Podcasts about second corinthians

It doesn't matter who you are, we all travel through dark and fearful places in life – and at those times, it can be so hard to remember that God is in the Light business.   The Darkest Nights I am always so excited to be starting a new series of messages and that's what we are doing this week on the programme – and it is a series that I have called "Dark Night, Bright Light." Dark and darkness – I wonder what those words mean to you? There are all sorts of connotations when we apply them to our lives. I remember when I was a young boy - even probably well into my teenage years – I was really afraid of the dark. I remember after dinner in the dining room, it was a long corridor – well it seemed a long corridor – especially in the dark. It was only about, I don't know, only eight or nine meters from the dining room to my bedroom. But I have to tell you, when it was dark, it was a long way for me to go. And I was afraid to walk from the light dining room into that dark corridor to my dark bedroom. Now in the house where we lived, we were blessed because there was a light switch for the lights at either end of the corridor so I could walk out of the dining room, turn on the light and the corridor was in light and then I could go to my bedroom – and I always used that switch. Now, we lived in a safe part of town and the house was secure and there was no logical or rational reason for me to be afraid of the dark – I just was – and it was a deep fear and I think a lot of kids go through that. It seems that darkness and fear, well, they often go together in life – young or old. Now the truth be known we need both – we need light and dark in this world. I love it when the sun goes down and it's time to go to sleep and again when the sun comes up in the morning and it's time to get up and get on with living life. That's a pattern we live by – it's a pattern of life. But imagine if it were only ever dark, how awful that would be. In some countries of course, far north and far south, they have many months of darkness. Now take a look at our own lives. If we look back on those dark times – those periods in life that we would rather forget – whether it was a broken relationship or sickness or the death of a loved one or some real financial difficulties or maybe you have been through a war and has seen people killed or been in prison. Perhaps you have seen everything that you have worked so hard for over so many years just go down the drain. Someone has hurt you incredibly deeply or someone you trusted – perhaps you have been through a time of depression or real loneliness or you are working so hard that you don't feel as though you have a life – that list just goes on and on and on. Life has its dark times, doesn't it? Maybe you are going through one right now or maybe, who knows, there is one just around the next corner or next year or the year after and that's why we are kicking off this series "Dark Night, Bright Light" because light is the opposite of darkness and when we are travelling through those dark times, light is the very thing that we need. The problem is it can be so hard to find; so hard to believe in or hope for and over these coming weeks, we are going to be spending some time with King David in Psalm 34. But before we go there, let's have a little foretaste about darkness and light. If you have got a Bible, I want you grab it; I want you to open it up at page 1 – Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1 – the beginning. Here's what it say: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said "Let there be light" and there was light. And God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day' and the darkness He called that 'night'. And there was evening and there was morning – that was the first day." I might hear you say, "Well, Berni, I know that passage and that's all well and good. You're talking about physical light here, that's fine but what about God shining His light into the darkness in my life?" We are going to talk about that shortly but the point that I'm making is this: creation tells us something about the Creator. You and I create different things because we are different. God, the very first thing He creates – the very first thing – is light. That tells us something about God but what a light! We tend to just think of the sun there; one of just an estimated trillion, trillion stars. God is seriously into light and that tells us something about who He is. Let's take a look at just another couple of verses in the Bible. There are so many of them that talk about God and light – Ezekiel chapter 10, verse 4: Then the glory of the Lord rose from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple. The cloud filled the temple and the court was full of the radiance and the glory of God. Words from Isaiah chapter 60, verse 19: The sun will no more be your light by day nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you for the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory. And perhaps my favourite of all, where Paul seems to bring it all together in Second Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 6: For it is the very same God who said "Let light shine out of the darkness, that made His light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Bible is full of references about God being our light and our radiance. Can you see why I have called this series "Dark Night, Bright Light"? Over these coming weeks I believed we are going to be transformed by God's Word about darkness and light. If you have just been through a "darkness" or you are going through one right now or you are going to go through one in the future, the Word of God is going to shine a light into that dark place – "Dark Night, Bright Light."   The Wisdom of Hindsight As I said earlier in the programme we are going to spend some time in Psalm 34, this week and over the next three weeks. It's an interesting Psalm because it comes out of King David's life. It's a Psalm of praise for deliverance from trouble. So it is a Psalm written, if you like, with the benefit of hindsight. David has learned something – something about God in a dark time. Now we are not sure what that time was. The introduction to the Psalm says, "A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away." Now we don't have any other information about that. Abimelech was a judge; he was a leader of Israel; he was Gideon's son. Anyhow the fact of the matter is, even though we don't know the precise historical details it doesn't matter. David had to engage in some deception, it tells us; if was a fearful and scary time and he needed to escape. Now let's have a look at the first part of this Psalm. If you have got a Bible, open it at Psalm 34 – we are going to look at just the first eight verses today. This is what it says: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord, let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me – He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him It's a beautiful Psalm! You see, it's David looking back on a difficult time. And he starts out be praising God – "I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips," because of God's faithfulness. And there's a purpose in him praising; a specific purpose. Look at verse 2. My soul will boast in the Lord, let the afflicted hear and rejoice. See, the purpose of this Psalm is to let the rest of us know when we are afflicted that God is faithful in those darks times so that we can hear that and rejoice. See, this Psalm was written for you and for me. Isn't God good? And David says, "You know why I am writing this Psalm? It's for you, you who are afflicted; you who are travelling through a dark and fearful time." You know why? Come and look at verse 3 again with me. David says: Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. In other words so that you and I can rejoice together even though we