Tara Lee Davis's Podcast

What is tenacious faith? And where does it come from? How do we live our lives as believers that are marked by victory and overcoming? Who's really in charge of our lives? Can others look at your life and declare, "The Lord, He is God!" What do we do when the odds are stacked against us?

In a fascinating exchange, Job questions God as to the misery he is facing when he loses everything in a single day. This story deeply resonates with all of us, as we've often asked "If God is good, then why ______________________?" But God in turn questions Job, and he responds in humility, brokenness, and repentance. What can we learn from this narrative? How do we respond when we face challenges that we deem as unfair?

Behind every successful person are 3 characteristics; they are quick to accept responsibility, they always say thank you, and they never give up. What is your life marked by, acceptance or blame? Is your life marked by complaining or gratitude? Do you easily throw in the towel or do you finish what you started? And what does a barfing whale, a bleeding woman and a leper have to do with any of it?!

John 10:1-10 paints a beautiful picture of Jesus as not only our good Shepherd but also as the gate, but what exactly does that mean?

Specifically looking at the idea of peace in the advent season. does Jesus stand the test of time? When He's asleep on the boat as the storm threatens to take them out, is it because He is unaware or indifferent or because He knows something we do not?

Paul compares our walk with God to a race. Most start strong, but few know how to finish strong. What keeps us from finishing our race well? What are the things that get in our way?Nu

What does it take to be kind? Why does kindness matter? Imagine a world in which people threw kindness like confetti!

What's the problem with idols?  Who or what am I worshipping, other than Jesus?  Is Jesus really the Lord of your life, or is He just your genie-in-a-bottle?

Everyone knows that dogs eat vomit, but does anyone know why?  Why is Proverbs 26:11 in the Bible, and what does it mean for us?  Is sin really that big of a deal?

What if the time and energy we spent trying to hide behind filters to fit in, be accepted and liked was the exact opposite of what God really wanted from us?  How do we live unmasked, as we are?  Is God's love and acceptance of us really enough, even if no one else loves and accepts us for who we really are?

Life is full of incredible disappointments, and certainly the graduating class of 2022 has faced 2.5 years of cancellations, new normals, and a majority of their high school lives spent in isolation with all of the fun cancelled.  But, as God's children, how are we to respond in the middle of life's crushing blows?  Can we trust the goodness, the Godness, and the faithfulness of God in the midst of life's crushing disappointments?  There are 2 paths, the one less traveled is the only path in which we find true hope, sustainability, and the wildest adventure ever, walking with Jesus in all things.

Revelation 21:1-6 paints a beautiful picture for us of what's to come when Christ reigns fully with His glory on display, but how exactly are we to live within the tension of the here and now?  How are we as God's children living out His love and putting His glory on display, or have we grown too sour for that?  What does Christ call us to while we wait and yearn for the promise of heaven?

Hebrews 12 instructs us to throw off everything that weighs us down and hinders us from running our race, but what if what kept us held back from true freedom in Christ was our own obligation?  Do we read Scripture out of obligation, or desire?  Do we pray because we have to, or because we want to?  Do we worship because that's part of our routine, or because it is our pleasure to do so?  What does it look like to have heart in following Christ?  How does heart affect the way in which we do things?

Isaiah 55:1-9 offers us an interesting invitation, an invitation to those who are hungry and thirsty to come and be satisfied, an invitation for those who are broke to come and buy.  Oh how the grace and mercies of Christ satisfy us in ways we've never known.  We are called as children of God to stay thirsty; thirsty for Jesus and His sweet presence.

For Jesus, compassion was more than just a feeling.  It was a commitment to get involved with hurting people.  What could it look like if we embraced others, even with their oozing sores?

In order to have compassion on others, we must learn to see others as God sees them.  The father in the story of the prodigal son saw, from a distance, who his son truly was.  And his acceptance of him, inspire of his failures, changed the trajectory of his life forever.

You cannot give what you have not received.  Who is our role model for compassion?  Christ, Himself.  Have we forgotten the incredibly high price that He paid for us?

90% of conflict stems from misunderstanding, so how do we, as God's children, practice perspective in a Biblical way?  We speak and be honest, we lean in and listen, and then we set our mind on things above.  Those who learn to look through the lens of God at their life circumstances will find a power and strength they've never known.  As Charles Surgeon so once wisely said, "Christian, remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity."

What if a right perspective gave us a power to get through the hard things?  Jesus gives us the ultimate example of this as He looked to the joy that set before Him and having done so, He endured the brutality of the cross.  What does that mean for our everyday lives and the trials we face?  How powerful can perspective really be?

We are in Part 1 of a 3 part series on Perspective.  What shapes our perspective, and how can a blind man see Jesus more clearly than His closest followers?

