Podcasts about In Jesus

A Prayer to Welcome Accountability with Rachael Adams Can we choose to speak the truth in live-even when it's uncomfortable?In this episode, Rachael shares a personal story of conviction after a social gathering, and through that story we’re reminded that accountability is a gift from God. Just as the prophet Nathan courageously confronted King David, we are called to lovingly challenge one another so we can grow in Christ and live lives that honor Him. Reference: Ephesians 4:15 Prayer: Father, guide and teach me what is true. Implant your truth in my heart so I am not deceived by the lies of this world and the enemy's schemes. Remove any apathy I may have for the behavior of others and give me the courage to sharpen the people in my life as iron sharpens iron. If you are leading me to intervene, let my words be filled with grace and love. May I also be open to receiving advice from others. Please place people around me to remind me of your word an hold me accountable. In Jesus' name. Amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Living life as though your cup is brimming over isn't a matter of circumstance. It's a matter of choice. Psalm 23:5 says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.”God promises bountiful blessings when we follow Him, but what about when times are tough? Nowhere does the Bible suggest we should wallow in misery when things don't go our way. Instead, we should slow down enough to count and savor every blessing, even when goodness is harder to find.Kristi Nelson, executive director of gratefulness.org, says this about gratitude, “I think gratefulness is about understanding that in each and every moment that we notice we are alive, we are succeeding in creating a life that hovers vividly at the brim. Because, in the end, it is all about the glass, not what is in it.” Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the blessings that you pour out on us. Not because we've earned your favor, but because you love us sacrificially. Give us an attitude of gratitude beyond our circumstances. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

Today is day 49 and we are in the section on the Second Article of the Apostles' Creed on Jesus Christ the Son of God. Today we are on the fourth line: “I believe in Jesus Christ” and studying question 49. 49. What does “Jesus” mean? “Jesus” means “God saves” and is taken from the Hebrew name Yeshua or Joshua. In Jesus, God has come to save us from the power of sin and death. ( Joshua 1:1–9; Psalm 20; Matthew 1:18–25; Romans 8:1–2) We will conclude today with The Collect for the Circumcision and Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ found on page 600 of the Book of Common Prayer (2019). If you would like to buy or download To Be a Christian, head to anglicanchurch.net/catechism. Produced by Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Madison, MS. Original music from Matthew Clark. Daily collects and Psalms are taken from Book of Common Prayer (2019), created by the Anglican Church in North America and published by the Anglican Liturgical Press. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Catechism readings are taken from To Be a Christian - An Anglican Catechism Approved Edition, copyright © 2020 by The Anglican Church in North America by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Messenger of the {New} Covenant {Jesus} Is Coming – Is He Coming to Purify You or to Judge You? MESSAGE SUMMARY: The people, in God's Judgment articulated in Malachi 3:5, are the people of God. These people are not the unbelievers; these are the people that say they are following God. Malachi 3:5, articulates those transgressions, including the absence of a “fear of the lord”, in which God: “will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.” To this end, Paul reminds us again in Romans 2:4-5 of a pathway to or away from God's Judgment: “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.". Additionally, in Proverbs 1:7 we find that the “fear of the Lord” provides us with “wisdom”. On the other hand and in the absence of our “fear of the Lord”, Proverbs 1:7 tells us that we are “foolish”: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”. The messenger of the Covenant is coming – He is coming to either purify you or to judge you.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Father, I confess that when difficulties and trials come into my life, large or small, I mostly grumble and complain. I realize the trials James talks about are not necessarily “walls,” but they are difficult to bear, nonetheless. Fill me with such a vision of a transformed life, O God, that I might actually consider it “pure joy” when you bring trials my way. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief. In Jesus' name, amen.     Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 94). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that, because I am in Jesus Christ, I want to know Him better (Philippians 3:10). “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”. (Philippians 4:14). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Exodus 19:5-6; Romans 11:25-32; Mark 14:22-25; Psalms 67b:13-24. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 4 – One God, Not Three”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

How can you trust a father if you don't know what he's supposed to do? Rabbi Schneider shares what a father's role is and what that means to you in relationship with God the Father. God is tender, compassionate, and has given life to you. Come and see this episode of Discovering the Jewish Jesus and learn how to be dependent on God the Father. In Jesus you are protected by the Father no matter what your fear is and no matter whether your earthly father has failed. **** BECOME A MONTHLY PARTNER - https://djj.show/YTAPartner   **** DONATE - https://djj.show/YTADonate  **** TEACHING NOTES - https://djj.show/gxs 

A Prayer to Let Go of Wrongs with Rachael Adams While our hearts may carry a record of mistakes, regrets, and wounds, God does not.In today's episode by Rachael Adams, we reflect on God’s unfathomable forgiveness and the freedom found in laying our shame at the foot of the cross. When we confess and repent, He doesn’t just forgive—He removes our transgressions completely. As far as the east is from the west. This episode invites us to release the ledger we keep against ourselves and others and instead embrace the blank canvas Christ offers through His redeeming love. Reference: Psalm 103:11-12 Prayer: Lord, thank you for pardoning me for my sins and erasing their very existence. Please help me to accept your mercy, absolve myself, and release those in my life who have hurt me. Produce in me a generous attitude of grace toward others the way you've extended it to me. Show me if there is someone in my life whom I may have hurt and give me the strength to humbly ask them for their forgiveness. Help us all to see our lives as a blank canvas like you do. In Jesus' name. Amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today, we're talking about grit and determination, which go a long way in helping find success in life. And they're contagious.Winston Churchill was almost 70 when his country needed him most, when he stared down Hitler's war machine. The British Prime Minister's signature line was, “We shall fight on the beaches,” but the essence of his message came with these words, “We shall go on to the end.” Luke 18:1 says, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” And it is a partnership because God keeps His word. Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”There's a great practical application in scripture. These old words that are always new were not meant to be just some nice thing to say. God does what He says he will do. If you feel like you have no way out of your troubles today, tell God that. Remember the scriptural promises and remind yourself that countless people have done the same and come out okay on the other side. Don't give up, and see what the Lord will do. Let's pray. Lord, we give you our fear and our uncertainty. We can't cope with the situation we're in alone, but we trust you to give us strength not to quit. We believe for the victory over these circumstances, and God, we find rest in your mercies. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

If you give a design problem to ten different engineers to solve, chances are you will not get ten different solutions. In fact, you are likely to end up with ten solutions that look very much alike.Now suppose 1,000 years from now someone found your ten sheets of problems, each with the design solutions offered by the ten engineers. Since they are practically the same, this person might conclude that each of the solutions was offered by the same person. He would account for their differences by saying that as each solution was tried, better ideas were developed. He would conclude that the solution most familiar to his own day was the final and most advanced solution.When evolutionists compare creatures like humans with apes, noting the similarities, they are falling into the same trap as our theoretical researcher from the future. Certainly there are some similarities between humans and apes. However, the structure of the human eye is most similar to the eye of the octopus! The general pattern of the functional structure of hemoglobin in human blood differs by only one atom from the chlorophyll found in plants. And the protein in human milk is most like the juice of the soybean plant.None of these comparisons offers any evidence for evolution. What they illustrate is that any good designer will solve similar problems with similar designs—they offer evidence that the creation is the work of a wise and powerful Designer!Romans 1:20"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:"Prayer: I thank You, dear Father, for Your continued love for man despite our stubborn perversity. I thank You that You sought me when I did not seek You and that You first loved me so that now I might love You. In Jesus' Name. Amen. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

No Matter How Deep Your Hole, that You have Dug for Yourself, You Can Call on God the Creator of the Universe for Help MESSAGE SUMMARY: Prayer is your conduit for communion with God. Through prayer, you are in God's Presence; and you can invite His help in your life's situations. The best way to learn how to have this communion with God is to just do it and use your normal conversational words; however, the words of Scripture are powerful and work strongly. Just pray with your heart in conversation with God. Jonah, in Jonah 2:1-2, models for us that no matter how deep our situational hole, which we have dug for ourselves, we can call on God the Creator of the Universe for help: “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.'".   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, I now take a deep breath and stop. So often I miss your hand and gifts in my life because I am preoccupied and anxious. Grant me the power to pause each day and each week to simply rest in your arms of love. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 132). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, because I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I will not be controlled by my Anxiety. Rather, I will walk in the Spirit's fruit of Peace. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): John 14:13; Jonah 1:1-2; Jonah 2:2-10; Psalms 68c:25-35. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 4 – One God, Not Three”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

At the Cross: The Amazing Exchange"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." — Romans 5:8You know, there's a hymn that's been sung in churches for over a hundred and fifty years now, and every time I hear it, I find myself stopped in my tracks by one particular verse. The hymn is "At the Cross," written by Isaac Watts way back in 1707, and the verse goes like this: "Was it for crimes that I have done, He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree!"When Isaac Watts wrote those words, he was wrestling with a question that should stop all of us dead in our tracks: Why would Jesus do that for me?Think about it. The Creator of the universe, hanging on a cross. And for what? For crimes that I have done. My sins "Big" and "Small" (no such thing as small really) the lies I've told. The times I've chosen my way over His.I'm too soon old and too late smart on this, but one thing I've learned is that we have a tendency to minimize our own sin while we maximize everyone else's. But when we look at that cross, we have to face the truth: it took the death of God's own Son to pay for those "slip-ups."But here's where it gets really amazing. That verse doesn't stop at the crime. It goes on: "Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree!" The cross isn't just about what we've done, it's about what He's done for us.When Jesus hung on that cross, He wasn't dying for some abstract concept. He was thinking about you. About me. And He didn't do it because we deserved it. He did it because that's who He is.The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." That's the amazing exchange. He took our sin and gave us His righteousness.I remember talking to a man once who told me he just couldn't accept that God would forgive him. He'd made too many mistakes. And I asked him, "Do you think your sin is bigger than the cross?"The cross says that no matter what crimes you and I have done, His grace is enough. His love is beyond degree. It's a love that looked at us in all our mess and said, "I'll die for that one."History is just HIS story, and the cross is the central chapter. It's where your sin and His grace came face to face, and grace won.Let's pray: Father, we stand amazed at the cross. Thank You that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Help us never to take for granted the price that was paid. In Jesus' name, Amen.#Faith #TheCross #Grace #ChristianLiving #DailyDevotion #HymnHistory #BiblicalWisdom #SpiritualGrowth #RTTBROS #NightlightBe sure to Like, Share, Follow and subscribe it helps get the word out.https://linktr.ee/rttbros

February 17, 1016Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily LifeThe Revelation 16:18I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.If you would like to revisit today's Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. Please follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church 

What do you do when you've been praying about something for years and nothing has changed? In this episode, Pastor Roderick Webster takes you to John 11 where Jesus prays at Lazarus's tomb and reveals three essential elements of powerful prayer: faith, persistence, and authority. Discover why Jesus thanked God before the miracle happened, what it means to keep praying when you feel like giving up, and how to pray with the authority Jesus gave you. This message will reignite your prayer life and remind you that God hears every prayer, sees every tear, and is working even when you can't see it. If you've stopped praying about that dead situation—that broken relationship, that financial need, that wayward child, that health crisis—this is the encouragement you need to start again.- Learn why Jesus prayed with thanksgiving before seeing the miracle- Understand the three elements of powerful prayer: faith, persistence, and authority- Discover how to position yourself to see God's glory in impossible situationsFather, I thank You that You hear me. What looks dead to me is not dead to You. I'm not giving up on this prayer. I'm expecting to see Your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

Why Spiritual Discipline MattersScripture: 1 Corinthians 9:27—“But I discipline my body and keep it under control,…”Accept Jesus Today: https://youtube.com/shorts/bIwAUlz7Kg4?si=BNOhv44iLWIR4eVJIf you would like to accept Jesus into your heart today, pray this simple prayer:****God, I have sinned against You. I believe that Jesus is Your Son, who died and rose for my sake. I ask you to forgive me for my sin. I place my trust in You for salvation. I receive you as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name, I am forgiven! Amen!"****Congratulations! You are now a child of the most high. John 1:12 says, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. If you just prayed this prayer to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, I welcome you to the family of God. Subscribe to my channel and type in the comments right now, “I just prayed that prayer.” I would love to connect with you and chat with you about all the amazing things God is doing in your life.Click here for FREE eBook Download: https://tinyurl.com/ISAIDTHEPRAYERShow your love, support the channel:*PayPal: PayPal.me/malachimitchellministry*Cashapp: https://cash.app/$MalachiMitchNote Journals and Puzzles: https://tinyurl.com/WalkinFaithPublishingAuthored Books: https://tinyurl.com/BooksofMalachiJoin Our Support Club: https://tinyurl.com/Support-ClubInvesting Opportunity: https://coinholders.hnocoin.com/signup/?refer=Malachi2uFREE Ways to Support Me:

*Disclaimer* This episode contains adult content and is not recommended for young listeners.   Hebrews 12:15 NLT “Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.”   *Transcription Below*   About Dr. Morgan Cutlip:  It's hard to know where to start so I'll start with what matters most to me and that's my relationships.   I'm a mother to two kids, Effie (12) and Roy (9). They are hilarious, spirited, spicy, deeply thoughtful and emotional kids. I adore them and being their mother. They've challenged me in the most surprising and wonderful ways. I'm married to my high school sweetheart, Chad. I always feel like I lose a little street cred when I say that so, for the record, we didn't date that entire time and eventually reconnected years after college on MySpace (yup, now I've aged myself). He's the love of my life, an incredible man that loves others deeply, works so very hard, and continues to be open to growth and change.   I've worked in the field of relationship education for over 15 years alongside my father, Dr. John Van Epp, who is the founder of Love Thinks and developer of multiple relationship education courses that have been taught to over a million people worldwide. I started traveling to conferences with him when I was in junior high and so, in many ways, it feels like I've grown up in the relationship education field. He's amazing and brilliant and I'm blessed to have learned so much from him over the years we worked together and just cherish our relationship.   I distinctly remember a conversation with my dad over 20 years ago where I said that someday I wanted to support women, but I just wasn't sure how.   Fast forward 10 years and Effie (our oldest) was born and, holy moly, did motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks and I completely lost myself in motherhood (you can read the full story in my book).

