Better News Podcast

Today Pastor Ricky compares the two sons in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. There is the irreligious that is shown to us in the prodigal son, the type of person who says they don't care what's right, they're going to do and get what they want. Then there is the religious, shown to us by the son who stayed with His father. He did what he thought he should do to earn the father's wealth but like the Lord, the father wanted to give his wealth to them both. They didn't have to earn or deserve it.

Today we cover the simplicity of what it takes to be saved. You need nothing more than to come to Christ. We don't need religion or idols. You may be thinking to yourself that you don't have a little wooden statue that you daily pray to, that you're free from religion or idols but is there something that you would allow first in your life before Christ? Anything that you place above Christ in your life is an idol. Christ laid it all down for us when He died on the cross. He wants the same in return.

Have you ever been outside and just looked around? Everything you see God has created. God is not boring. For someone to create all of this, how could He be? Today Pastor Ricky reminds us from the book of Ezekiel that everything started with God. He's merciful, gracious, and loving. We live inside His universe that He created, and God is beyond what we could imagine, He's better than we can imagine. He's not a boring God. The question is, do you know Him?

The Bible is a story about God. The very beginning of everything started with Him. God's people in the book of Ezekiel thought that He was powerless and distant. As they were in exile, they wondered where and what God was doing. Pastor Ricky will remind us that we can't put God in a box. He's not a tamed God. He's living and active whether you can see Him working or not. He's all-powerful and all-knowing. This is the God of the Bible and the God of today. Are you following Him?

Have you ever been corrected about something you were doing and instead of being gently redirected the person blasts you for doing it wrong? It turns your heart away from that person because their manner towards you was distasteful. In today's teaching, Pastor Ricky mentions that people can have a similar reaction to you if you tell them about God in a way that's belligerent or offensive but there's a better way to tell about Jesus. Let your message be inviting, not inciting.

Just think of all the things that it takes to qualify for a loan. You need to have good credit and have proof of who you are and where you live, who you're dependents are, etc… There's paperwork and some red tape that you have to cut through to get qualified. What do you think it takes to qualify for the kind of witness that God wants you to be? Pastor Rickys informs you today that it's simpler than you might think. The typical resume that the world requires is inconsequential as a Christian witness.

The underlying message of so many movies out there is a so-called empowering agenda of rising above the community that you've been a part of. You're departing from your past to find yourself and own it, regardless of the ones you left. This message is slightly misguided but what should the message be? Today Pastor Ricky expresses the type of heart that's good to have when you're a part of a community or family of believers. It's essential to embrace, love, and serve your spiritual family.

All throughout the Bible, there is an emphasis on having an eternal perspective and living in light of eternity. Some have said that you can be too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good. The Bible teaches however that the more heavenly-minded you are, the more focused you'll be in furthering God's kingdom on earth. Pastor Ricky will be exhorting us today to live our life as though we can come face-to-face with God at any moment. Go into eternity without having any regrets.

Just about everyone can relate to some dysfunction in their family, right? There are different personalities that are forced to come together and somehow get along. But then there's inevitably some kind of family drama because there's no way everyone gets along without any conflict. So how does this fit in the context of a church family? Today Pastor Ricky explores the various facets of what it means to have community with other people in a way that proves you're in it together for God's purposes.

When you choose to vote for someone you identify with them in some way. You publicly proclaim that you're backing them up, enough to endorse them as someone you want in leadership. But if you don't buy into the message they're expressing, you're not going to sign your name to that person being in a position of authority over you. What about when it comes to God? Today Pastor Rickys asks if you're prepared to follow God in a way that you could support and even imitate His way of living.

Being a follower of someone these days is usually associated with following someone on Instagram. What does that even mean? Are you just checking up on pictures that someone is posting but you don't really know them? In other times, being a follower of someone meant a very different thing. In today's passage, Pastor Ricky touches on how being a follower of Jesus entails living, and breathing, and following everything about what Jesus stood for. So who are you choosing to follow today?

Until you look at a specimen under the microscope, you might overlook something that initially seemed insignificant. Once you make a concerted effort to really see the object for what it is, you start to appreciate its intricate details and functions. In the same way, God wants you to truly look at people and see them, see their hurt, their circumstances and not just look past it as if it doesn't exist. Pastor Ricky encourages you today to be effective right where you are, with the people who are right in front of you.

When you have some kind of sickness it can be easier to treat the symptoms but not rid yourself of the disease. It's frustrating because even though you're curing some of the immediate discomforts, you know that there's a deeper issue at the root of it all. This is how it is with the world around you too. There are many grievous hurts and struggles amongst the people that you're around but today Pastor Ricky mentions how important it is to have a heart for people and their deeper need for Jesus. Jesus is the cure.