might be travelling through dark times. We are getting the benefit of what David discovered in his dark and fearful time. And what he discovered, well, it is as profound as it is simple. Look at verse 4; this is what he says; this is the heart of this first passage for me. David says: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. You know what happens in the darkness? In the darkness we become afraid and that fear immobilises us – fear stops us dead in our tracks. We just kind of sit there and we ache and fear eats away at our hearts like a quick spreading cancer and in that fear - remember, David was as he had been many times before, in fear of his life; real fear – David had more than his share of dark times – he had real fear. Let me say it this way – he was in deadly fear and in the midst of his deadly fear he did the thing that he had learned to do over all of those times in his life when he had been in danger – when he was on the run from King Saul who was trying to kill him for all those years – he did the one thing he knew to do – Psalm 34, verse 4: I sought the Lord and He answered me. David sought God – he'd cry out to God for help. The one thing that we can forget to do when we are frozen by fear is just to cry out to God – just to pour our hearts out to Him. And what a surprise, "God answered him and delivered him from all his fears." I don't know about you but I can relate to that. In life and in ministry I come against giants of opposition all the time and I can tell you, some days they scare me – seriously. And we have a choice – we can just kind of sit there and tremble in fear and be completely immobilised or we can spend some time with God, crying out to Him in prayer and reading His Word and listening to Him – and He always delivers me from all my fears. David goes on to say this – verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 34: Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered in shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him and He saved him out of all his troubles. There it is – the light word "radiance". The Hebrew word that sits behind our English translation means literally 'to beam or to burn with light'. It's an "over the top" kind of word – it's not a glow or a flicker or just a shine, but to beam and to burn with light and that's exactly what happens when we look to God; when we put our trust in Him in the middle of our darkness. See, in those dark times we are downcast; ashamed if you like, but David states this simple truth "This poor man called and the Lord heard him and saved out of all his troubles; He delivered him from all his fears." This is such a humble and beautiful picture, isn't it? David, probably the greatest King that Israel ever had, saw himself just as a poor man who cried out to God in his darkness. Don't you love it how the Bible is packed full of this real life stuff – this stuff that's right down where we are? The Word of God meant for us here and now; right where the rubber hits the road - the light and the radiance of God in our darkness and fear - and all this out of a simple step that David took; so simple and yet when we are afraid, so difficult. "I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears."   Taste and See God is very much in the "light" business, isn't He – taking our fear and replacing it with His radiance? Perhaps that's why David writes in Psalm 18, verse 28: It is You O Lord who lights my lamp; the Lord my God lights up my darkness. And again in Psalm 139, verses 11 and 12: If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to You. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to You. You get the impression that David is a seasoned traveller through darkness and he has learned some stuff that God would have us learn, each in our own way. Now let's head back to Psalm 34, verses 7 and 8, just to finish off our look at what David learned. Let's have a read: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Now there are two things here we need to get into; the first is the bit about the angel of the Lord. Let's have a look at verse 7 again: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Angels have a kind of funny symbology these days in our society – fluffy little creatures with wings – but you do just a short study of the angels that God describes in the Bible and you discover they are a fearsome lot. Often God uses them as a messenger and the first thing the angel says is, "Don't be afraid". They deliver a specific message to God's people to protect them from trouble and often they appear as fearsome beings to protect God's people. Look at Second Chronicles chapter 32, verse 20: King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos cried out in prayer to heaven about this and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the leaders and the officers of the camp of the Assyrian King. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace and when he went to the temple of his god, some of his sons cut him down with his own sword. Get it? The angel is serious protection. Presidents or Prime Ministers or Kings or Queens all have their security contingents right around them when they travel. Well those security contingents have got nothing on an angel of the Lord. And you might say to me, "Berni, do you seriously believe in angels?" Absolutely! We can't see them but when we fear God; when we reverence Him – we will talk more about that idea next week – when we belong to Him, He sends His angel to encamp around us; to surround us; literally, to lay siege around us to protect us. How does David know that? Because he has been there; he has experienced it over and over again and that's exactly what he says in the next verse. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Now, this verse is so often quoted out of context "Taste and see" – suck it and see! When you are in the darkness; when you are afraid, David is saying, "Try this thing that I am talking about 'Taste and see that the Lord is good', you will be blessed when you take refuge in Him." It's like an invitation to you and me today from God. Come on, try it – I can hear the Spirit of God saying through His Word – "Come on, try it because when you take refuge in Me". God is saying, "you will truly be blessed". I don't know about you but God has seriously spoken to me today and encouraged me through His Word; He is in the light business and it's something that David discovered through long, hard experiences in darkness and fear. And he comes out the other side of that singing God's praises specifically for you and for me to hear. I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name. I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called out and the Lord heard him and He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good for blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Isn't that an awesome Psalm? People sometimes say to me, "Berni, why do you talk about this stuff? You know, is this Christianity thing for losers?" You don't have to be a loser to go through dark times – we all go through dark times – we all travel through difficult times. You know, a friend or a relative that is close to us dies young of cancer and we are left reeling and we think "God why has that happened?" We get retrenched; we lose someone else we love; we … – all sorts of things happen to us and at those times it feels like God has deserted us. Listen to David again: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. In that darkness there is no light so bright as the light of God and His heart is to take a face that has been covered with tears and put His radiance on that face. God is a wonderful God. I want to encourage you to join me over the next three weeks as we further explore the Word of God and what God has to say about His light amidst our darkness. That's what this series "Dark Night, Bright Light" is all about.