In a theological landscape that often softens sin into "brokenness," Episode 480 re-establishes the biblical category of sin as debt. Jesse Schwamb takes us into the house of Simon the Pharisee to analyze the Parable of the Two Debtors. The central argument is forensic: sin creates an objective liability against God's justice that no amount of human currency—tears, works, or religious heritage—can satisfy. We explore the critical distinction between the cause of justification (God's free grace) and the evidence of justification (love and repentance). This episode dismantles the self-righteous math of the Pharisee and points us to the only currency God accepts: the finished work of Christ. Key Takeaways Sin is Objective Debt: Sin is not merely a relational slight; it is a quantifiable liability on God's ledger that demands clearing. Universal Insolvency: Whether you owe 50 denarii (the moralist) or 500 denarii (the open sinner), the result is the same: total inability to pay. God Names the Claim: The debtor does not get to negotiate the terms of repayment; only the Creditor determines the acceptable currency. Love is Fruit, Not Root: The sinful woman's love was the evidence that she had been forgiven, not the payment to purchase forgiveness. The Danger of Horizontal Math: Simon's error was comparing his debt to the woman's, rather than comparing his assets to God's standard. Justification by Grace: Forgiveness is a free cancellation of the debt, based entirely on the benevolence of the Moneylender (God). Key Concepts The Definition of Money and Grace To understand Luke 7, we must understand money. Money is a system of credit accounts and their clearing. When we apply this to theology, we realize that "religious effort" is a currency that God does not accept. We are like travelers trying to pay a US debt with Zimbabwean dollars. The Gospel is the news that Christ has entered the market with the only currency that satisfies the Father—His own righteousness—and has cleared the accounts of those who are spiritually bankrupt. The Pharisee's Calculation Error Simon the Pharisee wasn't condemned because he wasn't a sinner; he was condemned because he thought his debt was manageable. He believed he had "surplus righteousness." This is the deadly error of legalism. By assuming he owed little, he loved little. He treated Jesus as a guest to be evaluated rather than a Savior to be worshipped. A low view of our own sin inevitably leads to a low view of Christ's glory. Evangelical Obedience The woman in the passage demonstrates what Reformed theologians call "evangelical obedience"—obedience that flows from faith and gratitude, not from a desire to earn merit. Her tears did not wash away her sins; the blood of Christ did that. Her tears were the overflow of a heart that realized the mortgage had been burned. We must never confuse the fruit of salvation with the root of salvation. Quotes Tears don't cancel the ledger. Christ does that. Tears are what debtors do when Mercy lands. Grace received produces love expressed. A creditor doesn't need to be convinced you did harm. The ledger already stands. Transcript [00:01:10] Welcome to The Reformed Brotherhood + Teasing the Parable [00:01:10] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 480 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse, and this is the podcast for those with ears to hear. Hey, brothers and sisters, how great is it that we have these incredible teachings of Jesus? Can we talk about that for a second? Tony and I have loved hanging out in these parables with you all, and Tony will be back next week. Don't you worry. But in the meantime, I've got another parable for us to consider, and I figured we would just get. Straight to the points, but I have to let you in in a little secret first, and that is not even Tony knows until he hears this, which parable I've selected for us to chat about. And I knew that there might come a time where I would be able to sneak in with this parable because I love. This parable, and I love it because it's so beautiful in communicating the full breadth and scope of the gospel of God's grace and his mercy for all of his children. And it just makes sense to me, and part of the reason why it makes so much sense to me is. The topic which is embedded in this is something that more or less I've kind of built my career around, and so it just resonates with me. It makes complete sense. I understand it inside and out. I feel a connection to what Jesus is saying here very predominantly because the topic at hand means so much to me, and I've seen it play out in the world over and over and over again. So if that wasn't enough buildup and you're not ready, I have no idea what will get you prepared, but we're going to go hang out in Luke chapter seven, and before I even give you a hint as to what this amazing, the really brief parable is, it does take a little bit of setup, but rather than me doing the setup. What do you say if we just go to the scriptures? Let's just let God's word set up the environment in which this parable is gonna unfold. And like a good movie or a good narrative, even as you hear this, you might be pulled in the direction of the topic that you know is coming. And so I say to you, wait for it. Wait for it is coming.  [00:03:20] Luke 7 Setup: Simon's Dinner & the "Sinful Woman" Arrives [00:03:20] Jesse Schwamb: So this is Luke's book, his gospel chapter seven, beginning in verse 36. Now one of the Pharisees was asking Jesus to eat with him, and Jesus entered the Pharisees house and reclined at the table. And behold, there was a woman in the city who was a sinner, and when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisees house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume. And standing behind him at his feet crying. She began to wet his feet with her tears, and she kept wiping them with her hair over her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with perfume. Now, in the Pharisee, who had invited him, saw this, he said to himself saying, if this man were, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner. Let's stop there for a second. So this incredible dinner party that Jesus attends and here is this woman. Well, all we're told is that she's a woman who's identified as a sinner. Clearly moved by the presence of Jesus clearly wanting to worship him in a very particular way. By the way, loved ones. Can we address the fact that this goes back to something Tony and I have been talking about, I dunno, for like seven episodes now, which is coming outta Luke chapter 15. This idea that sinners, the marginalized, the outcasts, the down and out, they were drawn to Jesus. Something about him, his presence, the power of his teaching drew them in, but in a way that invited vulnerability, this kind of overwhelming response to who he was. And what his mission was. And so here maybe is like any other occurrence that happened in Jesus' day, maybe like a million other accounts that are not recorded in the scriptures. But here's one for us to appreciate that. Here's this woman coming, and her response is to weep before him, and then with these tears, to use them to wash his feet and to anoint him with this precious perfume. Now, there's a lot of people at this dinner party. At least we're led to believe. There's many, and there's one Pharisee in particular whose home this was. It was Simon. And so out of this particular little vignette, there's so much we could probably talk about. But of course what we see here is that the Pharisee who invited him, Simon, he sees this going on. He does not address it verbally, but he has his own opinions, he's got thoughts and he's thinking them. And so out of all of that, then there's a pause. And I, I would imagine that if we were to find ourselves in that situation, maybe we'd be feeling the tension of this. It would be awkward, I think. And so here we have Jesus coming in and giving them this account, this parable, and I wanna read the parable in its entirety. It's very, very short, but it gives us a full sense of both. Like what's happening here? It's both what's happening, what's not happening, what's being. Presented plain for us to see what's below the surface that Jesus is going to reveal, which is both a reflection on Simon and a reflection on us as well. [00:06:18] The Two Debtors Parable (Read in Full) [00:06:18] Jesse Schwamb: So picking up in, in verse 40, and Jesus answered and said to him, Simon, I owe something to say to you. And he replied, say it, teacher a money lender had two debtors, one owned 500 in RI and the other 50. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more? Simon answered and said, I suppose the one who he graciously forgave more, and he said to him, you have judged correctly and turning toward the woman. He said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house? You gave me no water from my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with perfume. For this reason, I say to you her sins, which are many have been forgiven for. She loved much, but he who is forgiven, little loves little. Then he said to her, your sins have been forgiven, and those were reclining at the table. With him began to say to themselves, who is this man who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.  [00:07:42] What This Scene Teaches: Sin, Forgiveness, Love as Fruit [00:07:42] Jesse Schwamb: What a beautiful, tiny, deep, amazing instruction from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So in this just short 10 verses here, it's we're sitting inside. This dinner at Simon, the Pharisees house, and a woman known publicly only as a sinner, has shown some striking love toward Jesus, and Jesus explains her actions. Then through this mini parable of debt, two debtors, one creditor, neither can pay. Both are freely forgiven. Love flows. Then from that forgiveness. And so there's a lot within the reform theological spectrum here that helps us to really understand. I think the essential principles of what's going on here, and I just wanna hit on some of those and chat with you about those and hopefully encourage you in those as I'm trying to encourage myself. First, we get some sense about what sin really is like. We get a sense of the inability to cope with sin. We get the free forgiveness that's grounded in Christ, in Christ alone, and we get this idea of love and repentance as the fruit or the evidence, not the cause of justification. Now to set this whole thing up. [00:08:50] Why Talk About Money? Defining Money as Credit & Clearing [00:08:50] Jesse Schwamb: I do think it's so important for us to talk about money for a second, not money, like we're gonna have a budget talk, not what you spend on groceries or your vacation, not even what you do in terms of planning for your retirement or what you give to the church in way of tithe than offering none of that. I'm actually more interested to talk to you about money itself. One of the things I love to ask people. Especially when I was teaching students in money and finance is the question, what is money? And I bet you if you and I were hanging out across the kitchen table and I asked you, what is money? I'm guessing you would go in one or two directions. Either you would gimme examples of money, types of money. You might talk about the US dollar or the Zimbabwean dollar, or the Euro or the Yuan. That would be correct in a way, but really that's just symptomatic of money because that's just an example or a type of some money that you might use. And of course those definitions are not ubiquitous because if I take my US dollars and I go travel to see our Scott brothers and sisters, more than likely that money. That currency, those dollars will not be accepted in kind. There'd have to be some kind of translation because they're not acceptable in that parts of the world. That's true of most types of money. Or you might go to talking about precious metals and the price of gold or silver and how somehow these seem to be above and beyond the different types of currency or paper, currency in our communities and around our world. And of course, you'd be right as an example of a type of money, but. Gold itself, if you press on it, is not just money, it's describing as some kind of definition of what money is. The second direction you might take is you might describe for me all the things that money is like its attributes. Well, it must be accepted generally as a form of currency. It might must be used to discharge debt or to pay taxes, or it must have a store of value and be able to be used as a medium of exchange. And you would be correct about all of those things as well because. Probably, whether you know it or not, you're an expert in money because you have to use it in some way to transact in this lifetime. But even those are again, just attributes. It's not what money is in its essential first principle. So this is not like an economics lecture, I promise, but I think it is something that Jesus is actually truly drawing us to, and that is the best definition of money I can give, is money is a system of credit accounts and their clearing. It's a whole system of credit accounts and their clearing. So think of it like this, every time you need something from somebody else. Anytime you wanna buy something or you wanna sell something, what's happening there is somebody is creating a claim. So let's say that I go to the grocery store and I fill up the cart with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and meats, and I'm at the counter to check out. What I've just done is said that I have all of these things I would like to take from the grocery store, and now the grocery store has some kind of claim because they're handing them over to me and I need a way to settle that claim. And the way that I settle that claim is using money. It is the method that allows us to settle those transactions. And in my particular instance, it's going to be the US dollar, or maybe it's just ones and zeros electronically, of course representing US dollars. But in this case, the way I settle it is with money and a particular type of money. But, and I want you to keep this in mind 'cause we're gonna come back to it. This is my whole setup for this whole thing. The reason why this is important is because you have to have the type of money. That will settle the debt or settle the creditor. You have to have the thing itself that the creditor demands so that you can be a hundred percent released from the claim that they have on you. If you do not have exactly a. The type of money that they desire, then the debt will not be released. The creditor will not be satisfied. You will not go free, and that it's so critically important.  [00:12:52] Sin as Objective Debt: God Names the Claim [00:12:52] Jesse Schwamb: I think it's just like this really plain backdrop to what's happening here When Jesus addresses Simon with this whole parable. So he starts this whole idea by saying to Simon that he is something to say to him, which I think in a way is profound anyway, because Simon invites him to speak. But Jesus here is taking the initiative. Simon is the host. He socially, as it were, above this sinful woman. But Jesus becomes the true examiner of the heart in this parable. What we have is. Christ's word interrupts self-justifying narratives, and clearly there was a self-justifying narrative going on in Simon's head. We know this because we're privy to his thoughts in the text here. The gospel does not wait here for the Pharisee to figure it out, the gospel lovingly correct. Always goes in, always initiates, always intervenes as Christ intercedes. And here, before any accounting happens, Jesus sets the terms. God is the one who names the debt, not the debtor. And this really is probably the beating hearts, the center of gravity of this whole exchange. I love that Jesus goes to this parable. Of a money lender, a money lender who had two debtors, one owned, 500, one owned 50. Now of course, I would argue that really, you can put this in any currency, you can translate into modern terms, you can adjust it for inflation. It doesn't really matter. What we have here is one relatively small debt, another debt 10 times the size. So one small, one large, and that's the juxtaposition. That's the whole setup here. And I would submit to you something super important that Jesus does here, which flies in the face of a lot of kind of just general wishy-washy evangelicalism that teaches us somehow that sin is just not doing it quite right, or is just a little brokenness, or is just in some way just slightly suboptimal or missing the mark. It is those things, but it is not the entirety of those things because what's clear here is that Jesus frames sin as debt. In other words, it's an objective liability. A liability is just simply something of value that you owe to somebody else. And I am going to presume that almost everybody within an earshot of my voice here all over the world has at some point incurred debt. And I think there's, there's lots of great and productive reasons to incur debt. Debt itself is not pejorative. That would be a whole nother podcast. We could talk about. Maybe Tony and I sometime, but. What is true is that debt is an objective liability. The amounts differ, but both are genuinely in the red here. And what's critical about this is that because debt is this objective reality, whenever you enter into an arrangement of debt, let's say that you borrow some money to purchase a car or home or simply to make some kind of purchase in your life, that's unsecured debt. In all of those cases, the. The one lending you the money, the creditor now has a claim on you. What's important to understand here is that this kind of thing changes it. It provides way more color and contrast to really the effects of what sin is and what sin does in its natural accountability. And so in this way we have this nuance that there are differences in outward sin and its social consequences. That is for sure that's how life works, but all sin is ultimately against God and makes us debtors to divine justice. That is now God has a claim against us. And this shouldn't make sense because unless we are able to satisfy that claim, all have that claim against them all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And as a result of this, it's not just that we somehow have lived a way that is just slightly off the mark and suboptimal, but instead that we've heaped up or accumulated for ourselves an objective liability, which is truly. Owed to God and because it is truly owed him, he's the one who can only truly satisfy it. This is why the scripture speak of God as being both just and justifier. That is a just creditor ensures that the debt is paid before it is released, and the one who is justifier is the one who pays that debt to ensure it will be released. God does both of these things through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Praise be to his name. So here we have a really true understanding. Of what sin is. There's no mincing of words here. There's a ubiquity in all of our worlds about money lending and borrowing, and Christ leans into that heavily. We know for a fact that the ancient Mesopotamians learned how to calculate interests before they figured out to put wheels on car. And so this idea of lending and borrowing and indebtedness, this whole concept has an ancient pedigree, and Jesus leans into this. And so we have this really lovely and timeless example of drawing in the spiritual state into the very physical or financial state to help us understand truly what it means when we incur sin. Sin is not easily discharged, and just like debt, it stands over us, has a claim on us, and we need somebody to satisfy that claim on our behalf. By the way, this gets me back to this reoccurring theme of we need the right currency, we need the right money, as it were to satisfy this debt only that which is acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Our Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit is what will be acceptable in payment in full for this kind of debt. And so that's again, this whole setup, it's the spiritual realm being immediately kind of dragged into this corporal reality of the balance sheet, assets and liabilities, things of value that we owe to someone else. [00:18:50] Unable to Repay: Free Cancellation, Justification by Grace [00:18:50] Jesse Schwamb: Notice in Luke verse 42, that the reason why it's important to understand the full ferocity, the ferocious of sin and the weight of the debt that it incurs upon us, is that it cannot be repaid no matter what. So look at both of these borrowers. Neither could repay. Neither could repay. So think about that for a second. It doesn't even matter how much they owed. Both were way beyond their ability. It's not merely they didn't want to, but they didn't have the resources in the spiritual state. In other words, there was no surplus righteousness to pay God back and the creditor's action here is free cancellation grace, not a negotiated settlement, but free cancellation. So whether it was 50 or 500, it was irrelevant to the fact that these borrowers just like you and I, have nothing within our means, our wherewithal to actually satisfy the this cosmic debt that we have rightfully incurred against God. And so you should be hearing this align so closely with justification By Grace, God doesn't forgive because we eventually scraped together payment. He forgives because he's gracious and in the full biblical picture because Christ pays and bears that penalty. So this isn't, we have somehow, as you've heard, sometimes in kinda very again, wishy-washy, evangelical ways that we've somehow come forward at the right time. To receive from God some kind of gift or that we've somehow elevated ourself to the place of the deserving poor, or that we come with our own extended arms, empty, but outstretched so that we might receive something from God, in part because we make ourselves present before him, not loved ones. It's far better than that. It's not being able to pay and Christ saying, come and buy. Not being able to put food on the table and him saying, come and eat. It's him saying, you who are thirsty, come and drink from the fountain of life freely and unreservedly. Not because you have some way deserved it, because in fact you desperately do not. And because God has made a way in Christ a way that we could not make for ourselves, he's paid a debt that we just could not repay. It doesn't matter what it is that you think is outstanding against you. The fact of the matter is you cannot repay it. And so of course, that's why Paul writes in Ephesians, it's by grace through faith and not by works that you've been set free in the love of the Kingdom of Christ, that all of these things have been given to you by God because he loves you and because he's made a way for you. You may remember that when Tony and I spent some time in the Lord's Prayer. That we really settled, we sunk down into what we thought was the best translation of that portion where we come to forgiving debts and forgiving debtors, and we settled on that one because we feel it's the most accurate representation of the actual language there in the text. But two, because that language also comports with all this other teaching of Jesus, this teaching that. Emphasizes the debt nature of sin, and that when we think about the fact that we in fact have a giant loan or a lease or an outstanding obligation, something that has been that our souls ourselves in a way have been mortgaged. And we need a freedom that breaks that mortgage, that wants to take that paper and to satisfy the payment and then to throw it into the fire so that it's gone and no more upon us. That because of all of that, it's appropriate for us to pray that we be forgiven our debts, and that, that we, when we understand that there's been a great debt upon us, that we are willing to look at others and forgive our debtors as well. And so you'll see that in, I'd say it looks like verse 43 here, Simon answers. Jesus question appropriately. Jesus basically pegs him with this very simple, straightforward, and probably really only one answer question, which is, which one do you think loved the creditor more? Which of these borrowers was more ecstatic, which appreciated what had been done more? And of course he says, well, the one with the larger debt, that that seems absolutely obvious. And Jesus essentially here gets Simon to pronounce judgment and then turns that judgment into a mirror. This is brilliantly what Jesus often does with these parables, and to be honest, loved ones. I think he still is doing that today with us. Even those of us who are familiar with these parables, they're always being turned into a mirror so that when we look into the, the text we see ourselves, but like maybe whatever the opposite of like the picture of the Dorian Gray is like, well, maybe it's the same as the picture. You know, this idea that we're seeing the ugliness of ourselves in the beauty of Christ as he's presenting the gospel in this passage. And the issue of course here is not whether you and I or Simon can do math. It's whether Simon will accept the implication and you and I as well, that we are a debtor who cannot repay. That. That's just the reality of the situation.  [00:23:44] The Mirror Turns: Simon's Little Love vs Her Overflowing Gratitude [00:23:44] Jesse Schwamb: And so Jesus turns then, and this is remarkable, he turns toward the woman and he compares her actions with Simon's lack of hospitality, speaking to Simon while he stares intently at the woman. I mean, the drama unfolding in this quick small little passage is exceptional. It's extraordinary. And unlike some of the. Other teachings that we've already looked at here, there is something where Jesus is teaching and acting at the same time. That is the scripture is giving us some direct indication of his movements, of his direction, of his attentional focus. And here there's an attentional focus on the woman while he speaks to Simon the Pharisee. And first what we find is Jesus dignifies the woman by addressing Simon about her while looking at her. He makes the sinner central and the respectable man answerable. That's wild. And there's an angle here that still leads us back to debt, which is Simon behaves like someone who thinks that he is little debt. So he offers little love and the woman behaves like someone who knows she's been rescued from insolvency, and so she pours out gratitude. And then there's a whole host, a little list here, a litany of things that Jesus essentially accuses Simon of directly and pulls them back into this proper understanding of the outpouring of affection. That is a fruit of justification exemplified in the woman's behavior. For instance, Simon gave no kiss, and yet here's this woman. She has not stopped kissing Jesus' feet and then wiping her feet, washing his feet with her tears.  [00:25:19] Grace Received, Love Expressed (Not Earned) [00:25:19] Jesse Schwamb: Of course, in that culture, Simon withheld this ordinary honor and the woman lavish is extraordinary affection. You know, we would often call this an reformed theology, evangelical obedience. It's the kind that flows from faith and gratitude, not a plan to earn acceptance. And this is tough for us, loved ones because we want to conflate these two. It's easy to conflate these two, and we're well-meaning sometimes when we do that. But we have to be careful in understanding that there is an appropriate response of loving worship to one who has set you free. While at the same time understanding that that loving worship never should spill over and, and into any kind of self-proclaimed pride or meritorious earning. And this woman apparently does this so exceptionally well that Jesus calls it out, that all of this is flowing from her faith and her gratitude. Jesus says, Simon didn't anoint his head with oil and she anoints his feet with perfume again. Notice some really interesting juxtaposition in terms of the top and the bottom of the body here. Here's this woman's costly act, underscoring a pattern, grace received, produces love expressed. I love thinking of it that way. Grace, perceived, excuse me, grace received produces love expressed.  [00:26:39] Sin as Crushing Debt: Why It Must Be Paid [00:26:39] Jesse Schwamb: That is the point that Jesus is driving to here, that if we understand the gospel and the gospel tells us that there is a law. That we have transgressed and that this law has accumulated in all of this debt that we cannot pay. And so the weight of this means not just that, oh, it's, it's so hard to have debt in our lives. Oh, it's so annoying and inconvenient. No, instead it's oppressive. This debt itself, this grand burden is over our heads, pushing down on our necks, weighting us down in every way, and especially in the spiritual realm. And because of this, we would be without hope, unless there was one who could come and release us from this debt. And the releasing of this debt has to be, again, an A currency acceptable to the debtor, and it has to actually be paid. There's no wiping away. There's no just amnesty for the sake of absolve. Instead, it must be satisfied. And the woman here has received this kind of extraordinary grace has acknowledged, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, through opened eyes and unstopped ears and a clean heart, has been able to understand the severity of the situation. And then this produces in her love expressed, which again is not the means of her justification, but certainly is one of the fruit of it. And Jesus explains then the reason for her response.  [00:27:58] Forgiveness First: Clearing Up Luke 7's Logic [00:27:58] Jesse Schwamb: The reason why Grace received produces love expressed is because she and her many sins have been forgiven. Hence, her love is great, love the one forgiven, little forgives little. I think sometimes that verse is often misunderstood as if. Her love caused her forgiveness. But again, we want to hear clearly from Jesus on this. The logic he gives is forgiveness, leading to love. Love is evidence or fruits. And so her love is the sign that forgiveness has already been granted and is truly possessed, not the purchase price. And Simon's Lovelessness exposes a heart still clinging to self-righteousness, acting like a small debtor who doesn't even need mercy, like one who doesn't understand that they will never, ever be able to repay the thing that is over them. You know, I love that John Val is often quoted along the lines of something like this. Those forgiven much will love much. And in his writing to me, he captures so much of this moral psychology of grace and I think there is a psychology of grace here. There is a reasonable response. That moves us by the power of the Holy Spirit, from deep within this renewal of the man, such that we express our love to God in all kinds of ways. I think especially in our age, on the Lord's day, in acts of singing through worship and meditation, through worship, and listening through worship and application, through worship, all of these means in particular as our expression of what it means to have been received, having received grace, producing a loving response. [00:29:36] "Your Sins Are Forgiven": Jesus' Divine Authority [00:29:36] Jesse Schwamb: I love that all of this ends as it draws to a close. Jesus speaks these incredible words. He tells her that her sins are forgiven. You know, notice here that Christ speaks an authoritative verdict. This is justifying speech. It's God's court declaration. It's not some like mere the therapeutic. Like reassurance here. It's not like whistling in the dark. It's Jesus himself saying This woman has been forgiven. Blessed is the one whose sins are forgiven. And of course, like so many other times in Jesus' ministry, and I have to imagine by the way, loved ones that this question got asked all the time, and not just on the occasion in which it was a court of us in scripture, but the other guests ask the right question and that question is. Who is this? Who even forgives sins, and that is the right question. Only God can forgive sins against God. Jesus is implicitly claiming divine authority. Now, we finally arrived. This is God's currency. This is the currency or the money, so to speak, that is desperately needed, the only one acceptable to discharge the debt, the cosmic treason that has been done against God himself. So because of that, here's Jesus making the claim that the way that you are led out, the way that you are set free is through me. So even here in the course of just this confronting Simon speaking about sin, he's also providing the way he's saying, I am this way, I am this truth. I am this life. Come through me. [00:31:14] Jesus the Greater Moses: The Gospel as Exodus [00:31:14] Jesse Schwamb: What I find amazing about this is in the beginning. With Adam and Eve, they transgress God's law. And from that day in all days forth, we have been building this massive sin, debt that we cannot repay. And part of the, the repercussions of that debt were for Adam and Eve to be driven to be Exodus as it were, out of the garden. And ever since then, the grand narrative of the redemptive history of God's people has been an exodus instead. Not out of what is idyllic, not out of perfection, but instead. Out of sin, out of bondage, out of sin and death and the devil and the deaths that we have incurred. And so here we have Jesus representing. He is the, the new and better Moses, he is the exodus, so to speak, who comes and grabs us by the hand almost as in the same way that the angelic representations in the story of la. And Sonor grabbed his hand to pull him, maybe even kicking him, screaming. Out of that sinful place, into the glorious light, into safety and security out from underneath this grand debt that we cannot repay. I think of Jesus's acal meeting with Moses and Elijah on the mounts of transfiguration. That's also in Luke, right? And Luke tells us that they spoke of his deceased, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. And the word deceased there literally means Exodus. In Jesus, God would affect an infinitely greater deliverance than he had under Moses. And then interestingly, we see that even in all the way back in Psalm 23, you know David, he's writing as a rescue sinner who has been brought out. Brought to the Heavenly Shepherd, into the security and freedom of a sheep hold in love ones I submit to you. That is what Jesus is after here. He's after it in your life and he's after in mind that there is death, and he wants to take us out from underneath that debt by paying it off that he is the rescuer, the one who is just and justifier that he's the greater Moses, and that he leads us into Exodus. So we are transferred into the kingdom of a light. And that kingdom of light is also a kingdom of lightness in the sense that what was once a burden on our back, like it was for Pilgrim, has now been taken off. And so we are free. In that freedom, in that financial freedom, in that spiritual freedom as it were, to use both of the sides of this metaphor. What we find is our response is appropriately one of worship, that we weep and we cry for who we were, that we rejoice for who God is, and that we come proudly into His kingdom because of what he has done. And this changes us. It messes us up. You know, I think we've said before that. The joy of the Christian life of Christian lives is that the transformation process that God undertakes in each of us is very different, and some honestly are more dramatic than others. But what I think is always dramatic is one, the scripture tells us that it is a miracle. That even one would be saved. So hardhearted are we, and again, so great this debt against us that when God intervenes all get what they deserve. But some get mercy. And if we have been the ones who have received mercy, how joyful ought we to be toward the one who has granted it to us? And so here we have Christ, the the one who delivers, the one who leads out, the one who pays off, the one who pays it all.  [00:34:45] Behold the Cross: What Sin Costs, What Love Pays [00:34:45] Jesse Schwamb: I think what's clear is that the cross gives us this sense when we look upon it of just how deep and dark and heavy sin is, and that there is no easy way out of it. That what we find is that sin constantly wants to drag us down. It constantly wants to take us farther than we wanted to go, and it certainly costs us way more than we were willing to pay. So I think if we come and we behold the wood, if we behold the nails, if we look on this crown pressed into the brow that knew no guilt or disobedience, if we, not in our mind's eye, but by faith, behold, the hands that open, the blind eyes now being opened by iron. If we see the feet. Walked toward the hurting, now fixed in place for the healing of the world. If we look at the thirst of the one who is living water and the hunger of the one who is the bread of life, we ought to see the one who here, even in this passage, is just and justifier, and he invites us to say with him, come witness the death of death in the death of Jesus Christ. That is the glorious mission, right? As as, um, Horatio Spafford said, my sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Oh my soul of ones. This is the beauty of, I think of what Jesus is, is teaching here. It's the lamb. It's the one promise on the mountain provided in place of Isaac. It's the Passover marked with Crimson death passing over doors that were covered. Here's the suffering. Servant despised and rejected a man of sorrows. Who here is one who is truly well acquainted with grief? When we see Jesus lifted up, lifted up on the cross, lifted up between heaven and earth. Here the instrument of exalted torment but also unexpected triumph, the perfect God man, lifted up between earth and heaven, lifted up in shame so that we might be lifted up in grace, lifted up in cursing. We might be lifted up in blessing lifted up in Forsakenness so that we might be lifted up in divine communion with God the father lifted up to be stared at as he presents himself here, so that we could finally see what sin costs and what love pays. That is everything that he's teaching us in this passage, and I hope that you are as encouraged about this as I am because. When I think about the gospel framed in this way with the full severity of its repercussions, thinking about sin as debt objectively as a liability, that must be satisfied. My heart is instantly warmed, and I think the warming of that is not because this manufactured some kind of sentimentality around this, but there is something about this that's so resonant to me that in my professional career, in my business, I'm intimately familiar with, with debt and understanding how to manage it, but also the dangers of it. And what a liability it truly is. And so when I hear that sin not just is like this, but is this way, it makes complete sense to me and I see that this is really the, the true way that we ought to understand, I think the gospel message.  [00:38:18] Key Takeaways: Debt, Currency, and Canceling the Ledger [00:38:18] Jesse Schwamb: So here's what we should remember. Debt highlights objective guilt. I think I've said that a bunch of times and I just feel like it's, it bears repeating one last time. Sin is not only damage, it is consequences, but it's also a liability. A creditor doesn't need to be convinced you did harm. The ledger already stands and the ledger against us is not on our side. Loved ones. We are deeply in the red, and it really doesn't matter what the balance is because we just cannot repay. So it's really about our lack of ability, our inability, the no, we have no capability to pay this, and so it doesn't matter. We find ourselves in a place of hopelessness no matter what, and this debt highlights that inability none of these particular borrowers could repay. It's devastating to moral pride. We lean on this in our reform theological perspective. Even our best works can't erase guilt or generate merit sufficient to square the accounts. It's impossible. It's impossible with two ways, and this is some, I think really like the beautiful nuance of what Jesus after here in the one way that we are enabled to do this. Is because we just actually cannot earn enough. So in other words, the debt is too big. So think of the biggest number in your head that you could possibly think of, and that's at least minimally the outstanding debt. But then think about this. You don't even have the right currency. So you might find that you spend your entire lifetime working to the bone. It's like finding out that you have a million dollar loan or lien against you, and you work hard all your life, 50, 60, 70 years. And finally, on your deathbed, you've assembled enough cash with all of your savings to put toward and finally satisfy. So you might die in peace with this $1 million free and clear from your account, and you turn over the money and the creditor says, what is this currency? I won't accept this. I can't accept this. How debilitating. So it's not even the size of the debt. It's also that we don't have, we cannot earn the right currency. Only. God. God. I think this debt also highlights grace as cancellation. Forgiveness is not God pretending the debt doesn't exist. It is God releasing the debtor. This is him in triumph, being the greater Moses who walks us out through the waters outside of the city into the glorious light and the broader New Testament explains how God can do that justly. The charge is dealt with through Christ. You can go check out Colossians two. Read the whole thing of Love it. It's fantastic. I think lastly, this debt explains love, as shall we say, like a downstream effect. People love a little when they imagine that they have little needs and people love much when they were spiritually bankrupt and then freely pardoned freely in that it didn't cost you and I anything, but of course it cost our Lord and Savior everything, and so. In this way, our hopes to frame the fact that our love should be an outpouring of gratitude, uh, for the grace that God has given us through Jesus Christ.  [00:41:28] Putting It Into Practice: Don't Compare Debts, Watch for "Simon Symptoms" [00:41:28] Jesse Schwamb: Here's some things I would say that we should all walk away with to help us then both process what we've talked about here, and also put some of this into action. First thing would be, don't measure your need by comparing debts horizontally. That's a fool's errand, whether 50 or 500. The point is we cannot pay. And this levels the Pharisee and the prostitute alike. That is like Tony talked about elsewhere in the previous Luke 15, where we're talking about the PR prodigal of the father, the prodigal of the two lost sons. How there's like a great insult against the Pharisee there. And here's the insult, it's also a little bit cutting to us, and again, that the Pharisee and the prostitute are alike. Can't repay. It Doesn't matter what debt you think you have in the corporal sense, or again in this horizontal means, but you cannot repay it. And so therefore, guess what? We're all like, we need to let forgiveness lead and we need to let love follow. If you reverse that order like I'll love so I can be forgiven. You crush assurance and you turn the gospel into wages and that's again exactly I think what Jesus is against in this. He's making that very clear. The, the beauty of the gospel is this receiving that Christ has done all these things that we, uh, find ourselves by his arresting, by again, his intervening by his coming forward. He does all this on our behalf. You've heard me say before, I always like take that old phrase, what would Jesus do? That question that was on everybody's bracelets and everybody's minds and what, two decades ago? And turn that answer into what would Jesus do? Everything And it's already done. We need to watch for Simon symptoms. That's my clever way of saying this, like low love, high judgment. A chilly heart toward Christ often signals a warm heart towards self justification. And so we wanna be about the kind of people that are closely king, clinging to Jesus Christ as all of our hope and stay that the strength for today and hope for tomorrow comes from what Christ has already accomplished on our behalf. And therefore, there is a dutiful and meaningful and appropriate response for us. But that response again, is not obedience for merit. It is obedience out of warm heartedness for our savior. And for a sincere repentance because a sincere repentance is not payment. It's agreement with God about the debt. Tears, don't cancel the ledger. Christ does that. Tears are what debtors do when Mercy lands, and I think in some way the challenge here is that have we really meditated on the life of this woman and then more personally on our own experiences on what it means to be saved? Well, I'm not asking you to get yourself worked up into an emotional state, but what I am asking all of us to do is. Have we spent enough time recently meditating on what it means that Christ has set us free, that we are incredible debtors, and that Christ in our own ledger in this way hasn't just wiped out the debt, but he's filled up the account with righteousness. And so we can exchange these horrible soiled garments for garments of praise. Now, have we thought about that recently? The call here is to be reminded. That sincere repentance is an agreement with God about the debt, and in that agreement we're sensing that weight. There should be a response.  [00:44:42] Final Charge + Community & Support (Telegram / Patreon) [00:44:42] Jesse Schwamb: So I leave it to you loved ones, you've heard it here, or at least you've heard me talk for a little while about this parable. And maybe one day, maybe there'll be an episode one day about Tony's perspective on this, which I can't imagine will be too much different. But again, I saw my opportunity, loved ones. I said, oh, I'm gonna sneak in hard on this one because this one is particularly meaningful and special to me, and I hope that even though it involved a little bit of economics and maybe a lot of finance, that it didn't lose its resonance with you. I think this is the great weight of the way in which Jesus teaches that he's not just using practical means. But he's using these things to give greater weight and flesh, as it were, to these concepts of a spiritual nature that sometimes feel ephemeral. Instead, he wants them to sink in heaviness upon us. And I wanna be clear that. This whole parable is both law and gospel. It is the weightiness and the sharp edge knife of the law which cuts against us. And Jesus throwing his weight around literally at this dinner party and in this parable, and you and I should feel that weight. It should knock us around a little bit. And then. And then comes the reminder that there is good news and that good news, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, is that he has made a way that the debt that was incurred against us, that we ourselves added to, that we continue to want to try to borrow against, that Jesus has, in fact paid that debt in full and that he's done so in the currency of his own flesh and blood and his own passive and active obedience so that it may be paid in full. It's true what the hymn says. Jesus paid it all, all to him. I owe. So I hope loved ones that you'll be encouraged with that message that it is both law and gospel, but it ends in this high and elevated state, which is we have been made together alive with Christ for his own sake, for his glory, and for our good. So now that you know that go out into the world and live that way, meditate on that, enjoy that. Talk about it with a family member or a brother and sister, or you can talk about it with us. You didn't think that we'd get this far without me even a plug for telegram, did you? So if you. Haven't listened to us before, or if this is your 480th time, I say welcome and also come hang, hang out with us online. You can do that by going to your browser and putting in there. T me slash reformed brotherhood. T. Dummy slash reformed brotherhood, and that will take you to a little app called Telegram, which is just a messaging app. And we have a closed community in there, which you can preview and then become a part of. And there's lots of lovely brothers, sisters from all over the world interacting, talking about the conversations we're having here, sharing prayer requests, sharing memes, talking about life tasting foods on video. It's really. Absolutely delightful, and I know you want to be a part of it, so come hang out. It's one other thing you can do. If at any point you felt like this podcast, the conversations have been a blessing to you, may I ask a favor, something at least for you to consider, and that is there are all kinds of expenses to make sure that this thing keeps going on. Keeps going strong. And there are brothers and sisters who after they've satisfied their financial obligations, have said, I want to give a little bit to that. So if you've been blessed, I'm what I can I boldly ask that you might consider that it's so many people giving so many tiny little gifts because all of these things compound for God's glory in the kingdom. And if you're interested in giving to us one time or reoccurring, here's a website for you to check out. It's patreon.com. Reform Brotherhood, P-A-T-R-E-O n.com, reform slash reform brotherhood. Go check that out. Alright, that's it. Loved ones, you know what to do. Until next time, honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. 