How many self-help books or programs are out there seeking to have you buy into what they're selling? It's not wrong to want to believe in yourself or to have a more positive view of yourself but what Pastor Ricky gets at today is that the greatest treasure to find is when you come to the end of yourself. This is so countercultural to today's way of thinking but it's actually what makes you stand out in contrast to the world around you. When you're acknowledging God's power in you, you're strong.

Wouldn't it be odd if someone made their platform about something they were weak and incapable in? This would be the opposite of anything that's successful in the world's mindset. What are some of your greatest weaknesses? Would you be willing to brag about those weaknesses to the world at large? As preposterous as this sounds, Pastor Ricky explains today that this was the mindset that Paul had when approaching ministry because he knew his tendency of being proud in his abilities.

It can be really difficult to encourage someone who has cancer, or someone who's just lost a loved one. Those are difficult situations to navigate but you are called to encourage those who are faint-hearted. Today Pastor Ricky is going to give you some practical ways that you can encourage people around you who are feeling a bit discouraged. He's going to remind us that Jesus should always be the starting point of those conversations, remembering always to point people to Him and not to ourselves.

Are you feeling discouraged today? Being discouraged isn't a sin but discouragement is a result of the sin in our world. You might feel like there isn't any hope left in the world, that there isn't any hope left in your own life but there is hope. That hope comes through Jesus. He wants to encourage you. He wants to remind you that our life here on earth is only temporary and that we have an eternal hope in Him. Today Pastor Ricky is going to remind us that our discouragement can be turned to joy.

Our culture generally doesn't align with what the Bible teaches us. Many people in our current culture believe that supporting those around us means supporting every choice that somebody makes, whether it's a good one or a bad one. But the Bible tells us that we should call each other out as brothers and sisters in Christ. When you see your friends doing sinful or harmful things you should lovingly help them get out of that sin. Today Pastor Ricky is going to encourage you to keep your friends accountable.

Are you sitting idle in your walk with God? The Bible's definition of idle might not be as obvious as it seems. Being idle in God's view doesn't mean sitting still and doing nothing. It also isn't a competition to see who can be the busiest or the best at what they do. You can be distracting yourself with social media, video games, or anything else. What you're involved in should reflect what God has put in your heart. Today Pastor Ricky is going to teach us what it means to be idle in the view of God.

Are you using the church as a convenience store? Maybe you walk into church and you go through the motions every week. You raise your hands in worship, you go through an offering and you listen to a sermon then you go throughout your week and repeat every Sunday. There's so much more to be involved in. God wants you to be close to one another so that you can care for one another. Today Pastor Ricky will give us some practical ways that we can care for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Have you ever felt lonely, like there's nobody that can understand the pain that you've been through? Or the hardships that you've endured, the sin that you felt burdened by for so long? Well, Jesus cares about you. He cares so much that He died on the cross so that you could be set free from sin and so that you could have an eternal relationship with Him. Today Pastor Ricky is going to encourage you that Jesus cares about you. He cared for His people throughout the Bible and He cares about you now.

Do you have the tendency to want to do things in your own power? In today's teaching, Pastor Ricky encourages you to check your motives. We often get caught up in trying to do the right things like developing a system of things to do that keep us “churchy”. Being sure to go on dates with our spouse, or read books on dating, or attending every service that is available can become what drives us. It can become religion. Check your motives today as you listen in and let the Gospel be the answer.

In today's teaching, Pastor Ricky walks us through people's tendency to use works to earn their salvation. You may be one of those people who doesn't feel close to God unless you're serving in a certain capacity, reading the right books, etc…You're sure to have the boxes checked on your list of things to do to be a good Christian. The reality is you don't need to do anything. Faith is it. While having the desire and serving the Lord isn't wrong, making it about works is.

There are a couple of guarantees that people jokingly make, death and taxes. And while that's true, Pastor Ricky will remind us of another guarantee in relation to reconciliation in this message. You see, just when you think that all the conflicts in your life have been resolved and everything is going well, the next hurdle magically appears before you. You see, we can be sure that we will sin again and the people around us will sin again and thus we will have conflict and the need for reconciliation throughout our lives.

It's so easy to lose focus on what God has done in our lives. It's easy to forget just where we've come from, especially when it comes to conflict in the body of Christ. The pain that comes from being betrayed by a close friend, or the discovery of infidelity by a church leader, reconciliation can be the farthest thing from our minds. Today Pastor Ricky will remind us to always keep our own cleansing front and center in the midst of conflict. When we remember what Jesus forgave us of, it becomes much easier to forgive and be reconciled to others.

