Podcasts about Andy Stanley

What separates good organizations from truly exceptional ones? In this episode from 2016, Andy Stanley sits down with Glen Jackson, co-founder of Jackson Spalding, to explore the concept of preeminence—the pursuit of extraordinary excellence that creates a lasting competitive advantage. IMPORTANT NOTES: New format beginning in August: We're kicking off a new format with a discussion of Andy's brand-new book, What Great Leaders Do: 7 Essentials for Enduring Impact. Joining Andy for these conversations will be an incredible leader, Holly Goddard. Together, they'll bring practical insight, honest conversation, and decades of leadership experience to each episode. New release schedule: New episodes will release on the first and third Mondays of every month. Available on YouTube: Each new episode will also be available on YouTube at YouTube.com/AndyStanleyOfficial Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts to Listen to in 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts to Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leader Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

People may never ask you to defend Christianity, but they may wonder why you've chosen to follow Jesus. Being prepared for that moment could deepen your own faith as much as theirs.

Telling the Story: Part 2 Acts 7:1-16 by William Klock When I was an American school kid in the 70s and 80s I learned that the defining events in the history of the United States were was the founding of Jamestown in 1607; the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620; and, of course, the Revolutionary War that began in 1775 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence—well—almost exactly 250 years ago.  There were plenty of other events that shaped the story, but those were the events that set the United States on its trajectory: a heritage from Britain with a good dose of religious freedom and Protestant work ethic coming together in a grand expression of the rights of man shaped by the Enlightenment.  Were there flaws?  Yep.  Slavery was a big one.  But the way I learned the story, the British mainland colonies of North America were on the fringe of the slave trade.  We received a tiny fraction of it.  The real slavery problem was in the Caribbean and Latin America.  Plus, we dealt with it.  The whole Civil War thing—a tragedy.  But it was a story to be proud of. But in 2019, the New York Times began a new publishing project.  They called it The 1619 Project.  It was subtitled, “A New Origin Story”.  Why 1619?  That was the year the first African slaves were brought to Virginia.  Before the Pilgrims.  Before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  It was a deliberate attempt to reframe the story of the United States.  Instead of a story rooted in a proud English heritage and religious liberty and Enlightenment ideals of freedom and liberty, the 1619 Project told the story of the United States as one rooted in racism and slavery and oppression.  Instead of a story that makes you stand proud, it's a story meant to instil shame and guilt. The 1619 Project didn't come out of nowhere.  It made public a story that many people had already been telling, especially to younger generations. And, as you would expect, this resulted in a great cultural clash.  Both sides shouting at the other, basically saying, “How dare you tell our story wrong!”  It wasn't so much a matter of the events themselves.  Both versions of the story involved the same events, the same people, and all of that.  But it highlights how much how you frame a story, how much you stress certain events and people and ideas over others, that you can end up with stories that are essentially the same, while dramatically different.  One instils national pride; the other instils national shame.  That doesn't mean there's no right or wrong.  Framing the American story as if slavery and racism are its fundamental core is dishonest.  But at the same time, telling a story that glosses over those evils for the sake of instilling pride, well, that's a problem too. And as much as this Postmodern metanarrative dilemma was nowhere on the radar of First Century Jews, I think it's a good way to understand what was going with Jews in those days and it's a good illustration of what Stephen is doing in his speech before the Sanhedrin in Ats 7.  [It's page 1087 in the Pew Bibles.]  There were different “parties” competing for influence and control in First Century Judaea and as much as they all told the same story of Israel, reaching back to Abraham and Moses and David, to the law and the Prophets, all rooted in the same exodus and exile and the same promises, how they told the story produced very different results, different feelings about Israel's present situation, different ideas about the future and how to get there—just as how I learned American history makes you smile when you see the Stars and Stripes, but others, having learned The 1619 Project story, feel shame. For Pharisees, unfaithfulness to the law resulted in exile—one that was still effectively ongoing—and only national faithfulness to the law would get them out of it.  For the Sadducees, that was all in the past.  God had restored them from their exile, and the temple and its priests were the proof.  All was well.  For the Zealots, the story said that armed revolution was the only way out of their oppression.  For the Essenes, the group responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, the story said that the everyone and everything had been defiled by unfaithfulness, even the temple itself.  God would wage holy war on the unfaithful, so they—the only truly righteous ones—retreated to the desert to wait and to keep pure.  And there was the historian Josephus.  A generation later, he told the story—after the disaster had happened—to say that the Jewish revolutionaries had brought God's wrath on themselves and that God had raised up the Romans to act as his instrument of judgement.  Same story, but the different ways they told it, the different parts they emphasised, the way they interpreted certain events like the Babylonian Exile, landed them in very different places.  Like I said last week, the story got them to the airport, but they were all waiting at different gates—and none of them the right gate for the God's real homecoming.  That said, all of them held the same markers of Jewish identity dear: the torah, the temple, the promised land, their circumcision.  They disagreed on a lot, but attack any of those things and they'd all join in stoning you after charging you with blasphemy. So what Stephen is doing before the Sanhedrin, backing up all the way to Abraham and telling the story yet again, was in good keeping with what was going on in First Century Judaea.  So—in case you missed last week or have forgotten—in the first sixteen verses, Stephen began telling the story of Jesus and the Spirit by going back to Abraham.  This was the moment when the God of glory—Stephen wants to stress that he's here to glorify the God of Israel, not blaspheme him or his holy things—Abraham was the moment when God stepped into the darkness and misery of his broken, fallen, corrupted creation and called to Abraham.  In Abraham, God was launching his project to restore rebellious humanity to himself and to set to rights the creation that we broke.  Now, there was more to it than this—it's online if you missed or forgot it—but Stephen's main point is that the gospel is not a departure from the story of Israel.  It's not something new that has no roots in what happened before.  He's saying to the Jewish elders: When the God of glory, the God of Israel called Abraham out of Ur and settled him in the promised land and established his covenant with him to make him a nation, that was the beginning of the story that brings us to Jesus, to the cross and the empty tomb, to the ascension and to Pentecost.  The story of Abraham is the story of the gospel and vice versa. Remember, they accused him of blaspheming torah and temple and Stephen's saying, “No way!  Torah and temple are good.  They're glorious.  They're how God prepared us and brought us to Jesus.”  Like I said last week, when you leave your car and board the ferry, you are in no way saying your car was bad.  It got you to the ferry.  But you can't drive on water.  Now it's time do something new—to do the very thing your car brought you to do. And then from Abraham to Joseph.  