A Prayer to Be Slow to Anger with Rachael Adams What happens when our protective instincts override our Christian witness?In this episode by Rachael Adams, we explore the tension between righteous anger and sinful reactions through a relatable story from the sidelines of a semi-state football championship game.Through biblical examples of Jesus’ indignation and practical wisdom from Scripture, we learn how to channel frustration into constructive action rather than destructive reactions. Reference: Psalm 145:8 Prayer: Father, thank you for being slow to anger when you have every reason to be irritated and aggravated with me. Forgive me for losing my temper so easily. If I get upset, may it be over an injustice where through your Holy Spirit spirit, I can find a loving solution. May my emotions not destroy relationships, but help all of us who aim to follow in your footsteps to pursue righteousness at all times. In Jesus' name, amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Games and sports aren't real life, but they often give a pretty accurate picture of how we can choose to face life. Imagine that your profession is on a national stage. You have the ball with less than two minutes to go, and your team is behind. Standing behind center and looking out at the defense, how many of us could even think? Then, imagine throwing the ball with any kind of accuracy, knowing you have to win the game.Most of us would be scared to death!Psalm 23:4 tells us, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”When we believe in something greater than ourselves—whether a close-knit team or better yet, the God of the universe—fear tends to leave. Just leave. Get away from me! If you are feeling terrible pressure right now and don't know what to do, stop what you're doing and get by yourself. Pray to the Lord that He will help you and show you the way.That's the true path to victory, and the best way to assure the win. Let's pray.Lord, we can't do it by ourselves. We need your Spirit in us and your strength every second of every day. Thank you for never leaving us. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

