordinary people, only creations made in the image of a holy God. May the readings today encourage you to see your own inherent worth and remind you to look for it in others.

What can it hurt to bend the truth for a good cause, to gain a little head way, to smooth over a misunderstanding? Today we discuss the destructive power of small lies and manipulations on our spiritual growth, on our lives and on our communities. I draw from Jordan Peterson, Richard Wurmbrand, an Orthodox Book of prayer, the Psalms, and the hymnal Hosanna, Loud Hosanna to bring todays “Treasury of Good Things”.

What if we haven't done great things for God like we thought we would have by now? What if our world is falling apart? What if we are so disappointed with our circumstances or grieving the loss of people, a position, or an idea of how we thought it was “suppose” to be. May today's readings give your heart a small rest in the wrestle.

If you need a sturdy practical word, today's readings bring a strong dose of good common sense and truth on truth on truth! The podcast is a little longer today, but I was blessed immeasurably with the readings and I hope you are too! The liturgy focuses on approaching the consumption of media, the history features a Christian who didn't get it “right” the first time, the hymn reminds us of God's power and might in this broken world and the Psalm is so practical you should grab your Bible and a highlighter and commit this one to memory.

Our readings today call us to die to ourselves so that much can be made of Christ. So often we want to relegate the Lord to a corner of our lives so that we can still be the star of our own show. In our liturgy, history, hymn, and psalm, we focus on setting our eyes on our Father so that we might be able to complete the work of the day, we discuss the saints who had no sense of self preservation in this life because their eyes were set not on this world but the next, we drink in the beauty of Fanny Crosby's famous “To God Be the Glory” and finally we find enormous peace in Psalm 16 as we are reminded that in His presence is fullness of joy while all other avenues bring sorrow. May you be blessed by these readings and may you be spurred on to live with more love, dedication, and obedience to the high calling of “Christian”.

Why is it so hard to remain in consistent obedience? Because we don't believe in God's genuine love for us. If you're struggling to choose the Lord be encouraged by today's readings where the focus is on success by God's standards, obedience in the face of temptation and trials, and the Lord's overwhelming love for us even as we stumble and falter.

In today's episode we discuss the trap of needing people to approve of us and becoming dejected when others don't see our efforts. The perspective given in today's liturgy could be life changing if we let it work its way into our hearts. The history today is stunning—listen carefully for how one Christian named Lawrence made the emperor lose his mind with rage over his fearless response to the ruler's demands. Be challenged by today's hymn, “Take my Life and Let It Be Consecrated” and join me in praying for a single minded desire for Christ as that song describes. Finally, take in the truths laid out in Psalm 42; when the world would mock our God and abuse us as we struggle to cling to truth, how can we stand firm when all around us are doubting and we're starting to fear that maybe we've gotten it wrong. Psalm 42 has a clear message: remind yourself, preach to yourself, meditate on the truth rather than your feelings. Have a wonderful Monday, talk to you later this week!

Join me as we sit in adoration of the Lord. Our liturgy orients our hearts toward our loving Father who is always faithful to us despite our faithlessness to Him; our history points us to his ever present help in times of trouble and we talk about Christ's suffering vs. the suffering of the martyred; our hymn is “Praise to the Lord the Almighty” and our psalm is 121 where we discuss how to use the first two verses as a mini call and response as we look to remind ourselves of where our true help comes. Have a wonderful Friday and a beautiful weekend!

In today's episode, we talk about temptation and the constant war we are waging against our grossest desires. Our liturgy is a prayer for those moments when temptation is strongest, our hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past”, reminds us that the lord is an ever present help in times of spiritual danger, and our Psalm 51 is a meditation on how we should rightly view the sins, big and little, that we commit. Our history, which is not in theme but rather a continuation of our history as a church, focuses on the 5th and 6th wave of persecution in the Roman Empire. I pray that today's podcast will encourage you mightily if you are in a season of deep temptation. I think all of us are either coming out of temptation or gearing up to meet it in one form or fashion, but we don't go into battle alone! Be encouraged! Christ is in our midst!

“And though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet”…this line from the famous hymn “This is My Father's World” is the theme of today's podcast. In a world cracked and twisted by sin, our Father is still in control and as we stumble along in our humanity, the Lord is ever present as we seek to understand the world around us. In today's liturgy, we pray for God's help as we navigate all the information that is available to us. We look at the persecution under Marcus Aurelius and are in awe of the grace given to God's people in the midst of horrific tortures. We rejoice with the hymn “This is My Father's World” at the beauty and majesty of the created world. We finish by reading Psalm 19 together. If it's been a while since you've read that psalm, be prepared for the gorgeous imagery that will inspire you to live joyfully for the Lord today.

Today our liturgy is all about having the right frame of mind in an age inundated with so much negative information and how we can rightly think about that. Our history from Foxe's Book of Martyrs focuses on the third persecution and the murder of the Church Father, Ignatius. We discuss how he could face death so eagerly and how his mindset was different from our modern one. We move on to the hymn, Beneath The Cross of Jesus, where we are reminded of the incredible paradox of our worth despite our unworthiness. Finally, we read over Psalm 3 and talk about how to combat the enemy's lie that “there is no salvation for you”. Thanks for listening today! See you on Monday!

We begin reading about the Church's persecution under Nero and that inspired the rest of our readings around the feelings of despair when we cannot feel the Lord near, when He asks us to endure bitter heartbreak, when we doubt His love and even His existence. If you are in a season of darkness, may today's liturgy, hymn, and psalm give a voice to your crushed spirit and assurance that the Lord is near to the broken hearted.

In today's episode we begin by reading a liturgy for the employed, we hear about the rest of the apostles plus Luke and Paul, we talk about the hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth”, and we finish with Psalm 92.

In today's episode I read from the liturgical book Every Hour Holy, the history book Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the hymnal Hosanna Loud Hosanna “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” , and the Bible. We discuss obedience, servant hood, and the holiness of small deeds done for others.

Welcome to A Treasury of Good Things! My name is Cheere Helton and this podcast is a collection of prayers, psalms, liturgies, hymns and stories of those faithful Christians who have gone before us. I hope that this simple podcast will be a daily encouragement to you. In a world in which we are inundated with so much negativity disguised as necessary information, may your soul be nourished by this treasury of good things.