Reconciliation is a term that we are all familiar with it yet each of us probably has our own definition of what that means. Today Pastor Ricky will delve into this subject of being reconciled. We'll learn the sinful tendencies that so many of us fall into when it comes to being reconciled with ourselves, or allowing someone who sinned against us to be reconciled to us. Pastor Ricky will focus on the most important reconciliation of all, being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

Many churches across America today are filled each week with committed Christians seeking to hear from God and to worship God. As we'll hear from Pastor Ricky, this is wonderful but should the church only be filled with Christians? We'll learn today that a healthy church will have people in it that don't know God but are seeking Him. The communion table is a powerful way to show those around us that our God is real and that He gave His one and only son for their lives as well.

We're told in the Bible that when we come together and partake of the communion table we are to “remember”. But remember what? For many, the communion table is simply a religious ritual that has become a monotonous duty. We learned last time that the communion table is so much more than that. Today Pastor Ricky will focus on some of the important elements of the communion table and why it's vitally important for the health of the body of Christ.

Every year we have annual dates set on our calendar that remind us of important events in our lives. For many of us, we remember the day that we were joined with our spouse in marriage. As parents, we remember the wonderful day that God gave each of our children to us. But today Pastor Ricky will remind us of another appointment that is even more important in our lives, it's the communion table. When we come together as a body of believers and partake, we remember what it took to save us.

Pastor Ricky has been sharing with us just how we exist in our own personal comforts, and how we generally don't give a second thought for that person that may not get invited to many dinner parties or other social events. We tend to only think about ourselves and what makes us happy. Jesus was and is so different than us. He spent time with anyone. Today Pastor Ricky will exhort us to follow our Savior's example and step out of our own personal comfort zone so that we might be used by God for His glory.

Today Pastor Ricky will show us a few characteristics of the divine economy and wow, it's very different from this kingdom's “get all that you can get” economy. You'll learn that because we all battle with our sinful nature on a moment-by-moment basis, we need to be purposeful in combating the tendency to exist where it's comfortable and to only spend time with those that we enjoy spending time with. Consider spending time with someone that isn't inside your circle of friends and watch what God will do.

You all know that person at the office or perhaps in your small group, that sort of awkward one who seems to say the most uncomfortable things at the wrong times, is that the person that you had over to play cards or watch the game this past week? Today Pastor Ricky will challenge our personal space and comfort by asking the questions, who did Jesus eat with, and who am I eating with? The answers to these questions will reveal a great deal about our spiritual maturity in Christ.

This morning when you woke up the sun rose just like it has for thousands of years and if the Lord causes it to do so, it will rise again tomorrow. This is the God that we serve. This is the God of unlimited resources, the amazing God described throughout the Bible. Yet, we oftentimes find ourselves wondering whether this all-powerful God we serve can provide for our basic needs. As Pastor Ricky will share today, our God is more than able.

How much faith do we actually have? Stop and think about what we say we believe. We say that we believe in a God we've never seen, that sent His only Son over two thousand years ago to die in our place for the penalty of sin and because of that, we will spend eternity in a place called heaven that no one has ever seen. And yet, when the unexpected hardships arrive we question whether God is able.

Insufficient. Unable. Incapable. These are all words that describe how we feel as followers of Christ from time to time. We all struggle with that nagging feeling that we're just not enough for the God that we serve. Today Pastor Ricky draws out a wonderful parallel in the story of The Feeding of the 5000. The truth is we are insufficient, unable, and incapable but the God that we serve is not. He can take the little that we are and multiply us to bring Himself glory.

The last time you were walking down the street and a dirty drunk homeless person thrust their empty change cup at you, do you remember your immediate response? If you're honest I'm sure you shrunk back like the rest of us have. Pastor Ricky is challenging us to consider that sin is sin, is sin. If God has made a place for us at His table by His grace, then shouldn't we be ready and willing to do the same for others?

Stop and think about this scene. You're at the gym and the professional bodybuilders are there lifting hundreds, upon hundreds of pounds in their workout. You've brought your 4-year-old with you to keep you company while you get a quick run in on the treadmill. He works his way over to the bodybuilders and climbs underneath the weight to try and lift it. While we think this is cute, it truly parallels what our response should be when we experience God's grace. Our hearts should long to do more than we're able because of God's love for us.

Have you ever thought of your works as currency or money? That scenario is pretty funny but it's so true. We do attempt to gain God's favor by doing this or that, so many times. Pastor Ricky reminds us again that God's grace is not something that we can earn, it's something that has been lavished upon us because God loves us beyond our understanding. The key is to receive God's grace and walk in the power that it provides.

Jesus came to be in the midst of sinners and call them to repentance. This type of thinking is foreign to us, be in the midst of sinners? Many of us have grown a bit too comfortable lounging in the church pew each Sunday that we have forgotten that Jesus has given us a mission to share His grace with the lost and dying around us, accepting them as they are yet loving them enough to challenge them to confess, repent, and change.