Stephen tells Isreal's story in such a way to highlight that when the God of Israel acts to bless and to save his people, it's often in unexpected ways.  Abraham was promised the land of Canaan, but never had any more of it than a little burial plot.  And Jacob and his sons were forced to flee the land of Canaan in order to survive a famine.  And Jacob's sons were wicked men who sold their brother, Joseph into slavery after nearly choosing to murder him.  And Joseph went from slavery to prison.  How was God going to work anything good from any of that?  But he did.  The sovereign God was at work all along.  Slavery and prison led Joseph to the premiership of Egypt just in time deliver his family when they arrived.  None of them had ever expected any of that.  But God delivered them.  And Stephen's telling of the Joseph story also highlights that gracious forgiveness has always been at the heart of the story of God and his people.  There was Joseph, hated, abused, sold into slavery by his brothers, but instead of taking revenge, he welcomes them and throw a party. This is what Jesus had been doing as the lost sheep of Israel, the tax collectors and sinners, came to him in repentance and faith. And this is the sort of rejoicing that would take place in heaven were the Sanhedrin to see how the story leads to Jesus and repent.  God was waiting for them with open arms and a promise of blessing, and they should know that, because that's how God's great story has always worked.  It's the key in which this great symphony is written. So now, Moses.  As important as Abraham and Joseph were, Moses stands like a colossus over the story of Israel.  Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of Egypt and parted the sea.  It was Moses who went up Mt. Sinai and saw God for himself.  It was Moses who came down and delivered the torah to Israel.  It was under Moses that God made a nation out of Abraham's family.  And this is where they've accused Stephen of blasphemy.  They've accused him of speaking against the torah and temple and Moses.  So look at Acts 7, beginning at verse 17.  Stephen highlights three things about Moses.  The first thing he stresses is how Moses was raised up by God to be the right man at the right place at the right time—even though no one would have guessed at the beginning that Moses was God's man for the hour. Stephen says: “God had sworn an oath to Abraham.  [Remember the promise to make him a great nation and to give his descendants the land of Canaan?] When the time drew near for this promise to be fulfilled, the people had increased and multiplied in Egypt, until another king arose over Egypt, one who had not known Joseph.  He got the better of our people, and ill-treated our fathers, forcing them to abandon their newborn children so that they would die.  It was at that time that Moses was born, and he was pleasing to God. He was nursed for three months in his father's house.  But, when they abandoned him, Pharaoh's daughter claimed him and brought him up as her own son.  So Moses was educated in the full teaching of Egyptian wisdom, and he was powerful in what he said and did.” Already, in the life of Joseph, Stephen has stressed that God works human evil for good.  Nothing escapes his sovereign hand.  And just so with Moses.  First, this new Pharoah decides to make slaves of the Hebrews.  Not good.  And then, when their numbers increase so prolifically that Pharaoh fears being able to control them, he hatches a plan to murder all the baby boys.  And so Moses ends up in a basket in the river, where Pharaoh's daughter finds him and decides to raise him as her own.  God turns Pharaoh's hate, prejudice, and injustice against him, sovereignly placing one of those Hebrew boys right in Pharaoh's own home, raised at Pharaoh's expense, and tutored by Pharaoh's own tutors in the famed wisdom of the Egyptians.  God ensure the story is full of irony.  Pharaoh unwittingly nurtures and educates the very man who will be his downfall.  And Moses, himself, receives the training needed one day to oversee, to govern the people of Israel.  Again, at the time, none of this made any sense.  No one could see any significance to the story as it was unfolding.  But God has a plan and one of the things the Jewish people learned from Moses' story—and so many others—is to trust God.  In the famous words of William Cowper, God moves in a mysterious way.  It's another motif in the divine symphony—one that comes back over and over and that God's people out to recognise when they hear the music. Second, Stephen stresses the rejection of Moses by his own people.  Look at verse 23: “When he had grown to forty years old, it came into his heart to see how his brothers, the sons of Israel, were doing.  He saw someone being wronged, and came to the man's defence; he took revenge on behalf of the man who was being oppressed, by striking down the Egyptian.  He thought his kinsfolk would grasp the fact that God was sending him to their rescue, but they didn't. “The next day he showed up as two Hebrews were fighting, and he tried to bring them back together again. ‘Now then, you two,' he said, ‘you are brothers! Why are you wronging each other?'  But the man who was wronging the other wasn't having it.  ‘Who made you a ruler or judge over us?' he retorted, pushing him away.  ‘Do you want to kill me in the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'  At that word, Moses ran away, and lived as a guest in the land of Midian, where he had two sons.” Yet another motif in the symphony, another recurring theme in the story.  Jesus wasn't the first of God's deliverers to be rejected by his own people.  The story highlights that this is sometimes how God works.  Now, there's no one-to-one equivalence between Moses and Jesus.  Moses was rejected because he wasn't ready yet.  He had a desire to see his people freed, but he hadn't yet been called by God to that mission, nor had he received instruction on how to do it God's way.  This way of telling the story, this way of looking back to the Old Testament is something we see all through the New Testament.  I think of the way Matthew regularly explains how something in the Jesus story “fulfils” this or that thing from the Old Testament.  And often we're left wondering how the connection works.  Thanks largely to the Church Fathers, we've been taught to see these connections as literal prophecies or as “types”, as spiritual shadows that prefigure Jesus and various events in his life.  That's kind of close, but it's not quite what Stephen (or Matthew) do.  When Matthew, for example says that in the birth of Jesus Isaiah's words about the virgin conceiving and bearing a child are fulfilled, we wonder how that works.  Isaiah was talking about a young woman in his own day bearing a child…and she wasn't a virgin.  What Matthew was doing was pointing back to an event in Israel's past, in Israel's story, where the birth of a child to a young woman—maybe a princess, maybe the Prophet's wife…it's not clear—but where the birth of this child signalled that God was about to act to deliver his people.  Matthew latched onto that.  This is how God works, but this time—in the birth of Jesus—it's not just a young woman, it's an actual virgin, and this time God's not just delivering his people from a foreign king; this time it's deliverance from sin and death.  Matthew recognised the motif in the music.  It was there in Isaiah's day, a lone violin telling a story that most people missed, but in the birth of Jesus that motif returned, and this time the whole symphony was playing it. Stephen's drawing on the story of Moses the same way.  Moses was rejected by his own people.  A repeating theme in the story that the Sanhedrin—people who know this story, know this symphony so well already—a theme they ought now to see plain as day in what happened to Jesus.  It should be obvious.  They were the ones playing the instruments this time, after all. And then, third, Stephen stresses how through Moses, the God of glory, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God Israel had known for two thousand years, had revealed himself in a new way that no one had expected.  Look at verse 30: “After another forty years, an angel appeared to him in the desert at Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush.  When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the vision.  But, as he came closer to see, there came the voice of the Lord: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.'  Moses was very frightened, and didn't dare to look.  But the Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.  