Mass Readings for Ash Wednesday February 18, 2026 Reading 1, Joel 2:12-18 Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17 Reading 2, Second Corinthians 5:20-6:2 Gospel, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

So often we try to make changes in our lives, you know, the difficult things, those entrenched behaviours that keep ruining things for us – but try as we might, somehow we always seem to fail. But worship, well, that's something that changes us – from the inside out.   Worship Sets us Free Well, welcome to this programme; it's the last programme in our four part series called, "Worship as a Way of Life". I guess the guts of it has been getting our hearts and our minds around the fact that worship is more than just going to church and singing songs on Sunday morning – so much more. And over the last three weeks we have seen that there are really two aspects to worship. Two different words used for worship in the New Testament. Worship on the inside – bowing down our lives to God, the thing that happens in our hearts, and then what we go on and do with that – living out that worship through our service, on the outside. It makes sense – look at a marriage. I love my wife, Jacqui, with all my heart – I adore her but if that's all I did it wouldn't be a very great marriage. Once a week, if I just said, "Darling, I love you", come on, what sort of a marriage would it be? I have to live out that marriage; I have to live out that love. I don't always do that perfectly, but she has to know that I love her through how I treat her and what I say to her and what I do for her and as I live out that love, it changes me on the inside and I love her even more. So this "inside", "outside" thing, well they feed off each other. The question is, is it like that in our relationship with God? Today we are going to conclude this series by asking that question. Ok, so if I worship God, what happens to me? I mean, does it change me, does it transform me, does it change the way I am on the inside and the outside? We are going to start off today back in the Book of Exodus, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it. We will go to the Book of Exodus and we are looking where Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the Ten Commandments. Something happened to him up there. Have a look at Exodus, chapter 34, beginning at verse 29. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he wasn't aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken to the Lord. When his brother Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him but Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him and he spoke with them. Afterwards all the Israelites came near to him and he gave them all the Commandments that the Lord had given him up on the mountain. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face but whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with Him he removed the veil until he came out again. And when he came out and told the Israelites what had been commanded they saw that his face was radiant again. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord again. See, when you go into God's presence, you can't help it, something happens to you. And with Moses, he went into God's presence up on Mount Sinai and then in the tabernacle (the tent), which was the tent of the meeting place. When Israel were out there in the desert for forty years in the exodus, they built a tent and in the centre of that tent; in a place called the Holy of Holies, is where the presence of God rested with them. And only Moses would go in and speak with God. And when he did that there was this radiance; something different about him, when he came out from having been in God's presence. He was transformed in a way that the people, well, they really noticed this. A few thousand years later the Apostle Paul looks back on all of that and comes up with the conclusion that when we turn to the Lord our God and worship Him, something like that happens, only much better. Let's again go to God's Word and have a look at Second Corinthians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. This is what Paul writes: We aren't like Moses who had to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. Their minds were made dull for to this day, that same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day, when Moses' laws are read, a veil covers their hearts but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. What's this thing that Paul is talking about here? I mean the Israelites in the first century, were bound up in God's law and in legalism. You know, it was all about rules – there were six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions in the Torah; in the Hebrew Law that was given through Moses and they got so rule-bound and legalistic and that's the thing that Jesus came to set us free from. I mean, Moses, in the Old Testament, was able to go into the presence of God, and when he came out he used to have to hide his transformation – the glory of God shinning out from his face, because people didn't understand it; they couldn't take it – the whole bunch of people around in his day who just didn't get it. A bit like today really. Whenever we turn to the Lord, to Jesus, the veil is taken away. And then Paul goes on to say in verse 17: Now, the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The picture here is of our faces shinning with the glory of God – not a sense of a bunch of rules that we have to keep – not that at all – a sense of freedom. See, here's what so often happens – someone accepts Jesus Christ into their lives as Lord and Saviour – right? Fantastic! All great intentions but then little by little we get bound up in rules and regulations and "you have to do this and you can't do that" – it's called legalism. And Paul is saying, "No, you get up on the mountain top and you worship God – you don't have to be like that. He changes you on the inside and you end up shinning on the outside." The veil is removed – you don't have to hide it anymore. Have you ever met someone who is just glowing with the glory of God; with the goodness of God? You know, they walk into the room and there's a kind of a light and when they leave something lingers – this sense that somehow, God is in this place. When we like Moses, go to that mountain top and worship God, it changes us; it transforms us on the inside and you end up glowing that on the outside. There's a sense that this person has been up there worshipping in the presence of God. You know what we try to do? We try to do this in our own strength. We look at God and go, "WOW, God is so amazing", and the more we look at Him the more we realise our own weaknesses, so then we set about trying to change them. We think, "you know something, I have to stop doing this or I have to start doing that, or I have to do this and don't do that", and before you know it we are peddling so hard, we're exhausted. And ultimately, we end up failing; it's too hard, we can't do it. Paul is saying here that when we worship God on that mountain top, God does something amazing. He fills us on the inside and we can't help it – it ends up shinning out on the outside. We'll take a look at that next.   Worship Transforms Us When we worship God, that bears fruit in our lives – it changes us on the inside and on the outside in ways that we simply couldn't do on our own. In fact, as we worship Him, we end up looking more and more like Jesus. Have a read here in Second Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 18, what Paul goes on to say. And we, who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. See, that veil that Paul was talking about before and here in this passage, is the veil of misunderstanding; it's the veil of separation; it's the veil that says, "I can't come before God because I'm not worthy." In the first century the Jews had the temple, in fact, they had had it for quite a long time before then. And in the centre of the temple, on the inside, was the Holy of Holies, the place where the presence of God was. And only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement – to make atonement with God through sacrifice for the sins of Israel. Anyone else went in there they would die because they couldn't stand the presence of the Lord – He's holy and He's perfect and we're not! – and we would surely die in His presence. That's why, when Moses came down from the mountain and his face was glowing with the glory of God, people were afraid. The Holy of Holies was closed off from the rest of us in the temple, by a thick curtain or a veil. So what's changed? How come we can go into God's presence and worship Him? How is it that we can come before a holy God just as we are with our faces uncovered and our hearts uncovered open to Him? Luke explains it in his Gospel as he records