Are You a Part of What God Is Doing in Our Country Today? Do You Seek God's Presence in Your Life? MESSAGE SUMMARY: Can you tell what God is up to in the World, in our time, in our church, and in America? Are you a part of what God is doing in the world today, or are you just reacting to what God is doing, thereby, creating conflict and division? Psalms 105 reminds you of God's power in the world if you do seek His presence in your life: “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered.". On the other hand, Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, warns you of the implications for not including the presence of Jesus in your worldly considerations: “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”. While the Lord is leading, and directing, it seems that we are wrapped up in our agenda and our way of doing things; therefore, we miss God's presence; and we miss the Holy Spirit in our lives.      TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, everything in me resists following you into the garden of Gethsemane to fall on my face to the ground before you. Grant me the courage to follow you all the way to the cross, whatever that might mean for my life. And then, by your grace, lead me to resurrection life and power. In Jesus' name, amen.   Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 100). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, Because of who I am in Jesus Christ, I will not be driven by Loneliness. Rather, I will abide in the Lord's Presence. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Matthew 5:6; Matthew 5:10; Psalms 112:1-6; Psalms 119b:13-24. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 4 – One God, Not Three”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

February 16, 2026Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily LifeThe Revelation 16:17I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.If you would like to revisit today's Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. Please follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church 

Discipline Over DesireScripture: Galatians 5:17—“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…”Many believers struggle, not for lack of love for God, but for living by desire instead of discipline. They pray when they feel like it. They read Scripture when they're inspired. They obey when it's convenient. But discipline says, “I will do what strengthens my spirit even when my flesh resists.”Accept Jesus Today: https://youtube.com/shorts/bIwAUlz7Kg4?si=BNOhv44iLWIR4eVJIf you would like to accept Jesus into your heart today, pray this simple prayer:****God, I have sinned against You. I believe that Jesus is Your Son, who died and rose for my sake. I ask you to forgive me for my sin. I place my trust in You for salvation. I receive you as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name, I am forgiven! Amen!"****Congratulations! You are now a child of the most high. John 1:12 says, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. If you just prayed this prayer to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, I welcome you to the family of God. Subscribe to my channel and type in the comments right now, “I just prayed that prayer.” I would love to connect with you and chat with you about all the amazing things God is doing in your life.Click here for FREE eBook Download: https://tinyurl.com/ISAIDTHEPRAYERShow your love, support the channel:*PayPal: PayPal.me/malachimitchellministry*Cashapp: https://cash.app/$MalachiMitchNote Journals and Puzzles: https://tinyurl.com/WalkinFaithPublishingAuthored Books: https://tinyurl.com/BooksofMalachiJoin Our Support Club: https://tinyurl.com/Support-ClubInvesting Opportunity: https://coinholders.hnocoin.com/signup/?refer=Malachi2uFREE Ways to Support Me:

What are you gazing at—and what are you only glancing at? In 2 Corinthians 3:1–18, Paul shows us how real change happens: not through self-effort, religious performance, or trying to prove ourselves, but through beholding the glory of God with an unveiled face. In Jesus, the veil is removed and we come face to face with God, and that encounter transforms us from one degree of glory to another. This message explores how the face of God gives us hope, boldness, and freedom as we live under the New Covenant of the Spirit.For more information about Integrity Church, visit our website, http://liveintegritychurch.org Connect with us on social media throughout the week to stay up to date on events and things happening at Integrity! Instagram: @integrity_church Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveintegrity/

In Exodus 22, God reveals His fierce wrath and His tender compassion. He judges evil, defends the vulnerable, and promises to hear their cries. In Jesus, we see these perfectly come together at the cross—God's wrath poured out against sin and mercy extended to sinners.

When Jesus Asked You: “Whom do you say that I am?”, Did You Answer Jesus: “You are my God and the Lord of my Life!”?  MESSAGE SUMMARY: The stories of the New Testament tell us that Jesus was no ordinary man. The Apostle John, in John 1:1-5, points out that Jesus, the Word, was the Creator of the Universe: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.". John tells us that Jesus had authority over nature, over creation, and over life itself, and he tells us that Jesus was the life-giver that came to earth for us. In John 20:26-29, Jesus asked the Apostle Thomas a fundamental question that Jesus asks you today– “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me?'”: “Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.' Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'”. When Jesus has asked you: “Whom do you say that I am?”, and how did you answer? Did you tell Jesus: “You are my God and the Lord of my Life!”? Have you, in your life, become a Jesus Follower? If not, why not?   TODAY'S PRAYER: Keeping the Sabbath, Lord, will require a lot of changes in the way I am living life. Teach me, Lord, how to take the next step with this in a way that fits my unique personality and situation. Help me to trust you with all that will remain unfinished and to enjoy my humble place in your very large world. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 129). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM FORGIVEN. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): John 1:1-18; Isaiah 7:2-14; Matthew 1:21-24; Psalms 67:1-7. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 4 – One God, Not Three” at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/    DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

Listen to Him – Matthew 17:1–91. We Live in a Noisy WorldMany voices compete for our attention.God's voice cuts through the noise:“This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”2. The Mountain Reveals Who Jesus IsOn the mountain, the disciples see Christ's glory.The One who shines in light is the same One who stepped into the water with us.Fully divine. Fully human. Close to us.3. Mountaintop Moments MatterWe all experience moments of clarity and grace.In worship. In prayer. In love. In creation.These moments are not escapes.They are maps for when life feels foggy.4. The Mountain Is Not the DestinationJesus leads the disciples back down.Following Him means moving toward real life.Toward need. Toward suffering. Toward the cross.5. Lent Is a Season of ListeningQuiet the other voices.Refocus your heart.Hear again Christ's invitation:“Follow me. Do not be afraid.”Remember This:The God of the mountaintop is not distant.In Jesus, God is right here.As close as your breath.Listen to Him.

A dying person's last words – be their words of bitterness, fear, hope, or more – often reveal to us how that person lived. In Jesus' last words, he not only reminded us of how he lived but how we should live as well. Join us at Faith Covenant Church as we explore Jesus' famous last words and discover how in his dying, Jesus showed us how to live.

Essentials Part 4 – One God, Not Three MESSAGE SUMMARY: In our exploration of the Trinity, we delve into one of Christianity's most profound mysteries. While the word 'Trinity' doesn't appear in the Bible, it's a concept deeply rooted in Scripture. We learn that God is one in unity, not plurality, yet reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This understanding challenges us to embrace the complexity of God's nature. The Old Testament gives us glimpses of this triune nature, even as it emphasizes monotheism. In the New Testament, we see Jesus baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, solidifying this trinitarian view. As we contemplate this, we're invited to marvel at God's vastness and intimacy simultaneously. How might this understanding of God as three-in-one impact our daily walk of faith and our approach to worship?   TODAY'S PRAYER: Keeping the Sabbath, Lord, will require a lot of changes in the way I am living life. Teach me, Lord, how to take the next step with this in a way that fits my unique personality and situation. Help me to trust you with all that will remain unfinished and to enjoy my humble place in your very large world. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 129). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM FORGIVEN. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Ephesians 1:13; 2 Corinthians 1:22; Matthew 12:31; Ephesians 4:30-32; Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:26. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. WEBSITE LINK TO DR. BEACH'S DAILY DEVOTIONAL – “When Jesus Asked You: “Whom do you say that I am?”, Did You Answer Jesus: “You are my God and the Lord of my Life!”?”: https://awordfromthelord.org/devotional/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