I have looked long and hard at the trouble my people are having in Egypt. I have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them.  So, come on now: I'm going to send you to Egypt.'” Stephen wants to be clear—and we see this all through early Christian preaching—the God revealed in Jesus the Messiah is not new.  He is the same God who has been directing this story, this symphony from the beginning.  This is the God of their fathers, the God who has been rescuing his people according to his promises for two thousand years.  The God they know.  The God whose character and ways they ought to have recognised in Jesus. Yes, Stephen's saying, Jesus was not what we expected.  In Jesus—and now in the Spirit—God is doing something amazing, something astounding, something new.  And that's why you rejected him.  But knowing the story, knowing the music, we should have expected God would do precisely this: something new, something wild, something we didn't expect.  Because the story is already full of episodes where God does just that.  No one, least of all Moses, exiled to the wilderness, tending his father-in-law's sheep—expected the burning bush.  And yet in that moment, heaven and earth came back together, God spoke, a man was called, and the world was never the same again. And Stephen's point is this: You can't predict the unexpected thing that God will do; but you can be sure—because the story is full of such moments—that God does act unexpectedly to do the things he's promised and that we expect, the very things in which we hope. Holy ground, for example, was something Stephen and his fellow Jews understood.  The temple was holy ground.  It was where heaven and earth met.  But it wasn't the end-all-be-all of holy grounds.  It began at Mt. Sinai—not in Isreal, but in the wilderness—where God met Moses in the burning bush, where the plan to rescue Isreal from her bondage began.  When the Israelites built the tabernacle and the cloud of God's glory descended to fill it, God upstaged what he'd done at the burning bush.  And then again, with the temple.  As if it were the strings playing the motif at the burning bush, and in Exodus 40 as God's glory fills the holy of holies, the woodwinds join them.  And the music was good and it was beautiful, but the Sanhedrin should now be hearing that same motif as, in Jesus and the Spirit the whole symphony comes together to play.  Stephen isn't disparaging Moses.  He's not blaspheming the law or the temple.  He's saying, “Can't you hear it?  Their beautiful theme is now being woven into something far grander and played by the whole symphony.  The motifs have been there all along, the story has always been told this way.  Don't plug your ears to this new thing.  Listen.  And hear how it's taken up all the old themes into something that is nothing short of glorifying to the conductor, to the God of glory. That's as far as we have time to go this morning.  Like I said, Acts 7 is long and there's a lot to unpack.  But I think the great take-away for us from this part—in addition to learning to hear the great story of God and his people—I think the most important thing here is to know that God really does do new and unexpected things.  As we get to know the story, we ought to expect for God to do the unexpected, for God to do new things that upstage what he's done in the past.  And yet, the story also emphatically tells us that as much as God does new things and upstages the things he's done before, those new things are always in keeping with what he's done before.  The past always points to the future and the future never undermines the past.  As the writer of Hebrews tells us, “God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”  We live in an age where too many people are ready to do something new themselves—something that breaks from what or how God has already revealed himself, something that breaks from or that disparages or that blasphemes God's past actions or his past instructions—they take this new human thing and declared that God is doing a new thing.  Andy Stanley saying we need to unhitch from the Old Testament so that God can do something new.  No!  Churches embracing sexual immorality and post-modern notions of identity and sexuality and family and marriage and then saying, “See, God is doing a new thing!”  A thousand times, no!  Brothers and Sisters, the theme of the story, the key of the symphony doesn't change.  God does new things, but those new things follow from what God's already done.  On the other hand—and I think it's mostly in response to all the proclamation of “new things” that aren't godly at all—on the other hand, we can become too fearful, too conservative and we can end up where the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Essenes were: locked down, afraid of the new, and turning away from burning bushes, and unwilling to go where God is actually leading. This why we need to steep ourselves in the story.  This why we need to immerse ourselves in the great symphony and to let the music wash over and through us.  Brothers and Sisters, we need to know the themes and the motifs, to learn the key in which God is playing, to be intimately familiar with how they interact, weaving around and through each other, so that as the story continues to unfold, as the symphony bursts into new movements, we can hear God bringing those old familiar themes to new heights, while also being able to recognise when a different story is being told, or a different symphony is being played.  I've said over and over, Brothers and Sisters: God's word is life.  Know, meditate on it, let it mould you, and then let it pour forth from you to give life to others. Let's pray: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things:  Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast – Episode 383 Release Date: July 14, 2026   Why the Leadership Pipeline Is a Myth, and What Actually Works What if the most widely accepted strategy for developing leaders in your church or business is fundamentally broken? In this episode, Justin Forman sits down with Pastor David Ashcraft, former lead pastor of LCBC Church, which grew to 25 locations and 28,000 weekend attendees, now serving with the Global Leadership Network. David pulls no punches: the leadership pipeline is a myth. What replaces it is a culture, one that produces leaders from within, in real time. David draws on decades of experience scaling a church from 200 to 28,000 and overseeing 300 staff, 275 of whom were developed from within the congregation. His insights on leadership development, faith-work integration, and measuring fruit over process offer a roadmap for any pastor, entrepreneur, or marketplace leader serious about building something that lasts. Key Topics: Why the "leadership pipeline" model fails, and the culture-based alternative that actually works How LCBC grew from 200 to 28,000 people across 25 locations by developing leaders from within The "just-in-time training" principle: why proximity to application accelerates leader development The Global Leadership Summit: roughly 400,000 leaders across 1,120 sites worldwide, and why it bridges pastors and marketplace leaders Data vs. fruit: how to measure discipleship and leadership without falling into box-checking traps How business leaders and churches can learn from each other, and why ministry happens everywhere, not just on Sunday   Notable Quotes: “You can have the money, but if you don't have the leaders, you're not going anywhere.” — David Ashcraft   “The whole idea of the leadership pipeline is a myth. It tends to be almost more of a class or a course. If you go through enough courses, somehow you're going to come out on the other end a trained leader—and you've received training, but it doesn't make you a leader.” — David Ashcraft   “If you're a leader, people are going to be attracted to whoever the leader is.” — David Ashcraft   Guest Bio: David Ashcraft served for decades as the founding lead pastor of LCBC Church (Lives Changed By Christ) in Pennsylvania, scaling it from a church plant in 1991 to 25 locations serving 28,000 people every weekend, with 275 of 300 staff members developed from within the congregation. He now serves with the Global Leadership Network (GLN), which hosts the Global Leadership Summit, an annual event reaching approximately 400,000 leaders across 1,120 sites worldwide. GLN features speakers including Jim Collins, Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel, Arthur Brooks, and Patrick Lencioni.