the crucifixion of Jesus. You can read this in Luke, chapter 23, verse 44. It was now about the sixth hour and the darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour for the sun had stopped shining and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit." When He said this, He breathed His last. See, the death of Jesus Christ paid for all my sins – He paid for all your sins And that one thing that stopped us from coming into the very presence of God, our sin, was dealt with and so God tore the veil in two – the veil that closed off the Holy of Holies. He opened that up to you and me, the instant that Christ died. That means if we put our faith in Jesus we can go and stand in His presence unveiled; just as we are and just gaze on His beauty with wonder and awe and worship Him. And when we do that then we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from God who is the Spirit. Just as we stand in His presence and know that He is God, He transforms us into His likeness, from glory to glory to glory and it works its way out from the inside to our outside and we're transformed into His likeness. We end up looking more and more like Jesus. Let me ask you a question: Why is it that so many Christians are just plain hypocrites? They go to church on Sunday and yet you look at their lives for the rest of the week and they look nothing like Jesus. I'll tell you why – because they haven't adopted worship as their way of life. I struggle so much in my life when I don't spend time with Jesus. If I've been sick or I've been travelling or I'm really busy or really tired, in those times I just know that I haven't got what it takes to do it on my own. And time and time again that's what brings me back to the foot of the cross. Time and time again I discover and I rediscover I can't do this on my own. Only when I worship God on the inside and then I live that out on the outside, that's when I can look like Him. When we get off that mountain top and wander round in the marshes of day to day life, like Moses, the glory fades. But when we spend time worshipping Jesus on the mountain top, on the inside; we don't have to go out there in life and wander round on our own any more, in our own strength. Instead the joy of the Lord is our strength. When we worship God, He fills us with His joy, just as having been in His presence. The joy of just having seen Him and heard Him and experienced Him changes us – He fills us with the joy of the Lord; the fullness of His Spirit. We need to experience Jesus for ourselves – that's what real worship is – making music unto Him in our hearts – singing, delighting, resting, praying and when we do that, we who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness, with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. I love this because we can't do it in our own strength. God has this amazing plan to transform you and me into His image from glory to glory. Just as we turn to worship Him and bow down before Him – to set us free, to fill us with the calm delight of His presence. This is where the rubber hits the road – this is so much better than keeping the veil over our hearts and trying to go out there and do it in our own strength. This is ... well, it's so God, isn't it? It's so.. Him! Do you get it? He wants to change you and me from glory to glory. He wants to transform us to, in effect, be Christ to a lost and hurting world; to look like and to walk like and to talk like Jesus – to ache like Jesus for those around us – in His image – that was always the plan.   A Treasure in Jars of Clay I was accosted recently by a man in a coffee shop in Chicago. It turns out, sad to say, that he was an Australian who heard me talking with my colleague in the coffee shop, and so he picked up my accent. Anyhow, this guy accosts me quite aggressively and starts telling me that if we believe in God, it's possible for us to be perfect here on earth. Unfortunately, I didn't think quickly enough – what I should have done is ask him, "So, do you know anyone who's like that, perfect, I mean?" Because the only perfect person I know is Jesus Christ. Now I want to deal with this because it's important. From what we've seen so far on the programme you could easily get the impression that I agree with that guy in the coffee shop. Just keep worshipping Jesus and you'll be exactly like Him – perfecto! My experience is that there are sometimes gaps between the glory – you know when it talks about us being transformed from glory to glory – I make mistakes every day, I fall short every day and my hunch is so do you. And if we think that we can end up being "perfecto", well, we are going to become very discouraged very quickly. Paul addresses this in the next few verses – go to Second Corinthians, chapter 4 and verse 6 – let's have a listen to what he says. For the God who said, "Let a light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That kind of reinforces what we've been talking about. God does something, "He shines His light" as we get to know Jesus; He shines His light into our hearts. The same God who created light out of darkness – it's the first thing He did – "Let there be light" – that God speaks light into our hearts through Jesus Christ. But look at what He says in the next verse, verse 7. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies. See, the treasure that Paul is talking about here is the wonder and the glory of God – that light that shines out from our faces and from all that we do when we are people of worship. The jars of clay, well, that's you and me – that's who we are! What a great contrast – the light shinning out the glory of God – bright and pure and perfect – but God takes it and He puts it in this rough and imperfect earthenware jar. Maybe it has some chips and cracks and that brilliant light of God's glory shines out from that imperfect and rough jar. See, sometimes we go and worship God and we come down from the mountain top and we are full of His glory and we think "everything is going to go well", but look what Paul says: We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus Christ so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. He was going through some difficult times in ministry – people were trying to kill him, they were locking him up, they were beating him, they were abandoning him. Just because we worship God doesn't mean that those things aren't going to happen to us – they do! We are in an earthenware jar. And what a sharp contrast between this beautiful, perfect, glorious light of God and this rough and imperfect and sometimes cracked and broken earthenware jar – they are so different you can tell the difference, you can't help it. And there's a reason for that. So that people will know that this light that they see on our faces – this glory of God, this all surpassing power comes from God and not from us. God is so realistic, isn't He? He doesn't expect perfection – He just wants us to come as we are – a bit rough around the edges, a bit perfect, with pressures and tensions in our lives and when we worship Him He pours His glory into us to shine out into the world. It's so easy for us to get discouraged! The more we worship God the more we see our own imperfections in His light but that's the plan – just for us to let Him take our lives as we are and for God to use them for His glory. That's worship – worship as a way of life. You go up to the mountain top and you worship Jesus – you do it with all your heart – you bow down and you worship Him in song and in prayer and in just resting in His presence and His glory with thanksgiving and with praise. And then we come down from that mountain top and we are walking around doing all the stuff we do in life and His glory just shines out into the world through the cracks in our earthenware jars. We go up to that mountain top again and He fills us again and again and we come down again and again and we live out that worship – it's just the way He made us. My earthenware jar was made for a different purpose to yours – yours is different to the next persons. We are all imperfect – that's the way it's meant to be so that nobody can be in any doubt that the glory comes from God. I love getting together with God's people and singing songs of worship and praise but you know the greatest times of worship for me are in my study with the door closed, with the Bible open, just praying and delighting and worshipping God and being filled with the sense of His presence; being filled with His Spirit. And then when I open that door and I go and do all the things I do in life, I'm a better husband; I'm a better father; I'm a better teacher; I'm a better manager; I'm a better everything because I spent that time worshipping God. Worship on the inside becomes worship on the outside – the things that we do in life. Worship – worship is a way of life.