What if all  of the great things we've done for Jesus didn't amount to a hill of beans?  In Revelation 2, Jesus issues a stern warning to the church at Ephesus, and to us as well.  They had abandoned their first love.  We are called to remember and repent, our love for Jesus is the most important thing we will have or grow in our lives.  Have you abandoned your first love?

What could God do with our everyday lives if we live with eyes wide open?  The opposite of apathy is simple, loving God and loving others.  Embrace the process, it prepares you for the destination.

One of the roots of apathy is insignificance not given to God.  However, we can overcompensate and in so doing, act out of pride and disobedience.  Our pride and disobedience can actually keep us from the gifts and blessings that God wants to give us.  Moses and Aaron were prevented from entering the promised land because of their pride and disobedience.  What can we learn from their example in Numbers 20?  Sometimes the biggest enemies we face aren't on the outside, but on the inside.

In the last 2 years, apathy has swept over our young people, and adults, like a raging wild fire out of control.  What is apathy?  Where does it come from ?  What difference does it make?  This is Part 1 of a 3 part series as we look to Scripture to find out how to live the abundant life that Christ paid for us.

What if the thing we longed for the most at the start of a new year wasn't found in the gym, our amazon carts, or wrapped under the tree?  We all long to be the best version of ourselves, but what does that look like for a child of God?  Here we take a look at the 5 signs of a life hidden with and in Christ, and what a difference it can make, not only for ourselves but for those around us.

Our lives are signposts, pointing to someone or something else.  What or who is your life pointing to?  The problem with a signpost is that if we follow the wrong one, we end up wasting our lives through a cycle or rerouting and we not only get to where we really want to go, but we lead others astray.

Are we living our best lives for God?  God our Father longs to give us the Kingdom, but instead we are living in poverty, merely wasting our days eating dinner out of toilets.  What does our best life for God look like that?  And what is keeping us from living our lives to the glory and honor of Christ?

Have you ever felt like the odds were stacked against you?  Are you unknowingly living with a "big me little God" mindset?  How does God respond in the midst of our fear, doubt, confusion, and anxiety?  What does God see that we cannot?  How do we fully live as His children?  Are we guaranteed victory doing things His way?  Gideon was one of the biggest wimps in Scripture, yet God used him, despite his doubts and fears, in a big way.  But the saddest part of the story?  After such an incredible talent show with the power and glory of God on full display after He rescued the Israelites from the hand of the Midianites, the people of God forgot.  And in their forgetting, they turned and walked away from God.  How do you forget what God has done, how do you just walk away?  By living with a dangerous mindset, the mindset of "big me little God."

What if our lives are filled with broken pieces of disappointment, pain, and confusion?  Is it possible to worship Jesus and give Him our best?  What does giving our best look like that?  How do we keep going when we find ourselves in the dark?

This week we dig into Acts 12 where we discover the purpose of persecution, the power of prayer, and the power of pride as we continue to learn from the early church.

What does it look like to live a life chasing after Jesus?  How can we keep running when we've grown weary, discouraged and overwhelmed?  Running with Jesus is intentional, requires discipline, and will be the greatest journey of our lives if we will simply keep going.

Saul has a wild encounter with God Almighty and is struck blind for 3 days, God uses a simple man to pray over the man who was having Christians locked up worldwide, and after his salvation and baptism, God uses Saul, now Paul, in powerful ways as he leads others to believe that Jesus is the Lord!

How was David able to lament the death of Saul?  After all, Saul the king who had gone mad did try taking David out, multiple times.  David was a man after God's own heart, and was more concerned with counting his own failures and shortcomings than he was keeping a detailed list of everyone else's dirty laundry.  When we lament our own sin, then we can truly honor others, even our enemies.  Heart check, when was the last time you were honest with yourself and allowed God to search every nook and cranny of your heart?

An in depth look at Acts 5 and how God deals with hypocrisy within the church.

Peter, the disciple who denied Jesus not once but three times?  Yeah, he was the one who recognized Jesus making breakfast on the shore that day and after being up all night fishing swim a hundred yards to shore.  He was compelled by his love for Jesus, and it showed.  How would our lives look different if we were marked by love, love for Jesus and love for others?

Jesus always invites us to return; return to His grace, His peace, His presence.  It's never too late to come home.

Hope is a powerful thing, and something we all desperately need as we muddle through this ongoing pandemic.  Misplaced hope always misaligns our hearts with God and sets us up for disappointment after disappointment.  Where or what or who is your hope in?

What does it mean that God prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies?  Could we possibly be saying no to the greatest invitation ever given simply by the way we live our overly busy lives?

Does God call His children to excellence in all things?  Why does it matter, or does it?  What can we learn from Hezekiah's life?  Most expect the blessing of God without putting in the work, and while it may look cute on your kitchen towel, God does not, in fact, "bless our mess."