What keeps you looking forward instead of backward? In this REVERB episode, Andy Stanley and Suzy Gray unpack one of the most powerful ideas from Andy's discussion with Jim Collins: the responsibilities you choose today shape the future you're moving toward. Discover why your greatest contribution may still be ahead of you, and how embracing the responsibilities you're uniquely designed to carry can keep your life and leadership moving forward. IMPORTANT NOTES: Beginning next month, we're kicking off a new format with a discussion of Andy's brand-new book, What Great Leaders Do: 7 Essentials for Enduring Impact. Joining Andy for these conversations will be an incredible leader, Holly Goddard. Together, they'll bring practical insight, honest conversation, and decades of leadership experience to each episode. New release schedule: New episodes will release on the first and third Mondays of every month. Available on YouTube: Each new episode will also be available on YouTube at YouTube.com/AndyStanleyOfficial Special thanks to our sponsor BELAY for offering a free download of their latest ebook, The Freedom Framework. This resource is designed to help leaders step out of the operational center of gravity and get back to the work that only they can do. Just text the word ANDY to 55123 to claim your free ebook now. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts to Listen to in 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts to Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leader Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Telling the Story: Part 1 Acts 7:1-16 by William Klock Last Sunday, in Acts 6, we saw Stephen confronted as he preached in the synagogue.  We don't know exactly what he was preaching, but from the accusations that were made against him, he was—of course—preaching that Jesus is the Messiah, but must also have been talking about the way in which Jesus and the Spirit fulfil God's promises to Israel, the law and the prophets, the torah and the temple.  We can surmise that, because what they accuse him of is saying blasphemous things against God in general and specifically against Moses.  They accuse him of saying that Jesus will destroy the temple and change the customs that Moses had handed down to them.  We can surmise this, too, because this is what we've been hearing Peter preach in the earlier parts of Acts.  Never in the early church do we see the apostles or anyone else just launching into a sermon about Jesus.  They always and consistently preach Jesus as part of the story of the God of Israel and his people.  That's important.  In fact, it's critical; it's essential.  Leave out the story that leads to Jesus and you just may lose Jesus himself.  That's what happened with Marcion of Sinope back in the Second Century.  His was one of the very first heresies the church had to confront.  He threw away the Old Testament.  He believed the God of the Old Testament was an evil, sadistic god and not the same God we see in the New.  So he just unhitched the Old Testament and left it behind.  And that heresy has been cropping up throughout church history in one form or another ever since.  A few years ago, ex-evangelical pastor, Andy Stanley, caused a big stir when he preached that the church has to unhitch itself from the Old Testament.  Even if we don't cut out the Old Testament from our Bibles, even if we cherish the Old Testament, if we lose the story it contains, we're going to get ourselves into trouble.  Men like Tertullian and Justin Martyr addressed Marcion and he was eventually excommunicated.  The church would always hold tenaciously to the Old Testament.  But it wasn't even a hundred and fifty year later that we started to undermine its story-telling.  As the church became increasingly dominated by gentiles, we started to read the Old Testament (and the New), not as the story of the God of Isreal and his people, but as a book of moral allegories and of types that pointed to Jesus.  We flattened it out and made it abstract.  We “spiritualised” it.  We knew the story of the God of Isreal and his people was there, but we denigrated it.  That was the simplest, the least important, the least “spiritual” way to read the Bible.  And by the grace of God we didn't lose the gospel, but gradually we started putting the em-PHA-sis in the wrong places. What we see in the Bible, in the Gospels, in the teaching of Jesus, and in the teaching of the apostles in their epistles, and in the examples we see through Acts, is that the good news about Jesus is deeply rooted in the Old Testament and in Israel's story.  You cannot separate the old and the new.  The story tells us the problem of human sin and rebellion and of the corruption of Gods' good creation.  The story shows us how God has stepped into the world to set it to rights.  The story shows—long before we ever get to Jesus—the goodness and faithfulness of God.  The story shows why the Israelites could and should trust the God who spoke through Moses and the Prophets—and eventually through Jesus and the apostles.  The story prepared them—and it prepares us—for Jesus, for his death and his resurrection and his ascension and his kingdom and it prepares us to know the Spirit and to be the temple, purified by the blood of Jesus and made a dwelling place for God, to be a the truly heaven-on-earth people God had promised to make Israel; to be the beginnings, the firstfruits of his new creation, his new age, his kingdom. That's what Stephen was getting at when he reminded his fellow Jews about the day when Jesus had said that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.  It wasn't about the end of Moses or torah or temple; it was about fulfilling them.  They were signposts point into God's future—a future in which God would live with his people, not in a building, but actually in them, and a future in which the law would no longer be carved on stone tablets, but written on human hearts.  But they refused to hear.  They drummed up false witnesses and they dragged Stephen before the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews.  Look at Acts 7.  [Page 1086 in the pew Bibles.]  Having been dragged before the Sanhedrin, “The high priest addressed Stephen.  ‘Are these things true?' he said.  ‘Brothers and fathers, hear me,' replied Stephen.  ‘The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he moved to live in Haran.'” Let me pause there.  Notice how Stephen is going all the way back to the beginning.  He speaks first of the God of glory, which might not seem very important to us, but it's noteworthy that “God of glory” is not a common way to speak of God in the Old Testament.  In fact, Psalm 29:3 is the only place this title is used.  On the one hand, I suspect Stephen uses it to make the point that he has no interest in denigrating or blaspheming the God of Irael.  Stephen is invested in proclaiming the glory of God, and that's exactly what he's about to do by reminding them of their own story—and, most importantly, how it ends with Jesus and the Spirit.  But Stephen is also invoking Psalm 29 as it ascribes glory to the God of creation, the God who is enthroned, sovereign over the seas and over the forests, sovereign over the nations, the God who blesses his people as they cry out in his temple, “Glory!”.  This is the God of creation.  And then to mention Abraham in the next breath is to set the opening scene.  God created the heavens and earth.  God created human beings to serve as his stewards and his priests in this creation.  And we rebelled.  We broke it.  We corrupted it.  We introduced darkness where there was supposed to be light.  