Examine yourself to see if we're in the faith today on Abounding Grace. We'll finish our study of Second Corinthians. It's a good idea to examine ourselves from time to time, and we have that opportunity today with pastor Ed Taylor. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Universal Salvation, part 4 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I'm going to do my best to wrap up this review of David Bentley Hart's book, That All Shall Be Saved, Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. And I hope you understand, particularly those of you who are Christians that are listening to this, that I do all of this in the name of the Father. It's not to tear down Christianity. It's to uphold the mission of the Messiah, which has been lost over the past several hundred years of Christianity. And so this talk of universal salvation is a necessary component of believing in the glory of God. Because universal salvation of all souls, not only all humans, but the dogs, the cats, the birds, the grasses, all living things, have to return to the Father, or else the Anointed loses power. The Father loses parts of himself. Okay, let's get back to David Bentley Hart. So we're going to run through these four meditations that are the body of his book. The first meditation is, Who is God? He says, The New Testament, to a great degree, consists in the eschatological interpretation of Hebrew Scripture's story of creation, finding in Christ as eternal Logos and risen Lord, the unifying term of beginning and end. There's no more magnificent meditation on this vision than Gregory of Nyssa's description of the progress of all persons towards union with God in the one pleroma, the one fullness of the whole Christ. All spiritual wills moving, to use this loving image, from outside the temple walls to the temple precincts, and finally beyond the ages into the very sanctuary of the glory as one. Okay, let me jump in here to say, do you notice that the New Testament words, when you use the correct translations, are the same as the translations in our Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi? Logos is the eternal spirit of humanity and the risen Lord. The Fullness is the one pleroma, the whole Christ. And in this statement, it's saying that all that is spiritual, which includes the spirits that reside within each of us, will all move as one into the pleroma of the Christ. That's who Christ is to us. He's the head of our pleroma. And when I speak of pleromas, I always picture that pyramidal shape, that hierarchical shape, and the capstone is the head. We 2nd order powers are children of the 1st order powers. The 3rd order powers are the Army of Christ that have come to redeem us. When Paul spoke of this, he was applying it literally to the temple in Jerusalem, where there were the walls of the temple, and most of the people were outside of the walls, and some of the people were in the temple precincts. And finally, the very sanctuary of the glory, where only the priests were allowed. These are the three parts that were mentioned, and these are archetypal of the movement of humanity, Hart is saying, from the outside of the pleroma of the Christ, into the pleroma of the Christ, and then into the very glory of God through the Christ. On page 90, Hart says, If one truly believes that traditional Christian language about God's goodness and the theological grammar to which it belongs are not empty, then the God of eternal retribution and pure sovereignty proclaimed by so much of Christian tradition is not and cannot possibly be the God of self-outpouring love revealed in Christ. If God is the good creator of all, he must also be the savior of all without fail, who brings to himself all he has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to himself in all that goes forth from him. And that's the end of the chapter, Who is God? And that pretty much states my basic belief on why everyone is going to heaven, because we all come from the Father, and therefore we all must return to the Father because the Father cannot be diminished in any way. And if he lost us, he'd be diminished. Do you see? The second meditation is, What is Judgment? And the subtitle is A Reflection on Biblical Eschatology. And eschatology, that's one of those big theological words that just means the end times, the end of time. On page 93, Hart says, There's a general sense among most Christians that the notion of an eternal hell is explicitly and unremittingly advanced in the New Testament. And yet, when we go looking for it in the actual pages of the text, it proves remarkably elusive. The whole idea is, for instance, entirely absent from the Pauline corpus as even the thinnest shadow of a hint, nor is it anywhere patently present in any of the other epistolary texts. There is one verse in the Gospels, Matthew 25-46 that, traditionally understood, offers what seems the strongest evidence for the idea, but then now Hart's going to explain how that can't be true. And then he says there are also perhaps a couple of verses from Revelation, and he says nothing's clear in Revelation, so he's not going to go there. But, What in fact the New Testament provides us with are a number of fragmentary and fantastic images that can be taken in any number of ways, arranged according to our prejudices and expectations, and declared literal or figural or hyperbolic as our desires dictate. It's why people can make the case for eternal damnation, but you can also make the case for not eternal damnation, because it's so metaphorical. On page 94, Hart says, Nowhere is there any description of a kingdom of perpetual cruelty presided over by Satan, as though he were some kind of Chthonian god. On the other hand, however, there are a remarkable number of passages in the New Testament, several of them from Paul's writings, that appear instead to promise a final salvation of all persons and all things, and in the most unqualified terms. How did some images become mere images in the general Christian imagination, while others became exact documentary portraits of some final reality? If one can be swayed simply by the brute force of arithmetic, it seems worth noting that, among the apparently most explicit statements on the last things, the universalist statements are by far the more numerous. And then he lists a number of verses from the New Testament that speak of universal salvation, over 20 of them at least, and I'll give you just a couple. Romans 5.18 says, So then, just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings. And jumping in from the Gnostic sense, he doesn't say the fall of one human, he doesn't say through Adam, he says one transgression—and we would call that one transgression the Fall of Logos, the fall of the Aeon, which is a higher order being than we are. Or Corinthians 15.22 says, For just as in Adam all die, so