But God! Ephesians 2:1-10 by William Klock Earlier this week Veronica and I watched an episode of the X Files that unintentionally had some pretty sound theology embedded in the story.  Agents Mulder and Scully were called to investigate some strange goings-on in a small town—as usual.  As it turned out, a guy cleaning out an abandoned storage locker found a genie.  And the genie gave him three wishes.  As you would expect, it didn't go well.  He wished to be able to make himself invisible so that he could spy on people.  And not being terribly bright, he prompted got killed crossing the street, because he was…invisible.  His brother claimed the genie and didn't fare any better.  His wish ended up blowing up his house with him in it.  And so Mulder ended up, unexpectedly, with the genie and three wishes.  And he asked the genie why the wishing thing always ends in disaster and the genie told him that it's because people are stupid and selfish.  So Mulder thought long and hard and in his best effort at altruism, he wished for world peace.  St. Paul would call it shalom.  And he went outside to discover that he was the only person left on earth.  Because the genie knew fallen human nature and getting rid of all of us was the only way to bring world peace.  Thankfully, Mulder had two more wishes so he could undo the first and set the genie free with the third. And I thought that St. Paul would probably have a bit of a chuckle at that.  Because Paul knew the same thing the genie knew: we are all sinners, idolaters who worship anything and everything but the God who created us and loves us.  And, like Agent Mulder, but unlike the genie, Paul also knew that there is no shalom without human beings in our rightful place.  Creation groans in eager longing for the day God will finally set us to rights, he says in Romans, Creation waits for the day when God restores us to our position as his stewards, to rule creation and to serve him in his temple.  That, Brothers and Sisters, is shalom, peace.  Creation can never be complete without us in our proper place—filling the vocation God created us for in the first place.  That's why God doesn't just “Deal with evil” like so many people want him to.  Like the genie, he'd just have to remove us all from creation—and that's not how creation is supposed to be.  This is why Paul practically shouts out ho de Theos, at the beginning of Ephesians 2:4: “But God!”  Because he knew that in setting creation to rights, God can and will, first, set us and our fallen, sinful hearts to rights—something no genie could ever do. And so far, in Ephesians 1, Paul has begun with a great shout of praise for what God has done in Jesus the Messiah and then he's told the Ephesians how he prays for them—that they would know, that they would understand this great story of redemption, the power behind it to renew creation, so that they can be part of this story that ends with the knowledge of the glory of God filling the earth.  Remember at the end of chapter one, closing his prayer for them, he wrote about the church, united with Jesus and full of the Spirit being the “fullness of the one who fills all in all.”  It's a prayer that God, that Jesus, that the Spirit, that the scriptures would form and shape them and truly make them the church.  And while we might miss the significance of Paul's language of filling and fullness and being all in all, it was not lost on the Ephesians.  This was temple language. It's the language of God coming to dwell with his people.  The way he did with Adam and Eve in the garden.  The story ever since has pointing in that direction.  The restoration of God's temple, the return of his presence, and God dwelling with his people forever.  This is what the Exodus was all about.  God rescued and created a people, he gave them a law to make and to keep them pure and holy, so that he could take up his residence in their midst—so that he could tabernacle with them.  It wasn't perfect.  The people needed to offer sacrifices repeatedly so that they could be purified by that blood.  A veil separated them from the direct presence of the Almighty.  But this model of new creation pointed forward to the day when God would set his people and his creation fully to rights.  The long exile, first from the promised land and the temple, then from the presence of God, primed Israel with hope for that coming day.  And now Paul's ready to explain to the church that they—that we—are the beginning of that fulfilment.  In us, God has established a new temple.  By the blood of Jesus he has purified us.  Through the gift of his Spirit he has taken up his dwelling in us.  He has begun the work of setting our hearts to rights.  And in that, he has made us the working model of his new creation and stewards of his good news—that we might, to use the language he used with Adam and Eve, that we might be fruitful and multiply, spreading the gospel, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of his glory. Brothers and Sisters, this is the story we need to inhabit.  Too often Christians have got it backwards.  We think the gospel story is a story of escape from creation—that in Jesus, God forgives our sins, so that someday he can take us away from earth and up to heaven to live with him.  But it's really just the opposite.  Through the blood of Jesus he has purified us and made us fit to be his holy temple, so that he can dwell with us.  Jesus is the model, Immanuel, God with us.  This is the story Paul wants to get across in Ephesians 2.  Ideally we'd cover the whole chapter all at once, but we'll have to break it into two halves.  This temple story will jump out at us in the second half.  The first half begins with our sin problem. How did these mostly Gentile Christians in Ephesus find themselves in this oh so Jewish story?  He writes beginning at verse 1, “Well, you were dead because of your offenses and sins in which you used to walk, keeping in step with the world's ‘present age'; in step, too, with the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is, even now, amongst the children of disobedience.” “You”—he's addressing them as Gentiles.  In verse 3 he'll link them with “us”—the Jews.  You were dead.  Because you walked—there's that great word peripateo again—you walked, you lived a life of offense and sin against God.  And we can't hear these two words sin and death together without it taking us back to Genesis.  And if we go back to Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve's choice to listen to the serpent's lie, not just to disobey God, but to reject their vocation as priests of God's temple and to try to become gods themselves, if go way back to the beginning of the story there, we should understand that sin and death aren't about God just setting up a bunch of rules and then condemning the people who disobey them.  Sin, and especially “offence”, are what we call it when human beings, created to bear God's image—that means to be his priests and his representatives in the temple, in creation—sin and offence are what we call it when we reject that vocation.  When we try to take the temple for ourselves.  And death is not an arbitrary punishment, but the natural result of turning away from the God who is the source of life.  That's why the wages of sin is death. And, of course, once humanity chose that path of disobedience and death it just snowballed.  Human culture and even those unseen powers that God had put in place to oversee the nations went horribly wrong.  The Jews called it the present evil age, because they lived in hope of the age to come when God would set creation to rights.  But the Gentiles had no hope.  They just went with the sinful flow.  We see it today as the world rejects Christianity.  Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal of degenerate, paedophile friends would have been right at home in pagan Greece or Rome and they're exactly what you get when a people rejects God.  The devil didn't just tempt the man and woman to reject God.  He and his cronies continue to steer and influence fallen humanity.  Paul will have more to say about this later when he writes about “principalities and powers”.  In our baptismal rite, we put this in terms of the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. All these forces work together to keep humanity lost in idolatry and sin.  And so far as this goes, Paul is just restating the standard Jewish analysis of the Gentiles.  But then in verse 3 Paul goes on and writes, “We all used to live this way, in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of flesh and mind.  We, too—he means he and his fellow Jews—were by nature children of wrath, just like everyone else.”  Paul recognised that even though his own people had the torah, God's law, and were trying to live by it, they were suffering the same problem as the Gentiles.  The corrupt desires of flesh and mind had just as much a grip on Israel as they did the peoples of the nations.  The whole world, all of humanity was mired in darkness, Jew and gentile alike. And this where, at the beginning of verse 4 Paul interjects this powerful, earth shattering: “But God!”  Into the darkness, into the hopelessness, into the condemnation, into the death, God intervenes to bring light, to bring hope, to bring deliverance, to bring life.  “But God,” Paul writes, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, he took us at the very point where we were dead through our offenses, and made us alive together with the Messiah.  Yes, by grace you are saved!” Israel knew about God's mercy and love.  The story they told of their history with God was full of mercy and grace.  And occasionally some gentile would hear that story and be drawn to it, because the God of Israel was unlike any of the other gods.  Zeus and Poseidon and Hades, Aphrodite and Artemis, people might believe all sorts of things about them, but no one ever believed that the gods loved them.  The gods served themselves.  If they sometimes showed favour to this person or to that city, it wasn't because of love; it was to further their own schemes and ambitions.  No Greek or Roman—no Egyptian or Persian, for that matter—would have ever said of their gods anything even remotely like what Paul says here of the God of Israel: that he is rich in mercy, that he loves us with a great love, or that he has shown us kindness.  Zeus and Hera, Osiris and Isis, they were all purely transactional.  If you did something good for them and you were lucky, they might do something nice for you.  We need to be careful, because Christians can fall into the same pagan way of thinking about God—making deals with him or treating him like a divine vending machine.  But Paul makes it clear that the God of Israel isn't like that.  Instead, he's full of mercy and love and kindness.  Yes, his purpose is to fill the earth with his glory, but he is glorious precisely because he is unlike the gods humans dream up.  He is full of mercy and love. And Paul reminds the Ephesians: By his grace, God has taken what he did for Jesus when he raised him from death, and has made it true of us.  If we are “in the Messiah”, then we are alive together with him.  He goes on in verse 6: “He raised us up with him and made us sit with him, in the heavenly places in Messiah Jesus.  This was so that in the ages to come he could show just how unbelievably rich his grace is, the kindness he has shown us in Messiah Jesus.”  This is how God reveals his glory.  Not merely with a show of strength or power, but by showing his grace. Again, what is true of Jesus is true of the church—of the Ephesians Christians, and of us.  And it's not just Jesus' resurrection, his being made alive again.  Paul has said that before.  But here he also stresses that Jesus' ascension is somehow true of us too.  God didn't just make us alive with Jesus the King; he's made us alive in order to sit us with the Messiah, with the King in the heavenly places.  So Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of his Father.  He's the King and that's what kings do: they take their thrones and they rule.  But Paul is saying that if we are “in the Messiah”, then we're right there with him. The resurrection part of that, the being made alive with Jesus probably isn't too hard for us to wrap our heads around.  In Jesus, God has made us a promise.  Even though we'll die, because we are in the Messiah, he will raise us to life again just as he did with Jesus.  If we have any doubts, Paul would remind us that God has filled us with his Spirit to give us a taste of and downpayment on resurrection life with him.  That part I think we can pretty well wrap our heads around.  But what does it mean to be seated with him in the heavenlies? This is where we need to make sure we've got the story right.  Because if we understand the climax of the story as someday escaping from earth, as escaping our bodies, to live a sort of disembodied spiritual life forever in heaven, we're going to miss Paul's point.  Again, the story isn't about us going up; it's about God making us fit, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, to be his temple—so that he can come down—to us. Consider: Jesus has already done this.  Remember the end of Chapter 1, where Paul said that Jesus is the one in whom heaven and earth—all of creation—are summed up, are brought together, are unified, the way it was in the beginning: heaven and earth overlapping, God and human beings dwelling together.  That's how it began and that's the ending towards which God is taking history—to set his broken, sin-sundered creation to rights.  Jesus is the prototype, the signpost who points us to, who shows us what God's future will be like.  In him, God has joined our nature to his own.  In him, heaven and earth have been brought back together.  Think of that great Ascension Day hymns, “See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph”: He has raised our human nature, on the clouds to God's right hand; there we sit in heavenly places, there with him in glory stand.”  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is the temple in person.  And Jesus is the whole of creation—heaven and earth—in miniature. And what is true of him is equally true of those who are united with him by God's grace.  As we'll see in the second half of the chapter, the church—the Ephesian Christians and you and me—we are also that temple and if we have any doubts, all we need to remember is that God has come to dwell in us in the person of his Spirit.  And remember the goal, the one promised by the prophets so long before, the goal is for the knowledge of the glory of God to fill the earth.  The church is his means of making that happen.  He didn't just send his son to be the on-earth-as-in-heaven man, through his son and through his Spirit he has created a whole community of on-earth-as-in-heaven people to do just that: to live out in our lives, in our relationships, in our community heaven on earth—to be a people who show the world God's love and mercy and grace and kindness.  To be a working model of his new creation and to give the world a taste of that future right now.  To reveal the glory and the beauty and goodness of God in our lives and in our own proclamation so that everyone around us will know his glory and be drawn to him. This is then what Paul gets at in verses 8-10.  He writes, “For you have been saved by grace, through faith. This is not of your own doing; it is God's gift.  It isn't on the basis of works, so no one is able to boast.  You see, we are his workmanship, created in Messiah Jesus for the good works that he prepared, ahead of time, so that we should walk in them.”  What does he mean?  Well, Paul's reminding them that there was a time when Jews and gentiles were separated by the law, by torah.  God poured out his grace on Israel, set them apart with his law as a way to teach them how to love him and to love their neighbours, so that they could be a light to the gentiles—so they could make his glory known in the earth.  Israel failed in that mission, but God acted in grace again.  He gave his son to be the faithful Israelite and in Jesus, Israel's mission to witness the grace and glory of God was fulfilled.  And now these gentile Ephesians who have encountered the risen Jesus, who have heard the gospel, and been filled with God's Spirit—they've been united together with faithful Jews in Messiah Jesus.  In them, God's promises—all the way back to Abraham and even to Adam—are being fulfilled.  In them, God's glory is on display before the nations.  And there is no longer a need for the division that had been given by torah.  Now the Spirit is teaching them and enabling them to love God and to love each other for all the world to see.  In Jesus and the Spirit, God has made them a people who are fulfilling the very thing that torah was meant to do, not just because we keep a set of rules or live according to a certain moral code—there's a sense in which we actually do do that—but because, through Jesus and the Spirit we actually live out and put on display the new creation, God's future that is breaking into the world in the midst of the old. Paul puts it beautifully, but in a way we might miss in English translation, when he says that we—the church—are God's “workmanship”.  The Greek word is poiema.  We get our word “poem” from it.  The Greek word doesn't mean “poem”—maybe we could almost say it means “artwork”.  In the Old Testament it's often used to describe the creative work of God.  In other places it's used to describe things that are carefully and meticulously crafted for his use, like the garments of the priests or the vessels of the tabernacle.  Brothers and Sisters, we—the church—are God's carefully, purposefully, and wonderfully created masterpiece.  He's given his son and he's given his Spirit to craft, to create, to work us into something good—to restore his broken creation in us.  And, Paul sums up, God has done this work in us so that in our own lives and in the life of the church together, we can do such good work too.  Not doing good works to please him or to earn his favour.  That would be like going back to the pagan world of people doing things to manipulate the gods.  God is pleased by our good works, but he's created and enabled us to do good works as a way of showing his new creation to the world, a way of fulfilling the law he had given to Israel, as a way of loving him and loving each other—ultimately as a way to restore us to that vocation as his image bearers, to be the priests of his temple who steward his goodness and his good rule for the sake of creation. Brothers and Sisters, this is the story that God has written for us.  The story of our priesthood, reject and lost, but now restored through Jesus and the Spirit, a story of renewal and a story of hope—as it points us toward the day when God finishes his great work of bringing heaven and earth back together, of the day when he will return to dwell with us as he did in the beginning.  This the story that reminds what Jesus and the Spirit have made us.  It's the story that reminds us of our vocation as the church—that we're not just the people who long for things to be on earth as they are in heaven; we're the people who find our very identity in Jesus, the heaven-and-earth Messiah, and who are, ourselves, called to be the heaven-on-earth people—a people who reflect back to the world God's love and grace, his justice and goodness, who are by our very redemption witnesses of his faithfulness and, above all, his glory.  We are his workmanship.  May the world, by God's grace, see his glory in us and in our life together. Let's pray: Heavenly Father, our Collect today reminded us that without love, nothing we do is worth anything.  Fill us with your grace, that we might truly love.  Love you.  Love our neighbours.  Making us the heaven-on-earth people you intend for us to be, so that the world may see your glory on display in your church.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.

Malachi 4 Tells Us God Takes Care of His Own and that Those Who Wait Upon Him and “fear my {God's} name” Will Not Be Disappointed MESSAGE SUMMARY:  Isaiah, in Isaiah 64:3,8, says that God is the awesome God who created everything: “When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence . . . But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”. In Isaiah 65:11-13, Isaiah expresses God's disappointment in being snubbed by His chosen people, the Jews. However, Isaiah expresses how pleased God is with being welcomed by the Gentiles {my servants}: “'But you who forsake the LORD, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny, I will destine you to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter, because, when I called, you did not answer; when I spoke, you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in.' Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame.'". Malachi tells us, in Malachi 4:1-3, that God will punish evildoers while sparing those who fear His name: “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.". God takes care of His own, and those who fear the Lord and who wait upon the Lord will not be disappointed.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, help me to be still and to wait patiently for you in silence. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 125). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that because I am in Jesus Christ, I will not be ashamed of the Gospel.  I will not be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (including me). From Romans 1:16 SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Isaiah 64:3-10; Deuteronomy 28:58; Nehemiah 4:1-11; Malachi 4:1-6; Psalms 66b:11-20 A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 3 – Incomplete Finished Work” at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

We “love” all sorts of things. We love a friend's new hairdo. We love pistachio ice cream and travel to exotic places.Many times, the word itself loses all real meaning. It's like homemade chicken soup without the chicken and without the soup.1 John 3:16–18 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”The Divine Word helps us yet again. Here we learn that true love means doing for others. Get involved. Don't just say you love your community. Show the community your love.Cleanup projects, running errands for a shut-in, taking your niece to the movies because her mother is working two jobs…you know what to do. You know the opportunities.Think you love those around you? Show them.Let's pray.Lord, there is so much good to do in the world! Please show us opportunities every day, so that we put action to our words. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

As a Jesus Follower, You Live in a World of Hurting People; and You Have their Answer - Are You Sharing the Answer with Others? MESSAGE SUMMARY:  Even though we are followers of Jesus, we live in a world of hurting people; but we have the answer to their pain. God has blessed us so that we might be a blessing to others, and He has healed us so that we might provide God's healing powers to others. He has saved us so that we might be His ambassadors. While we have the answer, we keep the answer to ourselves in the way we live and by not speaking about Jesus to others. Before Jesus Ascension, He instructed us, in Matthew 28:16-20, that we must “Go” and tell others about the answer, which the Gospel provides, by “making Disciples”: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”. Therefore, you must communicate the Answer of Jesus and the Gospel to others through both your “talk” and the way that you “walk” in your life. Walk the walk and talk the talk to share Jesus with others.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, I acknowledge that I prefer to ignore and deny my pain and loss. I struggle with seeing how resurrection life can come out of death. Grant me the courage to pay attention to what you are doing, and to wait on you — even when everything in me wants to run away. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 114). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, because of I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I will not be controlled by my Evil Ways. Rather, I will walk in the Spirit's fruit of Goodness. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Matthew 28:16-20; John 1:1-18; Matthew 16:15-19; Psalms 66a:1-10. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 3 – Incomplete Finished Work” at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

There was a woman in the Bible who was caught in sin. Caught, humiliated, and dragged before a crowd ready to kill her. Then, Jesus stepped in. He simply said, “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.” Slowly, one by one, they walked away. But Jesus looked at the woman and said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” He didn't excuse what she'd done—but He offered mercy, not shame.  Jesus does this today. He doesn't want our perfection. He wants us to come to Him, and He is quick to replace our guilt with His grace. Be encouraged by this today: Jesus is waiting to meet you with love that sets you free. You can pray right now: “Jesus, I want to know You. Cleanse my heart, and give me a new start today. In Jesus name, amen.” Always remember, there is hope with God. I'm Andrew Palau. Scripture Reference: John 8:10-11 radio.hopewithgod.com

“If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” — Matthew 10:42 I'm not sure how widespread the tradition is in your area, but when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday, like today, there is often a community gathering. In our area, anyone who is a biker heads off to the small town of Port Dover, Ontario. Thousands spend the day showing off their bikes, eating, and hanging out with people who have a shared interest in motorcycles. In the same small town is a wonderful ministry to young adults called the South Coast Beach Project, or SOCO for short. Young adults are welcomed into a home for the summer (May-August) where they share life together, grow in discipleship, and work and hang out in the community. A few years ago the young adults decided to set up a table on Friday the 13th when crowds of bikers came to town. They gave away freeze pops and made lots of connections. The SOCO director told me, "People couldn't believe we would give something away for free. It was fun to say, ‘We are just being neighborly.'” It was a moment of hospitality and generosity. It was an open door for conversation. I love how the SOCO group partnered with an event already happening in the community, and how they could share a “Jesus in the neighborhood” moment. What kinds of local events can you partner with to invite gospel conversations? God, thank you for opportunities to partner in our community. Help us to open our hearts to new ideas and new people. In Jesus, Amen.