We drove a great wedge between heaven and earth, between God and man as we claimed his creation for ourselves, to do with as we pleased, to try to rule it as if we are gods ourselves.  To write our own stories instead of living in the one he's given us. And it was into that darkness, into that void in which men and women had lost all knowledge of their creator and had turned to idols, God spoke.  And he called to Abraham.  That call was the beginning of a new story—a story to set creation and to set humanity to rights.  A story that would, one day, culminate in God returning to dwell with his people.  It's the story that everyone in Israel new, inside-out, backwards and forwards, top to bottom.  And yet something had gone wrong in the telling.  Because when God returned, Israel had rejected him.  Because when Stephen proclaimed Jesus and the Spirit, the people accused him of blasphemy. Because as faithful as they were to the story, they hadn't got it quite right.  Remember last week I talked about how you might take a trip to the other side of the country.  You drive your car to Nanaimo, then you leave it there and take a ferry to Horseshoe Bay, then you get off the ferry and take a bus downtown, and then you get off the bus to get on Skytrain to the airport, and then fly in airplane to your final destination.  That journey might break down at any number of points.  We might really, really like to drive our car and we can't bear to think of leaving it parked at the ferry terminal and taking a ferry instead.  And so we refuse to stop driving.  When our friend tells us you can't drive on water, we get angry.  We accuse him of being a car-hater.  We accuse him of saying that cars are bad and evil and no good.  And we wait for the ferry to leave and then we drive full-speed down the ramp and crash into the water and drown.  Not because cars are bad, but because cars were simply never designed to drive across water.  That's what's going on with Stephen's accusers.  Stephen never said that torah or temple were bad things.  They were good things.  They were wonderful, spectacular, glorious gifts of God's great grace.  They were signposts leading Israel to Jesus.  It's just that in this new age, God's given something even better.  There's a new law and a new temple.  Those things were the promise, but now the fulfilment of the promise is here.  But they don't want to hear that. But let's image you managed to transition from car to ferry to bus to Skytrain and you get to the airport, but instead of looking at the departures board to find your gate, you just walked down the concourse.  And you looked for the gate you liked best.  You stopped at one and you looked out the window and on the horizon, across the Strait, you could see Vancouver Island.  And it was comforting and you decided this was the right gate.  You could sit and wait for your plane to Montreal and never lose sight of the Island.  And you waited and waited, but no plane came.  And eventually you asked a gate agent, and she said, “Oh, you're at the wrong gate.  Your flight's leaving from such-and-such gate.”  But you didn't listen.  You liked this gate with the view of home.  And a while later they announced your flight—and the gate—but you ignored it.  Eventually you even heard them page you: “Passenger So-and-so, this is your last call for boarding at gate such-and-such.”  But you just sat there.  This gate was nice.  Everyone else was wrong.  Eventually the plane will come.  And that's what most of Isreal did.  The Messiah came to fulfil the law and the prophets, but people already had their ideas of who and what the Messiah was be and to do.  Because they'd got the story wrong.  Not all wrong.  They'd got to the airport after all, but wrong enough that they were convinced it was this gate, not that one. So Stephen's going to do what Jesus had done and what he'd heard Peter do.  He's going back to the very beginning of the story and he's going to tell it again.  He's going to tell it so they can understand that leaving the car and getting on the ferry doesn't mean you hate cars or think they're evil—and that the same goes for Moses and the Prophets and torah and temple.  And he's going to tell it so that when they do get to the airport, they be willing to trust the departure board and the gate agents and the pages about the right gate—so that they'll see how the story was, all along, leading them to Jesus.  The real key here is to pay attention to the bits of the story that Stephen—inspired by the Holy Spirit—decides to emphasise.  There are a thousand parts to this story, but—Stephen is saying—look at it this way and you can't help but recognise that in Jesus, the Messiah has come. So, again, picking up at verse 2: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he moved to live in Haran.  ‘Leave your land and your family,' he said to him, ‘and go to the land which I will show you.'  So he left the land of the Chaldeans and went to live in Haran.  Then, from there, after his father's death, God moved him on to this land in which you now live.  God didn't give him an inheritance here, not even a place to stand up in.  Instead, he promised (when Abraham still had no child) that he would give it as a possession to his seed after him.  This is what God said to him: that his seed would be strangers in a foreign land, that they would serve there as slaves, and that they would be afflicted for four hundred years.  But God said that he would judge the nation that had enslaved them, and that they would then come out and worship him ‘on this mountain'.  And he gave them the covenant of circumcision.  So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and he circumcised him on the eighth day.  Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of the twelve patriarchs.” You can't understand Judaism or Christianity without understanding Abraham.  This is where the story of God's rescue begins.  With this call, God's plan to set the world to rights begins to unfold.  Israel wasn't just some random nation in history.  God's calling Abraham out of the darkness of ignorance and sin and idolatry is what sets the story on its trajectory to Jesus, it's what establishes that this is the story of how God will rescue human beings and fix his creation that we broke.  It's like Stephen is answering the charge of blasphemy by affirming that, no, he is actually affirming the story they knew; he's affirming God's call; he's affirming the special status of Israel.  Just because we also had to take a ferry, doesn't mean the car was a bad thing or that it didn't have a good and useful purpose. And Stephen makes a point of zeroing in on Genesis 15.  That's the part of Genesis where Abraham has been faithful to God and followed him to the holy land, and God responds by establishing his covenant with him.  We see this, too, over and over in the New Testament, especially with Paul in Galatians 3 and Romans 4.  This is a vitally important part of the story that leads us to Jesus.  And so Stephen stresses: God promised the land to Abraham's descendants.  The most Abraham would ever have it was a burial plot that he had purchase.  But after his descendants had been strangers in a foreign land for four hundred years—he's talking about Israel living as slaves in Egypt—he would judge that land and its people, and he would bring Abraham's children out of Egypt to worship him “on this mountain”.  Why was that important?  Because it shows how God works.  He makes promises and he keeps them, but he does so in his own good time.  If Abraham hadn't know better, he might have thought God had failed.  Moses might have said, “I don't think this is what was promised.”  But instead, Abraham trusted.  