also in the anointed Christ all will be given life. I would say where it says for just as in Adam all die, it's not because Adam ate the apple, it's that we humans who are outside of the Christ, we're outside of the walls of the temple, we are in the pleroma of Adam—we are in the pleroma of human beings. When you accept the anointed, then you move into the pleroma, or you nest up higher into the pleroma of the Christ. That would be the Gnostic way of saying that. Second Corinthians 5.14 says, For the love of the anointed constrains us, having reached this judgment, that one died on behalf of all, all then have died. And of course that one is the Anointed, and He died on behalf of everyone. Or even Romans 11:32, For God shut up everyone in obstinacy, so that he might show mercy to everyone. And there's a long discussion in the chapter about how God's chosen—the original elect, that being the Hebrew nation—has been obstinate about accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Anointed. And so he's saying that everyone is shut up in obstinacy, that's the Hebrews, so that he might show mercy to everyone. And that is, they're temporarily set up in obstinacy so that the message of the Anointed can be preached far and wide, before death and after death, we Gnostics would say, and not be just constrained to only the Hebrews. That's why the Hebrews are set aside for the moment, so that those outside the temple walls can also come to Christ. And then there are 19 more verses after this, and he lists them all between pages 96 and page 102. And if you are a theological scholar or a concerned Christian that wants to know if this is heresy or not, I really suggest you buy the book, That All Shall Be Saved, by David Bentley Hart, and read it carefully from cover to cover. Jumping to page 116, Hart says, There are those metaphors used by Jesus that seem to imply that the punishment of the world to come will be of only limited duration. For example, “if remanded to prison, you shall most certainly not emerge until you pay the very last pittance.” Or, “the unmerciful slave is delivered to the torturers until he should repay everything he owes.” And Hart says it seems as if this until should be taken with some seriousness. Some wicked slaves, moreover, “will be beaten with many blows, while others will be beaten with few blows.” Hart says, of course, everyone will be “salted with fire.” This fire is explicitly that of the Gehenna. But salting here is an image of purification and preservation, for salt is good. Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom from the Old Testament, and that is where, outside of the city of Jerusalem, the refuse was burned, and even carrion and bodies were burned. And that is why it is considered to be a hellish place. And it has become a metaphor in the time of Jesus for the purging fire, the Aeonian chastening for the good. Hart says we might even find some support for the purgatorial view of the Gehenna from the Greek of Matthew 25:46, which is the supposedly conclusive verse on the side of the Infernalist Orthodoxy, where the word used for the punishment of the last day is kolasis, which most properly refers to remedial chastisement, rather than timoria, which more properly refers to retributive justice. So, the fire of the judgment. What is judgment? The fire is the chastening fire, the fire of personal guilt and remorse over the sins one has done, that causes one to repent and turn to redemption. Hart says, It is not clear in any event that the fourth gospel, [and the fourth gospel, that's the gospel of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John], it is not clear in any event that the fourth gospel foretells any “last judgment,” in the sense of a real additional judgment that accomplishes more than has already happened in Christ. To see His words as pointing toward and fulfilled within his own crucifixion and resurrection, wherein all things were judged and all things redeemed. The kingdom has indeed drawn very near, and even now is being revealed. The hour indeed has come. The judge who is judged in our place is also the resurrection and the life that has always already succeeded and exceeded the time of condemnation. All of heaven and of hell meet in those three days. . . Hell appears in the shadow of the cross as what has always already been conquered, as what Easter leaves in ruins, to which we may flee from the transfiguring light of God if we so wish, but where we can never finally come to rest, for being only a shadow, it provides nothing to cling to. And he attributes that concept of hell being only a shadow to Gregory of Nyssa, although we would attribute it to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi which came before Gregory of Nyssa. Hell exists so long as it exists only as the last terrible residue of a fallen creation's enmity to God, the lingering effects of a condition of slavery that God has conquered universally in Christ and will ultimately conquer individually in every soul. This age has passed away already, however long it lingers on its own aftermath, and thus in the Age to Come, [and that's capital A, Age, which we would interpret as the Aeons to Come, the Aeonian Pleroma to Come], and beyond all ages, all shall come to the kingdom prepared for them from before the foundation of the world. And that's the chapter, What is Judgment? The third meditation or chapter of Hart is called What is a Person? A Reflection on the Divine Image. It says over and over in the Bible that we are made in the image of God. Man is made in the image of God. That is the divine image. On page 131, Hart says, Christians down the centuries have excelled at converting the good tidings of God's love in Christ into something dreadful, irrational, and morally horrid. [And we covered that in depth in the previous three episodes, if you want to go back there.] On page 132, Hart says, I suspect that no figure in Christian history has suffered a greater injustice as a result of the desperate inventiveness of the Christian moral imagination than the Apostle Paul, since it was the violent misprision of his theology of grace, starting with the great Augustine, it grieves me to say, that gave rise to almost all of these grim distortions of the Gospel. Aboriginal guilt, predestination, (ante praevisa merita), the eternal damnation of unbaptized infants, the real existence of vessels of wrath, and so on. All of these odious and incoherent dogmatic motifs, so to speak, and others equally nasty, have been ascribed to Paul. And yet, each and every one of them, not only is incompatible with the guiding themes of Paul's proclamation of Christ's triumph and of God's purpose in election, but is something like their perfect inversion. Well, isn't that interesting? Because we already know that the archons represent the inversions of the Aeons of the