Grace is one of those terms in the body of Christ that has been thrown around quite a bit. Today we'll learn that grace is far more than the simple thought of unmerited favor. While it most certainly is unmerited favor, we'll learn that biblical grace is better described by the definition of the Greek word Charis which it is derived from, “The divine influence upon the heart especially seen in the life”. You see Jesus exhibited this kind of grace where on one hand He would break bread with anyone while on the other hand, He asked them to change.

Every time that you're in the presence of the Lord, you can have a taste of what heaven is going to feel like. We can have joy in the Lord because of the hope that we have in Jesus' return. He's going to return and save us from the corruption and sin that's in the world. You don't have to worry about tomorrow because God is in control. Today Pastor Ricky will encourage us to rejoice in God because He's already promised us the gift of eternal life and that's something to be thankful for.

It can be really hard to have joy in your life when everything seems to be falling apart around you. You lost your job, you lost your friends, the car is breaking down, your marriage is failing, it seems like things just can't go your way, so how do you find joy during those unfortunate circumstances? Well the Lord is the answer. He can provide joy that's everlasting. Today Pastor Ricky is going to use the story of Habakkuk to teach us how to have joy. Habakkuk understood how to rejoice in the Lord even when his circumstances weren't perfect.

The old prayer, “Lord, give me patience and give it now” has more truth than we would like to admit. As Pastor Ricky teaches today, learning to trust God requires a great deal of patience and waiting. We're learning in Habakkuk that God is squarely in charge. Another word for that is sovereign. Pastor Ricky reminds us that as we acknowledge that, it requires us to let go of forcing our own path and agendas in order to see progress the way we prefer it. Trust in God always pays off.

Have you ever wanted to be a part of a family, a company, or a club where everybody looked out purely for the best interest of each other? That sounds a little too good to be true sometimes, doesn't it? Well as Pastor Ricky teaches us today, God is always working and always including us in His victories. We never see God off doing something with disregard to what's going on back in our own lives. Somehow, God sees fit to include us and have us as co-victors with Him. That's the good news of the Gospel.

God has your best interest in mind. God's plan is for His glory and for your good. As Pastor Ricky teaches us today, God is about wholeness and restoration. The application from our scripture lesson is timely and relevant. Pastor Ricky reminds us that we might be confused with all of the bad things going on, and it seems to continue, and many seem to get away with it, so we're tempted to wonder, where is the justice? Habakkuk shows us that God is in charge. He hasn't lost control. He's not overwhelmed. He is big enough for what we're facing.

God's ways are higher than our ways. How many times have we found that to be true? As Pastor Ricky teaches us today, God uses unlikely people even an unfaithful country to bring about His plan. What can really be confusing is when justice doesn't seem to come fast enough. Pastor Ricky reminds us that even though we might feel that God isn't bringing about justice swiftly enough, or harsh enough, His ways are still higher and better than ours. We'll understand better one day but for now, we just have to trust Him.

With every day that passes, a couple of things seem to be an option for us to take. One is that we become more confident in what we've experienced and learned in life. If we're not careful that can lead to assumptions and reliance on our own knowledge. The other thing that could happen is that we realize just how much we don't know. As Pastor Ricky teaches today, trusting in the Lord is critical on our path with Jesus, even after many years of experience. So be open to where He leads today.

Have you ever thought about just how powerful faith is? Not just faith as a description of being religious but the deepest meaning of faith, trust and hope. As Pastor Ricky teaches us today, faith in Jesus brings salvation, receiving that gift, it's an amazing thing. Pastor Ricky reminds us that living a life in the power of the cross is crucial. Faith doesn't just end when you start your journey with Christ. You continue living, serving, and flourishing, in and through faith every single day.

Do you ever need a little extra motivation to go through something difficult? Even if it's just a reward at the end of a workout, or reaching a milestone towards a goal, a positive anticipation is good. As Pastor Ricky teaches today, the assurance that the Word of God increased and multiplied, was given before a difficult season as we'll hear in our text. Pastor Ricky reminds us that through it all, the Lord reigns and is doing a great work to keep us and His message until Christ comes again.

Aren't you glad that someone found a way to share the message of God's love in a language and way that you can understand? As Pastor Ricky teaches today, the good news spread to Antioch in a way that they could understand and that understanding came from a place of honesty, relatability, and realness. Pastor Ricky reminds us that we have fallen short. We've blown it big time and are all in the same need of forgiveness. That universal need carries us to the throne of grace. Christ is the answer for all of us.

Often in the English language, we have words with multiple meanings. The word “church” is one of those words. As Pastor Ricky teaches today, you'll learn that we casually refer to the meeting place, the building, its committees, systems and programs as church. Others define church by what we do at worship service but Pastor Ricky reminds us that the church of Jesus Christ is so much more than just a building or a weekly gathering. It's a living organism, universal, and alive with unity following our Lord.