Instead, Moses believed and followed God as he did a new thing.  And I think that's why Stephen phrases this bit about “on this mountain”—that was originally God's promise to Moses that he would bring the Israelites back to the place where God had met him in the burning bush and they would worship there, but Stephen connects that with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  Already—long before Jesus—God was fulfilling his promises in ways that were unexpected.  Mount Sinai points to Mount Zion. For Jews in the First Century, the temple had become a symbol of the land of Israel and of God's promise to Abraham.  That's why they were so angry at Stephen when they thought he was blaspheming the temple and saying it was no good or that it would be destroyed.  You might as well say—in their thinking—that God was going to abandon his promise to Abraham.  So Stephen connects this all together.  He affirms the promise; he affirms the covenant; he affirms God's promise of the land; and most of all he affirms the temple.  Most importantly, what he's doing is affirming that God has called this people and given them a purpose.  Through them he's going to save the world.  They knew that, but they'd muddled the story just enough that they'd got the “how” part of it wrong. Stephen's on his way to Moses now.  We'll look at that part of what he says next week.  There's too much to his speech to cover it all in one sermon.  But on the way to Moses, Stephen pauses.  He needs to remind them of the part of the story about Joseph.  Look at verses 9-16: “Now the patriarchs became angry with Joseph, and were jealous of him.  They sold him into Egypt.  But God was with him, and rescued him from all his troubles an gave him grace and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, making him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.  But then there was a famine over the whole of Egypt and Canaan, which resulted in great hardship.  Our ancestors couldn't find food to eat.  Jacob, however, heard that there was grain in Egypt, and sent our ancestors there on an initial visit.  On their second trip, Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and revealed to Pharaoh what family he was from.  So Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his family, seventy-five people in all.  Jacob came to Egypt and he and our ancestors died there.  They were brought back to Shechem and buried in the tomb which Abraham had bought with silver, at a named price, from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.” Before Stephen gets to Moses, there's Joseph and Joseph's story. Abraham (and Moses as we'll see next week) point to Jesus through their calling and the promises God made to them.  Joseph points to Jesus another way and he's particularly relevant to the current situation.  Joseph was rejected by his brothers, but it was precisely in that rejection that God was work.  It was through his rejection and through Joseph's unjust suffering that God raised him to govern the whole land of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh.  When famine came to Canaan and Egypt, it was Joseph whom his brothers came to for food—the man they'd been jealous of, the man they'd abused, the man they nearly murdered, the man they sold into slavery.  And yet, what happened when they came to Joseph.  Instead of being angry, instead of retaliating, instead of getting revenge, Joseph was gracious.  He wept for joy to see his brothers again and invited them to come and live with him in a land of plenty. I hope that sounds familiar.  I hope you can hear echoes of Jesus there. I can't help but think of the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son and the rejoicing that Jesus says happens in heaven when sinners repent.  I hope you can see in Joseph's story, particularly as Stephen tells it, how God was preparing his people for his son.  This is how God works: through humility, through rejection, through letting sin and evil and human rebellion do their worst, and then rising triumphant.  This is how God works, Stephen declares: He is loving and gracious and merciful toward those he has created.  One day, when he finally finishes the work of setting creation to rights, it'll mean wiping from its face all those who persist in their rebellion, who persist in sin and evil.  God does not rejoice in the destruction of those he loves.  And so he rejoices—just as Joseph did—to welcome the repentant, to welcome those who want to be part of God's new world, to welcome those who come to be washed clean in the blood of Jesus and to be filled with his Spirit, to become new creations themselves, to become part of his new temple.  Stephen's pointing back to Joseph to tell the Sanhedrin: There is grace, there is forgiveness for you too—even for those who cried out “Crucify him!” I suspect there were some men there in that meeting of the Sanhedrin that day who saw where Stephen was going with this.  Like I said, this is as far as we'll go with Chapter 7 today.  It's too much for one sermon.  But the real takeaway from these first sixteen verses is, I think, simply to understand what Stephen, inspired by the Spirit and steeped in the scriptures, is doing here.  This is—or it should be, because it sadly usually isn't—this is the great art of Christian apologetic and Christian preaching and the proclamation of the good news about Jesus.  It's to tell the story of God and his people, to have the wisdom to know which of the thousand and one details is relevant to the immediately situation or immediate audience, and then to tell that story as the story that leads to Jesus as its fulfilment and its climax on the one hand, but that also proclaims God's glory by showing his goodness and faithfulness in the story that brings us to Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, the Old Testament is not just a collection of useful stories for teaching morals nor is it a collection of allegories that foreshadow Jesus.  It is, first and foremost, the story of how God has been at work to save us and to save his creation from sin and death.  And we need to learn it.  We need to learn it well.  So that we can tell the story in a way that doesn't leave us behind as the ferry sails away or that leads people stranded at the wrong gate at the airport.  We need to tell the story in way that honours the old covenant, torah and temple, but we also need to tell it in a way that reveals Jesus as the fulfilment of them, a story that faithfully follows the signposts as they lead us to Jesus and to the Spirit, to the cross and to the empty tomb, to the ascension and to the creation of this new temple, not made of stones, but made of people washed clean by Jesus and filled with God's own Spirit.  We need to learn to tell the story so it gives glory to God for his goodness and faithfulness, for his grace and mercy, not just when we get to the part about Jesus, but at every step of the way: from Abraham to Joseph to Moses to David to Jesus—and then to you and to me, and to those who are lost and whom God so longs to rejoice over. Let's pray: Father, in the Collect we acknowledged your goodness and your promises that exceed all we can desire.  Remind us always that we know your goodness, because we know your story.  Capture our hearts and minds, we pray, by the glory of that story, that we might immerse ourselves in it, that we might meditate on it, that we might in habit it, and that we might tell it over and over and over until the whole world knows your glory.  Through Jesus our Lord, through the one who embodies your glory in all its fullness, we pray.  Amen.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