Pleroma. And so, although Hart doesn't realize he's implying this, to say that what has come down to us in Christian tradition through Augustine is the perfect inversion of what Paul was actually saying about universal salvation, which means, by definition, that it's the demiurgic or the archonic version of salvation. Isn't that interesting? I mean, that is what I have been implying, that what has been taken to be Christian tradition for the last couple of thousand years is actually a diminishment of the power of Christ and the power and love of the Father. By saying that people can be lost and condemned to eternal torture, that is sacrilegious to me. That is the heresy. And that is what Hart is saying here. He goes on to say on page 133, This is all fairly odd, really. Paul's argument in those chapters is not difficult to follow. What preoccupies him from beginning to end is the agonizing mystery that the Messiah of Israel has come, and yet so few of the children of the house of Israel have accepted the fact, even while so many from outside the covenant have. And Paul wonders, how is the promised Messiah rejected by so many, yet so many outside the temple walls have accepted the Messiah? There are far more Christians than there are Jews at the moment. Why is that? Paul was wondering. Hart says, Paul's is not an abstract question regarding which individual human beings are the saved and which are the damned. In fact, by the end of the argument, the former category, [that is the saved], proves to be vastly larger than that of the elect or the called, while the latter category, [that is the damned], makes no appearance at all. Jumping down the page, he says, “so then what if,” so now he's going to go ahead and quote Paul here, Romans 9:19, Paul says, So then what if God should show his power by preserving vessels suitable only for wrath, keeping them solely for destruction, in order to provide an instructive counterpoint to the riches of the glory he lavishes on vessels prepared for mercy, whom he has called from among the Jews and the Gentiles alike. For as it happens, rather than offering a solution to the quandary in which he finds himself, Paul is simply restating that quandary in its bleakest possible form, at the very brink of despair. He does not stop there, however, because he knows that this cannot be the correct answer. It is so obviously preposterous, in fact, that a wholly different solution must be sought, one that makes sense and that will not require the surrender either of Paul's reason or of his confidence in God's righteousness. Hence, contrary to his own warnings, Paul does indeed continue to question God's justice, and he spends the next two chapters unambiguously rejecting the provisional answer, the vessels of wrath hypothesis, altogether, so as to reach a completely different and far more glorious conclusion—God blesses everyone. Romans 10: 11, 12. And by the way, in Gnostic gospel, we would say the law is actually the Demiurge's rules for human behavior, because our self-will makes us otherwise uncontrollable. Because to the Father above, the only law is love. When we act out of love, all else follows. Going on, Hart says, As for the believing remnant of Israel, [Romans 11:5], it turns out that they have been elected not as the limited number of the saved within Israel, but as the earnest through which all of Israel will be saved. They are waiting for the Anointed to come and take the place of the King of Israel, King of the Jews. King of the Jews is one of the titles of the Messiah. That means the capstone of their pleroma. You see? It's all of these pyramidal shapes that are first designed up there in the Fullness of God, the pleroma. What Paul is saying is that the Jews that are in the pleroma of Israel, it's their remnant that makes them holy. It's their remnant that is the spiritual part, the higher part, the called part, the elect part of the pleroma of the nation of the Hebrews. And it is through those elect that all of the Jews will be saved, ultimately. Hart says, For the time being, true, a part of Israel is hardened, but this will remain the case only until the ”full entirety” [that is the pleroma] of the Gentiles enter in. The unbelievers among the children of Israel may have been allowed to stumble, but God will never allow them to fall. Hart's just saying that Israel's reluctance or slowness to believing that Jesus is the Messiah is just slowing down the progress of history to give everyone else a chance to catch up to it. Quoting Hart again, We're in Romans now, 11:11. This then is the radiant answer dispelling the shadows of Paul's grim what if in the ninth chapter of Romans. It's clarion negative. It turns out that there is no final illustrative division between the vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. That was a grotesque, all too human thought that can now be chased away for good. God's wisdom far surpasses ours, and his love can accomplish all that it intends. “He has bound everyone in disobedience so as to show mercy to everyone.” [That's Romans 11:32.] All are vessels of wrath precisely so that all may be made vessels of mercy. . . That Paul's great attempt to demonstrate that God's election is not some arbitrary act of predilective exclusion, but instead a providential means for bringing about the unrestricted inclusion of all persons, has been employed for centuries to advance what is quite literally the very teaching that he went to such great lengths explicitly to reject. . . Yet this is still not my principal point. I want to say something far more radical. I want to say that there is no way in which persons can be saved as persons except in and with all other persons. This may seem an exorbitant claim, but I regard it as no more than an acknowledgment of certain obvious truths about the fragility, dependency, and exigency of all that make us who and what we are. Oh, this is a very interesting portion. Okay, listen to this. Jumping to page 149. No soul is who or what it is in isolation, and no soul's sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of a potentially limitless number of other souls being ignored as well. And so it seems if we allow the possibility that even so much as a single soul might slip away unmourned into everlasting misery, the ethos of heaven turns out to be “every soul for itself”—which is also, curiously enough, precisely the ethos of hell. But Christians are obliged, it seems clear, to take seriously the eschatological imagery of scripture. And there all talk of salvation involves the promise of a corporate beatitude, a kingdom of love and knowledge, a wedding feast, a city of the redeemed, the body of Christ, which means that the hope Christians cherish must in some way involve the preservation of whatever is deepest in and most essential to personality rather than a perfect escape from