February 13, 2026Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily LifeThe Revelation 16:15-16I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.If you would like to revisit today's Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. Please follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church 

Living a Fasted LifeScripture: Galatians 5:16—“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”Many believers approach fasting as a temporary spiritual exercise. They fast for a day, a week, or a season and then return to normal patterns. But biblical fasting was always meant to cultivate a lifestyle of discipline, awareness, and dependence on God. A fasted life is not a life of constant fasting; it is a life where the flesh no longer dominates.Accept Jesus Today: https://youtube.com/shorts/bIwAUlz7Kg4?si=BNOhv44iLWIR4eVJIf you would like to accept Jesus into your heart today, pray this simple prayer:****God, I have sinned against You. I believe that Jesus is Your Son, who died and rose for my sake. I ask you to forgive me for my sin. I place my trust in You for salvation. I receive you as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name, I am forgiven! Amen!"****Congratulations! You are now a child of the most high. John 1:12 says, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. If you just prayed this prayer to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, I welcome you to the family of God. Subscribe to my channel and type in the comments right now, “I just prayed that prayer.” I would love to connect with you and chat with you about all the amazing things God is doing in your life.Click here for FREE eBook Download: https://tinyurl.com/ISAIDTHEPRAYERShow your love, support the channel:*PayPal: PayPal.me/malachimitchellministry*Cashapp: https://cash.app/$MalachiMitchNote Journals and Puzzles: https://tinyurl.com/WalkinFaithPublishingAuthored Books: https://tinyurl.com/BooksofMalachiJoin Our Support Club: https://tinyurl.com/Support-ClubInvesting Opportunity: https://coinholders.hnocoin.com/signup/?refer=Malachi2uFREE Ways to Support Me:

Love is in the air, as they say, and that is our topic this week. Love can be a broad term, but we want to refine it for our time together—at the same time, we are preoccupied with cards, gifts, and candy hearts.1 Corinthians 13:4–5 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”If we're honest, that definition—God's definition, really—is pretty different from much of how the world sees love. In real life, it can be complicated, stressful, even brutal. Broken relationships devastate lives.But those of us who know Jesus know that our mission is to love like Him. Loving like Jesus takes the complications out of relationships.If you are sorting through what love means to you, would you consider for the next few days what it means to love with the pure love of Christ? Paul's words in 1 Corinthians require something of us, and that is a key we will continue to explore.Make someone else the priority this week, and not yourself.Let's pray. Lord, your perfect love has sustained us always. We love you in return! In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

Today's Uncertainties Call for a Deepening Personal Relationship with God Through Prayer, Fasting, and Listening MESSAGE SUMMARY: There are times when you need clarity, understanding, knowledge, and insights from the Lord about the specific issues that you are facing. The Lord will speak to you, but sometimes it takes your listening and fasting to hear Him. For example, when Joel received a Word when the land was to be destroyed, he called a fast (i.e. Joel 1:14): “Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.”. Some things you are facing in your life must be dealt with by both prayer and fasting. Fasting releases a spiritual power – in your weakness, God is made strong in your life. Daniel's prayer, from Daniel 9:3-5, provides a context for asking direction from God: “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, ‘O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules.'". After Jesus responded to the Apostles request of “teach us to pray” by providing the “Lord's Prayer”, Jesus instructed the Apostles and us, in Matthew 6:17-18, how to fast: “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.". Our fasting will be rewarded as a deepening link to God in our personal relationship with Him.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Father, I confess that when difficulties and trials come into my life, large or small, I mostly grumble and complain. I realize the trials James talks about are not necessarily “walls,” but they are difficult to bear, nonetheless. Fill me with such a vision of a transformed life, O God, that I might actually consider it “pure joy” when you bring trials my way. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 94). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, Because of who I am in Jesus Christ, I will not be driven by Lust. Rather, I will abide in the Lord's Perfect Provision. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Joel 1:13-16; Matthew 6:16; Daniel 9:3-7; Psalms 114:1-8. WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 3 – Incomplete Finished Work” at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

February 12, 2026Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily LifeThe Revelation 16:14I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.If you would like to revisit today's Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. Please follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church 

In Jesus' agony we learn that human support will fail, only the Father is fully adequate, and true spiritual victory comes when we pray, lean on the body, and resolve that God's will is our supreme desire.

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20260211dev.mp3 Listen to Devotion Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11 Prepare for Battle Is today shaping up to look a lot like yesterday? And the day before it? Life sure can settle into a routine, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Routines and habits can be blessings in our lives. But the same familiar rhythms of our daily lives can also lull us into a false sense of security in our spiritual lives. Because we end up doing the same thing most days, we can easily forget that the stakes are very high. The Bible says that every day is a spiritual battle. Each day, there is a battle in a long spiritual war that we’ll be waging until we leave this earth. This battle is an internal one. The attacks come from our own sinful desires that fight against how God wants us to live our lives. Are you fighting that battle? Or have you quit putting up a fight, maybe without even realizing it? The culture around us wears us down and we may not even know we are often losing the battle, whether it is through the language we choose to use, the things we daydream about, or the actions that have become habits for us. These daily battles are serious: our souls are the target. The devil is trying to destroy our souls, and he uses our own desires to do it! Because we so often fail to put up a fight, we most definitely should lose the battle and have our souls condemned forever. Thankfully, we have one in our corner who fights for us. His name is Jesus, and he was born into this world for the specific purpose of going to battle on our behalf. To do so, he lived a perfect life in our place, daily defeating every temptation he faced. Then he gave his life in our place, to die the death that we deserved, even though he was completely innocent of all sin. Finally, he rose from the dead to guarantee our victory. In Jesus, the war has been won! Prayer: Dear Jesus, help me to be ready for battle each day with the knowledge that in you I have victory. Help me to fight the good fight of faith. Amen. Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

A Prayer to Resist Pride by Rachael AdamsAs followers of Christ, we are invited to lay down judgment, extend compassion, and honor others as image-bearers of God.In this episode by Rachael Adams we reflect on the lasting impact of family decisions, the power of compassion, and the call to honor others—even when life doesn’t unfold the way we hoped. We also look at how Jesus restored dignity to women who were shamed by society, modeling a radical kind of honor that transcends culture, circumstance, and past mistakes. His example calls us to stop casting stones and instead treat others with love, respect, and humility. Reference: Romans 12:10 Prayer: Father, forgive me when I degrade others. It is not my place to cast stones. Help me to absolve those who have shamed me. I don't want to live in disgrace or regret. Free me from these feelings. Thank you for showing me how to respect and honor people regardless of their behavior and decisions. I know I fall short of your glory every single day, yet you continue to love me. May I never forget the magnitude of that. In Jesus' name. Amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Have you ever been hurt in a relationship? If you've been alive very long at all, the answer is an obvious “Yes!” Reality has shown us that love can be the most wonderful feeling ever…or it can be ugly and brutal. It can feel like your heart has been run over by a truck.We're talking about loving like Jesus, and as usual, His Word unlocks the secrets of our hearts and shows us the way to healing.1 Corinthians 13:4–5 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”Frankly, each of us is supposed to love like this. But just briefly, let's focus on you. Why? Because it's okay to do that if you understand that Jesus loves you and wants all the best for you.Has someone hurt you in a relationship? Is marriage or romance a challenging topic for you? Then please meditate on Scripture and realize that Jesus wants a partner for you who is patient, kind, and honors you. Oh — and he or she doesn't take frustrations out on you, either.Use that as your starting point over whether to stay in a relationship or open your heart to new opportunities.Let's pray. Lord, help us to be mindful of your desires for us in the area of relationships. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

By NOT Adhering to Jesus' “Great Commission” to “go . . . and make disciples” You Are Following Jesus MESSAGE SUMMARY: God said told all Jesus Followers to “go and make disciples” not to “make decisions”. In other words, we are to bring the Gospel to others with whom we have or with whom we develop a personal relationship. Therefore, we are to leave the “conversion” or the “decision” of others to become a Christian up to the Holy Spirit. Our job, as Jesus Followers, is to “go and make disciples”. In Jesus' last instructions to His Apostles and to you, before His Ascension to Heaven from Earth, is in Mathew 28:16-20 -- Jesus' Great Commission: “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”. A disciple is a student, a follower, a learner. Making a disciple is not about classes. Making a disciple it about investing yourself in the life of another person – discipling is having a personal relationship with another person so that they see the life of Christ in you. Have you been discipled, or have you made a disciple? Not “going and making disciples” is your “great omission” as a Christian.     TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, in order to be with you, I need you to show me how to “create a desert” in the midst of my full, active life. Cleanse me from the pressures, illusions, and pretenses that confront me today so that my life may serve as a gift to those around me. Amen.  Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 26). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that, because I am in Jesus Christ, Nothing compares to knowing Jesus (Philippians 3:7f). “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”. (Philippians 4:14). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV):  Mathew 28:16-20; Mathew 9:36-38; Mathew 10:16-33; Psalms 115:1-18. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 3 – Incomplete Finished Work”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20260211dev.mp3 Listen to Devotion Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11 Prepare for Battle Is today shaping up to look a lot like yesterday? And the day before it? Life sure can settle into a routine, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Routines and habits can be blessings in our lives. But the same familiar rhythms of our daily lives can also lull us into a false sense of security in our spiritual lives. Because we end up doing the same thing most days, we can easily forget that the stakes are very high. The Bible says that every day is a spiritual battle. Each day, there is a battle in a long spiritual war that we’ll be waging until we leave this earth. This battle is an internal one. The attacks come from our own sinful desires that fight against how God wants us to live our lives. Are you fighting that battle? Or have you quit putting up a fight, maybe without even realizing it? The culture around us wears us down and we may not even know we are often losing the battle, whether it is through the language we choose to use, the things we daydream about, or the actions that have become habits for us. These daily battles are serious: our souls are the target. The devil is trying to destroy our souls, and he uses our own desires to do it! Because we so often fail to put up a fight, we most definitely should lose the battle and have our souls condemned forever. Thankfully, we have one in our corner who fights for us. His name is Jesus, and he was born into this world for the specific purpose of going to battle on our behalf. To do so, he lived a perfect life in our place, daily defeating every temptation he faced. Then he gave his life in our place, to die the death that we deserved, even though he was completely innocent of all sin. Finally, he rose from the dead to guarantee our victory. In Jesus, the war has been won! Prayer: Dear Jesus, help me to be ready for battle each day with the knowledge that in you I have victory. Help me to fight the good fight of faith. Amen. Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

February 11, 2026Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily LifeThe Revelation 16:13I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.If you would like to revisit today's Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. Please follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church 

Are you in the middle of a storm you didn't ask for? Divorce. Sickness. Emotional stress. There is hope for you.   In this episode of Chosen By Jesus, Kelley and Taylor Tyan speak to the woman who is carrying more than she ever expected and quietly wondering how to stay grounded when life feels unsteady.   Storms don't mean your faith is weak. They reveal how deep your roots are.   This conversation explores the difference between emotional faith and anchored faith—and why anchored faith doesn't stop storms, but it does stop drifting. You'll be reminded that faith doesn't remove pressure, but it steadies us in the middle of it. ⸻ In this episode, we talk about: • Why dark seasons don't ask permission • How pressure exposes what's underneath • Why faith steadies us instead of removing storms • What you return to when overwhelmed—and why it matters • How small, daily spiritual rhythms build deep roots ⸻ Scripture referenced: Hebrews 6:19 Jeremiah 17:7–8 Isaiah 40:31 Romans 15:13 ⸻ Anchors don't stop waves. They stop drifting.   Storms will come—but rooted women don't drift. They stand. ⸻ PRAYER FOR THOSE IN A STORM Divorce • Sickness • Stress   Lord, For the one listening in the middle of a storm they didn't ask for—be their refuge.   For the one navigating divorce, bring wisdom, peace, and protection. For the one facing sickness, bring strength, comfort, and hope. For the one under emotional stress, bring rest to their mind and calm to their body.   Remind them they are not drifting. They are being held.   Give them courage for today—not the whole journey, just today. Help them stay planted, even when the wind is strong.   In Jesus' name, amen. ⸻ CALL TO ACTION Subscribe for weekly faith-filled conversations Like this video if it encouraged you Share with someone who's waiting but still believing Comment below—we pray over every request ⸻ ABOUT CHOSEN BY JESUS Chosen By Jesus is a Top 1.5% Christian podcast worldwide, streamed in 16+ countries, with 725+ hours of YouTube watch time and a growing global community seeking biblical wisdom, peace, and encouragement. ⸻ One Year. 12 In-Person Gatherings. Endless Encouragement.   Step into a sisterhood of women who pray together, grow together, and rise together.   What You'll Experience: • A safe place to grow in faith, be encouraged, and empowered • Accountability & support to stay strong all year long • Prayer, worship & fellowship that soothe your soul   Monthly Meet-Ups: 3rd Wednesday of every month at 6:30 PM The Wellness Way – Shrewsbury, MA   Come as you are — leave inspired and equipped to live boldly for Jesus. Only $200 for the entire year (that's just $16/month for faith, growth & sisterhood!)   Join the Chosen By Jesus Community today: https://kelleytyan.com/cbjcommunity ⸻ Want to go deeper? We coach women who are ready to rise in faith, walk in identity, and stand strong no matter the season. DM us on Instagram or visit www.chosenbyjesus.com ⸻

A Prayer to Resist Pride by Rachael AdamsWhen we lay down our pride and embrace humility, we open the door for deeper relationships, greater service, and God’s favor in our lives.In today's episode, Rachael Adams shares a moment of offered help revealed how easily pride can keep us from receiving blessings God places in our path. Through the example of John the Baptist, we’re reminded that true greatness comes from pointing others to Jesus, not ourselves. Reference: Luke 18:14 Prayer: Lord, change the posture of my heart. Reinforce that my purpose is to point people to you. Forgive me for behaving pridefully. I know you oppose the proud and show favor to the humble. Help me to be content to let you take the higher place. May I accept help willingly and offer aid generously. In Jesus' name, amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

When it comes to love, the secular world has plenty to say. Turn on the television, radio, or explore the internet, and you'll find advice on every type of relationship, from friendships to getting along with your parents, and of course, advice on romantic relationships. People are clamoring to figure love out…but what does the Bible say about love?1 Corinthians 13:4–5 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”Love isn't about control or about protecting our own interests. It's not about winning, because true love doesn't keep score. God's Word gives us a beautiful picture of what love can be when we seek to follow the Lord: patient, kind, selfless, humble, and forgiving. That's the kind of love we should strive to build with family, friends, and a potential mate.If we want to take Paul's wisdom in Corinthians to heart, we must first think about what the other person needs in our relationships. And you know, if you practice this model, you'll find that soon enough, your own needs will be met, too! Pure love has a ripple effect.Let it wash over you!Let's pray. Lord, your relationship to us is perfect. Help us love as you love. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

God Sees a Jesus Follower as Being “In Christ”; Therefore, God Sees a Jesus Follower as His Son or Daughter MESSAGE SUMMARY: As Followers of Jesus, you are "In Christ" -- God looks at you, as a Jesus Follower, and He sees Jesus in you. Throughout the Epistles we find: "In Christ" or "In Him". In Galatians 3:14, Paul tells you that your faith in Jesus makes you “In Christ” and a recipient of God's Covenant with Abraham: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.". Also, Paul goes even further, in Galatians 3:25-28, to tell you that, through your faith in Jesus, you no longer need any kind of intermediary because you are “In Christ” and you have a personal relationship with God, the Creator of the Universe: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.”. When God sees you, “In Christ" as a Jesus Follower, He sees Jesus, the Son. Therefore, God sees you as His son or daughter.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, everything in me resists following you into the garden of Gethsemane to fall on my face to the ground before you. Grant me the courage to follow you all the way to the cross, whatever that might mean for my life. And then, by your grace, lead me to resurrection life and power. In Jesus' name, amen.   Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 100). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, because of I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I will not be controlled by my Despair. Rather, I will walk in the Spirit's fruit of Joy. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Romans 3:21-26; Romans 6:5-11; Romans 6:22-23; Psalms 63:1-11. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Essentials Part 3 – Incomplete Finished Work”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