The founders believed liberty was worth risking everything for, but they also understood it came with a hidden requirement. Two hundred fifty years later, that requirement matters more than ever.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Many Christians spend their lives measuring themselves by whether or not they are obeying all the rules. That's not what Jesus intended.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating God's love and approval as something to earn. That assumption quietly shapes our relationship with God more than we realize.

What separates good organizations from truly exceptional ones? In this episode from 2016, Andy Stanley sits down with Glen Jackson, co-founder of Jackson Spalding, to explore the concept of preeminence—the pursuit of extraordinary excellence that creates a lasting competitive advantage. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts To Listen To In 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts To Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leader Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do you do when the path ahead is unclear? In this REVERB episode, Andy Stanley and Suzy Gray dive deeper into the uncertainty that often accompanies major life transitions. Expanding on Andy’s conversation with Jim Collins, they explore why seasons of "fog" are a normal part of life, how small steps create momentum when clarity is lacking, and what it looks like to discover your unique encodings so you can spend more time doing what you were made to do. Special thanks to our sponsor BELAY for offering a free download of their latest ebook The Freedom Framework. This resource is designed to help leaders step out of the operational center of gravity and get back to the work that only they can do. Just text the word ANDY to 55123 to claim your free ebook now. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts To Listen To In 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts To Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leader Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We never know how one small invitation might change someone's story… until we offer it.