What a gift that we can count on God to be the same today as He was yesterday and He will be tomorrow!  Even when life ebbs and flows and the seasons we find ourselves in are constantly changing, we can always count on the One who never changes!

How quickly do you forget how God has taken care of you?  Does it even matter that we remember what He did for us 7 years ago?  One of the best ways to strengthen and build up our faith is to actively remember the countless ways that God has provided for us!  Even the Israelites forgot how good God had been to them and their puny little lives and pathetic excuses made life miserable for them.  What are you anchoring yourself to; the constant waves of life that ebb and flow mercilessly?  Or the faithfulness of God and His unchanging, always good character?

Everyone loves a good story! But how do we live our best stories, especially when our lives are full of disappointment, pain, and heartache? Is there more to our story than just our accomplishments and failures? How can we live lives that are marked by Jesus and moved by love? One sinful woman shows us how, and what appears to be an extreme waste to some ends up being extravagant love for One.

What is God saying in this season? The pandemic, the political divisions, the violence, the quarantines and our lives completely upended as we knew them, is God speaking still? Does God's still, small voice speak louder than the screaming of the world in which we live? And why does it matter? What if in missing God's whisper we miss out on passing on a legacy to the next generation?

When do we grow from emotional experiences with God to actual encounters with God? When do we move from throw up to growing up? When do we stop wasting our lives magnifying and instead put Jesus on display? Is the Gospel partial to us and our own shortcomings, or is it for all? What do our hearts reflect about us? Jonah not only gets swallowed by a large fish for disobeying, but after surviving being thrown up by that same large fish, we discover that his heart is still far from God, even though on his second chance he obeyed. God is asking for all of us, our complete hearts. Obedience without a heart change is merely rule following.

In the midst of a pandemic and a quarantine that never seemed to end, we all found ourselves in the midst of a storm. What if the storms of life were meant to be danced in instead of sheltered from? How should we respond when faced with adversity? How does God respond to us and our endless questioning? While it's true that storms bring destruction, they also bring great growth when received with open hands rather than resisted with closed fists.

Jesus gave His followers a lot of authority, but what exactly does that look like and mean for us today? Elijah the prophet understood what it meant to stand and operate in God-given authority, and even though he stood alone, he used his God-given authority to put God on display and turn the hearts of people back to God.

The spies were sent into the land, which God has promised them in advance, for 40 days to investigate. 10 spies came back talking of the giants that inhabited the land, 2 spies came back saying that the land was theirs to take and that anything was possible because God was with them. Because of their murmuring, complaining, groaning and grumbling, the Lord was angry and turned them back into their wilderness where they would wander for 40 years until every single of them died off. What is louder to God, our worship and praise or our grumblings and complaining? Was it the report that our lives speak of? Do we spur others on in faith or cause them to shrink back in unbelief? Yes, the grapes are big. Yes, the giants are bigger. But God is greater even still. How sad it would be if we, just like the Israelites, forgot all that God has done for us and wasted the rest of our lives wandering aimlessly in the wilderness waiting to die, all because we didn't take God at His Word.

God has made it clear through His Word that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts. And yet many of us get stuck trying to understand what He is doing, rather than just yielding. God, much like our faith, cannot be measured. But when His plan goes one way and ours run perpendicular to that, we are left with the ultimate reminder, the cross. And it is the cross of Jesus Christ that reminds us that we can fully trust and rest in who He is, especially when we don't understand. God is good, God is faithful, there is hope. He, in fact, is really good and completely worthy of trusting...unlike us.

God never promised to bring us out of the fire, but He did promise to walk with us through the fire. And how you and I choose to walk through the difficulties of life can either point others to Jesus and make much of Him, or we can waste that opportunity. We have been called and chosen to suffer well, Christ did. The fire of life is a gift; it purifies, it refines, it makes us more like Jesus. We are better in the fire, with God at our sides, than out of the fire without Him. Our miracle is in the fire.

Living from a place of insecurity limits me to living only in and through and for myself. Living in confidence allows us to live fully confident in who God is, and in who He has called us to be. We live our best lives when we live in confidence, yet it's something we all struggle with in the everyday mundane of our lives. And yet there was one, David, an overlooked shepherd boy, who when living with confidence overcame the odds stacked against him and rewrote the history books forever with the slaying of a giant! Maybe instead of trying to live really big lives rooted in insecurity and ending up exhausted and confused, you and I could live everyday simple lives rooted in Godfidence, and in so doing be used by God to rewrite the history books for His fame and honor!

Why do we waste so much of our lives allowing others to define us? Only the Creator has the power and authority to define us as created beings. I AM was the name of a very holy God, long before it was a label we used to define ourselves. When we misspeak of ourselves, we not only speak what is not true but we are also speaking those same things of the very One who created us. So who are we, then? As long as we don't have a firm grasp on who we truly are, we will never live the life that God created and destined for us to live!