Special Patreon Release: Emotionally Healthy Familial Relationships with Cherilyn Orr   "bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4b (KJV)   *Transcription Below*   Cherilyn Orr is passionate about helping parents, teachers, and guardians raise emotionally healthy and resilient children. She has worked with families and educators in North America, Europe, and Africa to help them build safe schools, homes, and communities where children can flourish. The Stoplight Approach that she developed was born out of her experiences as an educator, a foster mom, and a mom to seven through birth and adoption, and it combines biblical truths with the latest brain science. Connect with her on her Website, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.   Topics and Questions We Cover: What are a few helpful tips for us to understand brain science 101? How can we repair the relationship when we don't disciple and discipline from our Green zone? Within the stoplight approach, can you provide some examples of how we can calm a red-rooted misbehavior?   Thank You to Our Sponsors: Chick-fil-A East Peoria and The Savvy Sauce Charities (and donate online here)   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”   Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”   Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”   John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:09 - 2:07) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   I want to say a huge thank you to today's sponsors for this episode, Chick-fil-A East Peoria and Savvy Sauce Charities.   Are you interested in a free college education for you or someone you know? Stay tuned for details coming later in this episode from today's sponsor, Chick-fil-A East Peoria. You can also visit their website today at Chick-fil-A.com/EastPeoria.   If you've been with us long, you know this podcast is only one piece of our nonprofit, which is the Savvy Sauce Charities. Don't miss out on our other resources. We have questions and content to inspire you to have your own practical chats for intentional living.   And I also hope you don't miss out on the opportunity to financially support us through your tax-deductible donations. All this information can be found on our recently updated website, TheSavvySauce.com.   Cherilyn Orr is my guest today. She is kind and humble and a woman who's passionate about helping parents, teachers, and guardians raise emotionally healthy and resilient children. She's going to share how she combines biblical truths with the latest brain science to build healthy relationships in the family. Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Cherilyn.   Cherilyn Orr: (2:07 - 2:08) Thank you. I'm really happy to join you today.   Laura Dugger: (2:08 - 2:10) And will you start by just giving us a snapshot of your life right now?   Cherilyn Orr: (2:08 - 3:11) Yes, I am actually talking to you from Athens, Greece. That is where our family resides right now. And we've been here for the last few years. And before that, we lived in Uganda and Africa.   I have seven children and my oldest is now a mom herself. And she just gave birth a couple months ago to a preemie little baby. And I am so excited because now I have entered the world of grandparenthood.   But I'm also in the throes of life with a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 17-year-old. And I have a university student living at home. My next son is 21, and he's also living at home, going to university. So those are my four at home.   I have one in Canada, working there. And I have two that are married. One that lives in Africa with his wife, and they're working there. And another one with my grandbaby that's living here in Greece, working with the church here.   Laura Dugger: (3:12 - 3:19) That is quite a full family and a global family. What has taken you to the different parts of the world?   Cherilyn Orr: (3:20 - 3:44) Well, we are a missional family. But we believe that everybody's called to be a missional and to serve God. And God happens to have taken us to different places.   I've been working with The Stoplight Approach now for a few years now. My husband does leadership training as well. So that's kind of what's taken us around the world. Now that we're in Greece, I'm also involved with refugees as well here.   Laura Dugger: (3:45 - 4:06) Well, we are fortunate to live in a time with access to scientific knowledge about the brain. And it all points back to our brilliant Creator, God. But you make this brain science so simple to comprehend. So, can you just share a few helpful tips for us so that we can understand kind of brain science 101?   Cherilyn Orr: (4:08 - 6:40) Yes, I think for me, it's been a journey. But it came when after we adopted a child and she was having an all-out meltdown. And it would have taken me an hour or so to regroup her.   And it was just amazing. I was with a friend and she is a behavioral consultant. And she said, “Let me.” And this was after we had had her for at least a couple of years at this point. And she just said, “Let me.”   And she got down on the ground where my child was screaming hysterically. And she was able to get her back sitting on her seat, doing what she was supposed to in less than, I don't know, 10 minutes.   And I was shocked because here I am an educator. I have a master's degree. I'm a special needs teacher. I have been working for years with children in different settings around the world. And here I was looking at her doing something that I just didn't know how to do.   It was a huge paradigm shift for me when she said afterwards, I said, “What did you do?”   And she said, “It's by understanding the brain. The brain is like three parts. It's like a stoplight.”   So, she said, if you can think of it that way, as there's that bottom part of your brain, which is that fight, flight, freeze. When you are just only using 50% of your capacity and you just can't hear anybody's perspective.   And then there's that middle part of your brain, which is the limbic system. And she said, you know, that's when you're using 75% or so of your brain capacity. And that's when you're stressed, you're worried, you're anxious, and you're just not at your best.   And then there's your top part of your brain, which is your neocortex, which you are just ready to learn. And you can problem solve and you can think and you are the best version of yourself at that moment.   And she talked to me a little bit about that. And she's just said, this is what's happening in your brain. For me, that was a wow, you know, because it's like understanding the brain is so opposite than anything that I had ever done. And as an educator, I've been trained to control children. I've taken courses on behavior management. And this was just like changing the equation. When you understand the brain, then it changes how you can relate to the child in your care.   Laura Dugger: (6:41 - 7:05) And also, I will just sprinkle in a few little things that I found fascinating in your book. One of your conclusions was that relationships are the biggest factor in brain development and for it to develop in a healthy way. So, is that what you found true throughout the years of our life, that relationships are vital?   Cherilyn Orr: (7:05 - 8:02) It's for everybody. And it needs to start with that relationship. And that relationship has what I would say three pillars, which is safety, which is your red brain. In order to come out of that fight, flight or freeze, you have to feel safe.   And in order to come out of yellow brain, which is your limbic system, you need to feel connected and you need to feel respected. And respect means to be seen, heard and valued. And when you're in that yellow brain state, you don't feel connected. You feel disconnected.   So, in order to get people to green brain, you need to make them feel seen, heard and valued. So, if we want healthy relationships and we want green home, then we need to be able to help our children get to that green brain state. But it starts by making them feel safe and making them feel connected. So, relationship is foundational.   Laura Dugger: (8:02 - 8:24) And you've combined your knowledge of the Bible and all of this brain science to write a book entitled Signals: How Brain Science and the Bible Help Parents Raise Resilient Children. So, will you elaborate now on that Stoplight Approach that you teach and write about?   Cherilyn Orr: (8:27 - 11:10) Well, yes, I am so excited because we just looked at, you know, those three elements, safety, respect and being connected, and then we could teach it. And when we look at the Bible and we say, “How does God view me and how does He work with me?”   I go back to the fact is when God sees me in my mess ups and He sees my anger or my gossip or my addictions or whatever I'm struggling with. He looks at me and He says, “Come to me. I am your safety. I am your refuge.”   He wants us to bring Him our messes. He says, “Come to me just as you are, not as you want to be, not as you should be and not as you could be.” And in that context, He says, “I delight in you. I know you. I know every hair on your head. I know you. I know your name and I love you. You are in the palm of my hand and I delight in you.”   And Zephaniah talks about and He sings over us, not because we've done something, not because we're worthy, because He knows that unless we feel safe and unless we are in that connection and can relationship with them, then He cannot help us to train us and to walk with us and guide us through the process of growing and becoming that healthy person that He desires for us to be.   So, I was so excited when I looked at who God is and how it matches with what brain science is teaching us about red, yellow, green and how we can't teach anybody. It takes 12 to 15 times to teach a child a new skill when they are in green. That same child, that same skill when he's there in red will take 350 to 400 times because that is not the part of the brain where you can do problem solving or critical thinking or even to have empathy for anybody else. That part of the brain can only do rote learning. So, it will take you so long to teach a child when they're in that part of the brain.   And I love it because that obedience is an outflowing of a relationship with us, with God. And when we look at our child, that's what we want is we don't want them to obey us because they fear us, but we want them to obey us because they are connected to us. Just like God wants us to obey Him in that relationship, not because it's the rule and that's what we need to do.   So, I'm so excited to see how that brain science is catching up to who God is.   Laura Dugger: (11:11 - 12:07) Oh, my goodness. That is amazing to also just think of the Lord as obviously our parent and we want to model after Him. Some of this is reminding me there was a previous episode with Dr. Josh and Christy Straub where they were looking at research findings about parenting. And one of them was that it was so important for us to be self-regulated when we're responding to our children. And there's a connection.   So, in your book, I'm just going to read this one quote from page 56. You wrote, “One of the most shocking things I realized as I learned about brain science was that it is impossible to make a child feel loved when the parent is in yellow or red. They feel our stress. They feel our disapproval.” And so, would you like to elaborate on that as well?   Cherilyn Orr: (12:09 - 13:41) Well, we have this thing that we talk a lot about in The Stoplight Approach. We talk about the stoplight starts with me. You cannot give what you don't have.   So many parents will say, “I love my child,” but the child does not feel loved. And when I was doing seminars and training throughout North America, you know, often people say, “We are a yellow society.” And that broke my heart.   We are a yellow society. We're running our kids at five in the morning to this program, to hockey or this or programs late at night. And we're just running.   And I feel like if we are yellow and we are stressed, then there is automatically a disconnect. There's almost like a gate that says, do not enter. You can't go through it unless you are in green.   You're in red, then your whole house turns to red. Mama's in red, everybody's in red. Or if you're in yellow, you'll start to see the children in your care are in yellow.   And I find that in my house. When I start to see my house going to that yellow space, I start to have to do like, what color am I in? If I'm in yellow, then they're going to be in yellow. And you start to see them fighting amongst themselves or bickering or just not cooperating. And there's that tension that comes because they're picking up my yellowness and my stress.   Laura Dugger: (13:42 - 14:04) And so, let's go a little bit further with that scenario. If parents are in a very stressful season and there are quite a few to-do's that have to get done on top of the daily things. If that parent identifies they are in the yellow, maybe in the red, how can they get back to green even in the midst of a crazy time of life?   Cherilyn Orr: (14:06 - 16:26) Well, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be a perfect parent. But what science is showing us and it's what God wants from us is that sense of repair. We need to look at how do we repair because that's what our child needs because life is not perfect and we are not perfect. And I am certainly far from being a perfect parent. But how do I repair the damage and how do I connect?   So, we call it fix it, treasure it and change it. So, fix it is: Yes, I am sorry. Mommy yelled at you. I am so sorry I did that. I was in yellow and I was really stressed. Would you forgive me? I love you and you did not deserve me to yell at you. I care about you and I did not handle that appropriately.   And I want you to help me. This is what I've said to my children. I want you to help me when I'm going to red or I'm going to yellow. Just remind me and say, “Mom, you're going to yellow.” And then that can help me to make some changes right then and create that gap so that I'm not reacting. Or maybe I could take a walk or maybe I could get myself back to green.   When I react in that yellow or red brain state, it's not safe for you. It's not safe for others. So, let's work together on this.   And then we can talk about maybe what was happening in our house at that time as well. And maybe how they can help things to go smoother in our house. So that they could take some responsibility in helping because Mommy didn't feel seen, heard and valued. You know, I had asked you five times to do that. So how do we work together to make this house run smoother?   So being red and yellow are not bad things. It's not like you are horrible because you went to red and yellow. It's warning. It's like an alarm going off to say, be careful, be careful.   It's an opportunity to reflect and say, what's not working here? What's the deeper issue here? Yes, maybe I was overtired and maybe I did this. But what else is going on? And I may need to look back on things that maybe are triggering me that are deeper. And maybe things that relate back to my own childhood or how I was raised.   Laura Dugger: (16:26 - 16:52) That makes a lot of sense, that reflection. Because I studied psychology and marriage and family therapy. And we were always taught, name it to tame it. And sometimes that really does help when we can pinpoint and identify and name. What is that trigger? It helps to tame it. And I think the biblical concept is when you share it with somebody else, when you bring it into the light, it does lose a lot of its power.   Cherilyn Orr: (16:53 - 17:46) Definitely. Because if I can say I'm in red, it helps me know what I need to do to get myself back to green. So, if I can start to recognize when my body is starting to get tense, when I'm starting to get stressed, I can say, oh, this is my warning. I need to do this. I need to have a shower. I need to go for a walk. I need to regroup myself so that I'm not reacting to my children in my red brain state. I can get myself back to green first. So, I can create that gap.   So, naming it, that's what I think the success of Stoplight is. It's the common language that says how do we help each other when we are moving to yellow and we are moving to red so that everybody in the family knows that red is not bad, but how do we help that person in their red to get back to green?   Laura Dugger: (17:48 - 17:52) What is the Stoplight Approach to discipline and boundaries?   Cherilyn Orr: (17:54 - 22:32) Well, sometimes people think, oh, is The Stoplight Approach permissive? You know, we just let kids do what they want and let them be in green. If anybody has multiple children, you know that if one child is being self-centered and they're in their own world, it's going to create chaos for the rest of the family.   And so, Stoplight is not about permissiveness. And I think we need to be looking at the word discipline comes from the word disciple, which means to train. If you can kind of get that word discipline, because so often we've mixed that word discipline with punishment. So, it's all about punishing a child, whereas actually discipline is not about punishing. It's about training a child.   And everybody, every child needs boundaries. Boundaries help to keep us safe. They help to keep our family safe. It helps to keep that relationships in a healthy way.   So, we often use that word to look at how do we as parents, we've always got boundaries. Don't run in the road. We want to keep you safe. Don't touch the hot stove because you'll burn yourself. So, we look for ways to keep our child safe, and we look for ways to help them be safe in relationships. Yes, you want that ball, but you don't hit the other child to get the ball. So, what could we do differently?   Proverbs 13:24 is a common phrase that I grew up hearing. It was kind of like the parenting theology of my generation. “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but who loves him diligently disciplines him.”   So that was a verse that I heard a lot in my life. But then as I was studying and looking at brain science and really studying about who is God. And I had to look at what is my image of God? Is He this harsh judge up there that maybe subconsciously I believed? Or is He that loving father like the prodigal son that's waiting for his son? Not to punish him, but to love him and to connect with him. And it says in the New Testament, Jesus says, if you've seen him, you've seen the Father. So, He's a good, good father.   So, then I started to dissect this. What is the rod used for? And it talks about the rod being a comfort and a rod being a sense of protection. And we often hear it used in relationships to sheep. You know, if we're going to keep sheep safe, then we need the rod. That shepherd used a rod to protect his sheep from wild animals. So, as we look at that word rod, it's a protection tool.   So, we take apart that and then hates his son. I think, wow, a parent that does not protect their child or teaches their child to be aware of the dangers in this world. So, as a young child, you're protecting them and teaching them to make safe choices. And then as they get older, you still have to continually, continually teach them that. And so, when I look at that word rod and hates his son, that would be a neglectful. In my words, a parent who is neglectful to teach.   The second verse talks about diligently. And that reminds me in Deuteronomy, when we're told to teach our children all through the day, when we're walking, when we're sitting, when we're at mealtimes. We should be using our days to continually teach our children and to discipline them, which would be to train them in the way that they should go.   And I look at God as our creator of our brain. And He loves us so very, very much. And He wants the very best for us. And we know that children and human beings do better when they feel better. So how do we connect with our child? How do we protect our children? And how do we take that opportunity to be present with our child?   Those are hard things for a lot of parents these days to be present, to be engaged with them and to look for ways to continually be working with them and protecting them and keeping them safe.   Laura Dugger: (22:33 - 22:58) Wow. And I just want to share one of my favorite takeaways from page 143, where you write “Green rooted misbehavior needs coaching. Yellow roots need connection. And red roots need calming.” So, can you provide some examples with that last one of how we can calm a red rooted misbehavior?   Cherilyn Orr: (23:00 - 27:00) Yes, I certainly can. So, all three of these are so important because we often miss it. I'm going to say that red root, it needs us to speak the red language, speak red brain. And to speak red brain means to stop talking about the problem.   That child does not have capacity to hear you when they are in a red brain state. They need me to be calm. They need me to be in green. And they need me to stop talking. And maybe to only use words that feel safe. You're safe. I'm here. You're safe. I'm here. There's no point in talking to anybody in red brain because they have no capacity to hear.   And then also to be able to go for a walk with your child. Repetitive patterning activities are really helpful. Like for my children, each of my children have, they have a green plan. It's like, what do I do when I'm starting to go to red?   So maybe for one of my children, we have a hammock outside. So, she goes there. These are planned ahead of time when they are in green. These are discussed ahead of time. So, another child will, you know, might listen to music, have a shower, go for a walk. Every single one of us, whether it be an adult or child, should look at what do I need to do to get back to green.   As a parent, when we're looking at green rooted misbehaviors, red rooted misbehaviors and yellow roots misbehaviors, you could have the same issue like two kids fighting. You come around the corner and there you see your two siblings fighting. As a parent, often we go to red immediately. Our brain state goes because it feels threatening. It feels fearful to us. And then we react.   So, I have to take a deep breath myself and I have to say, OK, what brain state is this child in? And sometimes we don't know. So, we can call the children and say, what's going on? Just stopping and asking the question will give us the opportunity to hear what brain state our child is in.   If they happily look it up and say, we were playing Pirates of the Caribbean or something that they had seen on a TV show, then you can say, OK, well, what you're doing is unsafe and somebody is going to get hurt. But they're just acting.   And then if it's a yellow brain state, it's like he pushed me, he touched me. And they're just kind of bickering at each other. They're not really all out fighting. But, you know, you can look at them and say, let's stop and let's make each other feel seen, heard and valued. So, you can work with that child because that child at that point is in yellow brain. And then we can speak yellow brain, which is people don't feel that they're being heard. They don't feel respected. And that's when you can talk about what other things that they could do instead.   And then, of course, we have red brain when these children are all out to hurt each other. They are mad. So that's when we can go into that red brain and say, OK, both of you need to get back to green. We're not going to talk about this right now. I want you to use your green plan and get yourselves back to green. And then we will talk.   Some children can do that independently and some children need you to do it with them. And sometimes it might be that you just take those two children out and say, we're going to run around the block together.” And it's how do you connect with your child at that particular time and keep them safe and get them moving and get their brain state back up to green before you talk with them.   Laura Dugger: (27:01 - 32:37) And now a brief message from our sponsor. Did you know you can go to college tuition free just by being a team member at Chick-fil-A East Peoria? 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Another way to find it is simply type in donate to the search bar on our website and just click the first picture shown.   We are all about sharing around here, sharing resources, sharing joy, and sharing the good news about Jesus Christ. We ask that you also will share by sharing financially, sharing the Savvy Sauce podcast episodes, and sharing a five-star rating and review. You can also share any of our social media posts on Instagram or Facebook. We are grateful for all of it, and we just love partnering together with you.   Now, back to the show. And then on our side, I love how you also bring in the repair piece. So how can we practically repair the relationship when we don't disciple and discipline from our green zone as the parent?   Cherilyn Orr: (32:38 - 34:39) Yes, I feel like that is, it's really hard to ask your child to do anything that you're not doing because they're not going to actually be able to take that to heart. And if you say to a child, “I want you to say sorry to your sibling,” they're just going to look and go, “Sorry,” and have no meaning whatsoever.   And that's why we've done a lot of apology notes in my home over the years, because it's an opportunity to really sit down and reflect and talk. And we talk about how the card needs to be beautiful because we need to treasure that person. And so, they need to apologize for what they did. They need to talk about why on earth are they even writing this apology note? Why is that person of value? Because they're our sister or they're our brother or they're our friend or they're the teacher or the coach. And they are a part of our community and our family. So, we need to write that apology note to value that person.   And then we talk about what are we going to do next time. So those three points go into every single apology note my kids write: fix it, treasure it, change it. But you cannot do that when the child is in red. You cannot do it when they're in yellow. You need to have them back to green and then we can talk through it. And then they can go and deliver that to that person and then talk about how they can reconcile the situation. But I find that that's a really good reflective piece that I've used over the years.   But as a parent, it's hard to say sorry to your kid. It's easier to jump in and just treasure the child. You know, let's go to the park. Let's do this and just value the child. But then you end up having an insecure relationship because you've never acknowledged the problem. Therefore, you cannot change it. So therefore, you cannot have a healthy reconciliation.   Laura Dugger: (34:40 - 34:57) And how have you seen this Stoplight Approach work across the world? So many different settings with different countries and cultures or families who foster and adapt or even ones raising children with special needs?   Cherilyn Orr: (34:59 - 36:53) Well, the great thing about science is it doesn't change based on where you are in the world and what culture you're in. Every human has a brain, and all human brains function the same way. And all human brains need safety, connection and coaching.   So that's been the exciting part about understanding brain science. So, you know, even when I work in Africa, I'll say to people when I get malaria, do they give me a different medication because I'm from Canada or do they give me the same as you? And everybody says, of course, malaria is malaria. You know, it's because of science.   And I love that whole element of science that our brains are made the same. It doesn't matter what culture you're in and it doesn't matter what special needs you have. If I see a child and they're under the table and they're holding their ears, I might not know that child at all. But I know that that child is in red brain. I don't have to know if they're special needs. I don't have to know anything else. I can immediately diagnose what brain state that child is in. And then I can work at creating safety for that child. And connecting with that child. And then we can find out how do we move that child and work with that child, whatever their needs are.   And I have four adopted children, and I have fostered many children. In the process of doing that, I have recognized that every child needs to feel safe, connected, and then we can train them. So, it's like changing the equation for how we work with the children. But it works for all people. So, I don't have to have a different philosophy of parenting for my adopted child or my foster child or my biological children. Does that make sense?   Laura Dugger: (36:53 - 37:03) Yes, absolutely. And to personalize it, how has The Stoplight Approach then worked in your life and with you and your husband raising your own children?   Cherilyn Orr: (37:05 - 41:32) I just love the fact that it's a common language. So, I can give you an example of one day there was company coming and I was really stressed. And it seemed like everywhere I looked; every room was a disaster. You know, I had teenagers who were cooking and making themselves food and it was a mess. I had children that had used the bathroom and made a mess all through the bathroom. And then I had toys everywhere and sheets being made into forts. And I had company showing up.   And so, I was going into to Red Brain and I started going, “Who did this? What did you do? Who left this here? Who made this mess?” And one of my kids went and says, “Dad, mom's going to Red.” And that wasn't a judgment. That was like, this is a fact. We need your help here.   And so, dad comes along and he says, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, “You're going to Red.” He says, “Why don't you go for a walk? I'll do zone cleanup with the kids because I'm in green. And you can come back in 20 minutes and then you can do all the final tidy up before the kids come. And then that we could greet the company and green.”   So, it just becomes that common language of understanding. And he knew my need at that time. I was feeling unsafe because the house was a disaster. And my brain just was it's a brain issue, right? It's not a behavior issue. But then it was like, how do we support mom in this moment? And then I came back 20 minutes later and did the final little cleanups, and we were able to greet the company in green.   So, there's an example of using the common language as a way to help others in our family know what brain state you're in to support one another. And to be able to identify and connect.   I mean, I could give you tons of examples, even from the smallest child. They start to understand. “He made me go to red” or “I'm in red now.” So, then it's like, OK, so what do we need to do? How do we do this?   I mean, there's been days when all of a sudden I hear everybody kind of not doing too great. And I get them all to sit at the table. And I said, “So what color is our home right now?” And somebody say red. Somebody else says yellow. Then you're saying, “OK, but what kind of home do we want to have?” And they'll say green. So, what do we need to do to get it to green?   So, I think there's there's many, many different ways. But I think it's that common language that even the small child that's two and three can start to learn when they're in red or we can start to use it to teach empathy. When you did that to your sibling, what color did we make him? He didn't feel seen, heard and valued.   Just a few weeks ago, my daughter. Here's here's a recent example. We've had a refugee staying with us for a couple of years, a little girl, and she was about three. All of a sudden there was this blood curdling screaming, you know, just screaming. And I come around the corner going, “What's going on?” And my 12-year-old, very responsible, is holding scissors. She's running with scissors.   And so, my 12-year-old here was a chance to talk. And I said, “OK, so when you took her scissors away, she did not feel seen, heard and valued. Because when you took them away from her, you didn't actually speak to her. So, you need to get down on your knees, and you need to look at her and say, what did you want the scissors for? And we need to teach her. Where do we have scissors? How do we use them?”   So, she was being responsible to keep her safe. But she didn't make her feel seen, heard and valued and listen to her and say, “Oh, you want to cut your hair. Oh, only mommy cuts hair. You can't cut your hair, but we could use our scissors at the table.” So, using red, yellow and green helps to give incredible opportunities to teach empathy and to look at themselves, self-awareness and how to grow and take responsibility.   Laura Dugger: (41:34 - 42:06) And I love how you talk about this common language in such a proactive way with our children, with our families. So that when we are in red, we've got a path and a plan to get back to green. And we've got some tips for repair.   So, when we go to the proactive side and kind of tie this back into the beginning, when we talked about relationships are the foundation for brain health and development. What are some ways to securely attach with our children during different ages and stages?   Cherilyn Orr: (42:08 - 45:54) I think it comes back to being intentional. I often think of it as the 5-10-5 rule. Five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening and five minutes before they go to bed at night. It's that opportunity to stop what you're doing and to just focus in intentionally connecting with my child.   It's not easy. It's not easy. But it's how do I connect first thing in the morning when that child has been disconnected from me all night long? How do I connect with them first thing in the morning before they start their day? And then how do I connect with them like after school, before dinner? And how do I hear about what they want to tell me about their day? What part was red? What part was yellow? What kind of day they had?   One of my kids goes, “It was lime green.” And I'm like, “Okay, so how did that happen?”   “Well, I was in green and then I lost my backpack. So, I went to yellow, but then the teacher helped me find it. So, then I went back to green.” So that's how she described her day.   And then you have that connecting before they go to bed at night. That's just like, I see you, I know you, I hear you.   And so that can look differently according to different ages and stages of life. But I think holding that 5-10-5 is a good principle. And there are so many of my children that that 5-10-5 happens in hours and hours. Because they are children that demand my attention. And they are there and they are wanting that continual attention. So, some kids it happens more naturally too.   And then there are some children, and especially as they start getting older, it's a lot more challenging to be able to find that 5-10-5. And that doesn't mean in the busyness of the dinner table or in chore times. But it's about trying to connect with them and say, “I hear you. Tell me about your life. And where are you at?” Or just really just having fun with them. And just connecting to them and laughing with them and playing a game with them as well. Or going for a walk. We do a lot of that.   And with teenagers, and especially boys, it was all about the food. I would show up in their room with a milkshake or something else. Or call them out of their rooms to connect with them at different times. So, you have to be creative. It's not about my schedule sometimes. It's about looking at when they are open as well. Especially as you start getting into teenagers.   And I found that one of my teenagers, she'd always like to come and sit on my bed. Just at 11 o'clock at night. Just as I feel like I'm down for the night. And you know that baby is going to start waking up at 6 or 7. And you're just dying to go to sleep. But you know that this is important. She's ready to talk. And so, I need to be available.   Which isn't easy. But also, I think, how do we do that with seven children? Because that's a lot of kids. But my husband and I, we look at dividing and conquering. And then we look at special times. Like daddy time. Or going out with mom. Where I'll take one child to do a chore. Or go shopping. And I think that is really important to think about. How am I intentionally connecting with my child? So, I took a child to Canada recently. And I often will take a different child on different trips that I'm going on.   Laura Dugger: (45:55 - 46:15) Okay, so five minutes right in the morning. Greeting each other. Five minutes before bed. And finding ten minutes of intentional time to connect. Is that one-on-one throughout the day?   Cherilyn Orr: Yes.   Laura Dugger: You've given us so many helpful tips to apply. Is there any other encouragement that you want to make sure that we don't miss out on?   Cherilyn Orr: (46:16 - 47:52) I think when you hear a lot of these stories. First of all, I want you to know that I am not perfect. As a mom, it's a journey. And I don't want you to go away feeling like, I could never do all this. It's a journey one baby step at a time. And I encourage you to get the book. Listen to podcasts. And be able to join that journey. But don't be hard on yourself. And don't feel that sense of guilt and shame. That says, oh my, I messed up. That's okay.   Being able to recognize you messed up is a good thing. And also recognize that you think, oh man, I messed up on my kids. I did all the wrong things. I want to tell you that we all do the best we can with the knowledge that we have. And that's really, really important to know. It's like, this is a journey. And you are doing the best.   I learned all about behavior management. How do I control my child's behavior? And that was how I parented when I started this journey. And it has been a journey to shift into brain science. And to learn as much as I can about the brain science. And how it impacts my child. And to grow and be the parent that God wants me to be. But don't be hard on yourself in that way. That would be my biggest thing is. And to take one baby step. To decide one baby step that you take.   Laura Dugger: (47:52 - 47:57) And where can people find and learn more from you online?   Cherilyn Orr: (47:58 - 48:14) Well, look at the StoplightApproach.org. So that is our website. And you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And you can preorder and sign up for your book (Signals: How Brain Science and the Bible Help Parents Raise Resilient Children). You can get that on Amazon.   Laura Dugger: (48:15 - 48:32) Wonderful. We will add those links to the show notes for today's episode. And Cherilyn, you may know we are called The Savvy Sauce. Because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so is my final question for you today. What is your Savvy Sauce?   Cherilyn Orr: (48:33 - 48:55) I would say that it's not about controlling behavior. It's about connecting with my child. Relationship first rather than behavior first. It's like changing the equation. Relationship is the key. And everything else will flow out of that. And then if you can think of change the brain. Then you'll be able to change the behavior.   Laura Dugger: (48:56 – 49:20) Oh, I love that. That is memorable. And I really appreciate your emphasis on relationship. And it's so helpful to hear your stories of how this has played out over time. And cultures. And how we can now take this common language into our own homes. So, Cherilyn, thank you so much for sharing this research. And your book with us. And thank you for being my guest today.   Cherilyn Orr: (49:21 – 49:23) Thank you for having me.   Laura Dugger: (49:24 – 53:06) One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life. We could never live and died in our place for our sin.   This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished. If we choose to receive what he has done for us, Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   So, you pray with me now. Heavenly father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you.   Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life? We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus name we pray.   Amen. If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me. So, me for him, you get the opportunity to live your life for him.   And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you're ready to get started.   First, tell someone, say it out loud, get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes and Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it.   You can start by reading the book of John. Also get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.   We want to celebrate with you too. So, feel free to leave a comment for us here. If you did make a decision to follow Christ, we also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

A Prayer for Love that Does Not Boast by Rachael AdamsThere is so much joy when we see our children using their God-given gifts for His glory. In this episode Rachael shares a story of a young worship leader and the example of the apostle Paul, we’re reminded that our talents, accomplishments, and abilities are not meant to draw attention to ourselves, but to point others to Christ. When we shift our focus from self-promotion to God’s faithfulness, we discover the freedom and joy that come from boasting in the Lord alone. Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:31 Prayer: Father, thank you for all you have given me. Forgive me for taking credit or trying to gain glory for what you alone deserve. Cleanse my heart from any impure motive or thought that causes me to extol myself and seek man's applause. If I boast, may it be of the ways you have blessed me and worked in my life. I pray, if I make much of anything, I make much of you. May my desire be to make your name known and exalted. In Jesus' name, amen. LINKS: Connect with Rachael Adams Order Everyday Prayers for Love Follow Everyday Prayers @MillionPrayingMoms Get today's devotion and prayer in written form to keep for future use! Support the ministry with your $5 monthly gift through Patreon. Discover more Christian podcasts at LifeAudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at LifeAudio.com/contact-us Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.