We never know how one small invitation might change someone's story… until we offer it.

The gap between skepticism and faith starts to close when Christianity is viewed through the lens of history. In this conversation with Andy Stanley and John Dickson, the story of Jesus is presented as something meant to be investigated, not avoided.

Segment 1 • Why do so many Christians sit through sermons without ever expecting God to personally confront or comfort them? • Todd explains why “good preaching” has less to do with charisma and more to do with whether God's Word was faithfully prepared for the church. • Can expository preaching become so obsessed with Greek details that it completely misses the point of the passage? Segment 2 • Todd breaks down why verse-by-verse preaching protects churches from hobby-horse theology and culture-driven sermons. • A shocking Mother's Day church illustration raises the question: has entertainment hijacked the pulpit? • Andy Stanley's critique of expository preaching sparks a bigger discussion about creativity, burnout, and whether pastors are feeding people God's ideas or their own. Segment 3 • Freemason rituals exposed: secret ceremonies, violent oaths, and why Todd says Christianity and Masonry cannot coexist. • Vienna is stunned by what Muslim youth now openly believe about Sharia law, faith, and Western culture. • Minnesota politicians and racial identity politics collide in a segment that asks: has the cultural script completely flipped upside down? Segment 4 • Todd announces a brand-new podcast from Dr. Jason Lisle connecting Genesis, evolution, morality, and the collapse of Western culture. • What happens to marriage, truth, morality, and human dignity if Genesis is rejected as real history? • Dr. Jason Lisle argues that the battle over origins isn't ultimately scientific — it's about whether people will trust God's Word or man's opinions. ___ Thanks for listening! Wretched Radio would not be possible without the financial support of our Gospel Partners. If you would like to support Wretched Radio we would be extremely grateful. VISIT https://fortisinstitute.org/donate/ If you are already a Gospel Partner we couldn't be more thankful for you if we tried!

Joy may sound soft, but it has a measurable impact on resilience, engagement, trust, and team performance. In this REVERB episode, Andy Stanley and Suzy Gray unpack Andy’s conversation with Kate Bowler about why joy matters more than most leaders realize. They discuss the difference between joy and happiness, how recognizing progress creates gratitude, why storytelling strengthens team culture, and how simple acts of recognition can transform engagement. If you want to build a healthier culture and become the kind of leader people want to follow, start by creating more space for joy on your team. Special thanks to our sponsor BELAY for offering a free download of their resource The Guide to Outsourced Accounting. Just text the word ANDY to 55123 to claim your free guide now. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts To Listen To In 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts To Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leader Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Healthy relationships aren't built on rules, but they can't survive without a particular one. And it's a rule that removes every loophole.

Healthy relationships aren't built on rules, but they can't survive without a particular one. And it's a rule that removes every loophole.

Healthy relationships aren't built on rules, but they can't survive without a particular one. And it's a rule that removes every loophole.

Healthy relationships aren't built on rules, but they can't survive without a particular one. And it's a rule that removes every loophole.

Healthy relationships aren't built on rules, but they can't survive without a particular one. And it's a rule that removes every loophole.

The secret to stronger relationships isn't being understood, but choosing to put someone else first, even when they don't deserve it.

The secret to stronger relationships isn't being understood, but choosing to put someone else first, even when they don't deserve it.

The secret to stronger relationships isn't being understood, but choosing to put someone else first, even when they don't deserve it.

The secret to stronger relationships isn't being understood, but choosing to put someone else first, even when they don't deserve it.

Pastor Mike explores the forensic nature of justification, using the classic analogy of snow covering a "dung pile" to illustrate how Christ’s righteousness covers the believer's sin . He issues a "Kooks and Barney's" award to Andy Stanley for suggesting that the foundation of the Christian faith is historical events rather than the authoritative Scripture, a view Mike counters by highlighting Jesus' own absolute reliance on the Old Testament. The episode also features a recommendation for Arnold Dallimore’s biography of George Whitefield, a clarification on the distinct categories of justification and sanctification, and a discussion on the biblical reality of demon possession. Ultimately, Mike concludes that the most effective response to spiritual darkness is the simple and powerful preaching of the gospel, which allows the Holy Spirit to displace the demonic. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jXOyCX1FfPA  No Compromise Radio “Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.” Video Episode 61: “Foundation of Faith" Hosts: Pastor Mike Abendroth (Pastor & Author) Produced/Edited By: Marrio Escobar (Owner of D2L Productions)

Every conflict feels like it's about what someone else did, but the real source runs deeper and it's hard to admit.

Every conflict feels like it's about what someone else did, but the real source runs deeper and it's hard to admit.

You can be successful and still feel like something’s missing from your life. A meaningful life is built when your life makes sense to you, has purpose and direction, and is rooted in healthy relationships. In this episode, Andy Stanley sits down with Arthur Brooks, bestselling author and Harvard professor, to explore why so many successful people still feel unfulfilled. Together, they unpack the three essential components of meaning, why our culture is making it harder to find, and how even suffering can become a catalyst for deeper clarity and growth. They also explore the shift from a self-focused life to one centered on serving others and why that shift changes everything. If you’ve ever felt busy but off, or successful but unsatisfied, this conversation will help you realign what matters most and take a simple first step toward a more meaningful life and leadership. Download the application guide: https://bit.ly/3NSefsQ Here is what they cover in this episode: Why anxiety, loneliness, and meaninglessness have surged in recent years (7:18) The three components of meaning: coherence, purpose, and significance (9:31) Why life feels empty when everything seems random—and how faith restores coherence (12:18) How suffering actually helps us discover meaning (19:29) The shift from “me self” to “I self” and why serving others changes everything (21:58) A simple starting point: creating silence so meaning can find you (32:15) Special thanks to our sponsor BELAY for offering a free download of their resource Five Traits AI Can't Replace. Just text the word ANDY to 55123 to claim your free guide now. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts To Listen To In 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts To Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leaders Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The story of Jesus didn't begin with confident believers. It began with disillusioned followers who walked away, only to be pulled back by something they couldn't ignore.

The story of Jesus didn't begin with confident believers. It began with disillusioned followers who walked away, only to be pulled back by something they couldn't ignore.

The gap between skepticism and faith starts to close when Christianity is viewed through the lens of history. In this conversation with Andy Stanley and John Dickson, the story of Jesus is presented as something meant to be investigated, not avoided.

Jesus regularly challenged people's assumptions about both wealth and eternity, and when he did so it revealed that the way we handle what's temporary points to what we truly believe is permanent.

Many people experience faith primarily as something they attend or consume. But the moments that deepen faith most often come when we begin giving it away.