personality. But finite persons are not self-enclosed individual substances. They are dynamic events of relation to what is other than themselves. And then Hart summons up the idea of a single recurrent image, he says, That of a parent whose beloved child has grown into quite an evil person, but who remains a parent nevertheless, and therefore keeps and cherishes countless tender memories of the innocent and delightful being that has now become lost in the labyrinth of that damaged soul. Is all of that, those memories, those anxieties and delights, those feelings of desperate love, really to be consigned to the fire as just so much combustible chaff? Must it all be forgotten or willfully ignored for heaven to enter into that parent's soul? And if so, is this not the darkest tragedy ever composed? And is God not then a tragedian utterly merciless in his poetic omnipotence? Who or what is that being whose identity is no longer determined by its relation to that child? [Skipping to page 153] Personhood as such is not a condition possible for an isolated substance. It is an act, not a thing. And it is achieved only in and through a history of relations with others. We are finite beings in a state of becoming, and in us there is nothing that is not an action, dynamism, an emergence into a fuller or a retreat into a more impoverished existence. And so, as I said in my first meditation, we are those others who make us. Spiritual personality is not mere individuality, nor is personal love one of its merely accidental conditions or extrinsic circumstances. A person is first and foremost a limitless capacity, a place where the all shows itself with a special inflection. We exist as the place of the other, to borrow a phrase from Michel de Certeau. Certainly, this is the profoundest truth in the doctrine of resurrection. That we must rise from the dead to be saved is a claim not simply about resumed corporeality, whatever that might turn out to be, but more crucially, about the fully restored existence of the person as socially, communally, corporately constituted. Each person is a body within the body of humanity, which exists in its proper nature only as the body of Christ. Well, that's pretty neat. See, we are nested fractal hierarchies of the pleroma of the Fullness of God. And if you've been with me a while, you know what that long and complicated sentence means. Picture a pyramidal shape, picture every living part of your body as building up the pyramid, and your conscious self is the capstone of that pleroma that makes up your body. Now, you are then nested along with all other humans into the pleroma of humanity, the body of humanity, also called the body of Adam. Just the way our cells nest up into building us, we nest up into building the great body of humanity. And then, Hart is saying this body of humanity exists in its proper nature only as the body of Christ, because when we then nest up and make Christ the king of our pleroma, we are nested into the Fullness of Christ. And that is what the final salvation resting point is. When we all finally pass through the final judgment and nest up into Christ, then we're all nested up into the pleroma, we're all nested up into the Son. And there we are. And we will still have our lives the way the Fullness has their lives. They dream together as one of paradise. And that's where we're headed. Hart says, Our personhood must truly consist not only in the immediate love of those close at hand, but also in our disposition toward those whom we, by analogy, care for from afar. Or even in the abstract, for the most essential law of charity, of love, when it is truly active, is that it must inexorably grow beyond all immediately discernible boundaries in order to be fulfilled and to continue to be active. And all of those in whom each of us is implicated, and who are implicated in each of us, are themselves in turn implicated and intertwined in countless others, and on and on without limit. We belong of necessity to an indissoluble co-inherence of souls. And I think that down here on the physical level, on the material plane, the demiurgic version of that shared coherence of all souls together is quantum entanglement. That's the Demiurge's material version of how we are implicated and intertwined with every other soul. And now he goes on to say something that's very Gnostic. On the next page, Hart says, There may be within each of us—indeed there surely is—that divine spark, that divine light or spark of nous or spirit or atman that is the abiding presence of God in us, the place of radical sustaining divine imminence, nearer to me than my inmost parts. But that light is the one undifferentiated ground of our existence, not the particularity of our personal existence, in and with one another. Oh, hey, there it is. That's what I'm always saying. This one spark, that's what we call the big S Self. And the particularity of our personal existence is what we here at Gnostic Insights label as our Ego. So we are made up of the Self that we share with all others and that we share with the Son, but we are also our own individual existence. That's why we can't just blink out into nothingness and not be missed, because we have our particularity, and it has its own place in the hierarchy. Then Hart says, But then this is to say that either all persons must be saved or that none can be. [He says,] God could, of course, erase each of the elect as whoever they once were by shattering their memories and attachments like the gates of hell and then raise up some other being in each of their places, thus converting the will of each into an idiot bliss stripped of the loves that made him or her this person, associations and attachments and pity and tenderness and all the rest. If that were the case, only in hell could any of us possess something like a personal destiny, tormented perhaps by the memories of the loves we squandered or betrayed, but not deprived of them altogether. [Jumping to 157, he says], I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If then anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. . . For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already and decisively gone down into that abyss for us to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair, and hence the love that has made all of us who we are and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Amen. And that's the end of the third meditation. Now the fourth meditation, we just don't even have time to get to. It's called, What is Freedom? And if you want to hear the fourth meditation in depth, please text me in the comments and ask for more David Bentley Hart That All Shall Be Saved. But as for now, this treatise on what is freedom? I'll actually just jump to the last page and skip all of the explanations. The fourth meditation, What is Freedom? is all about free will. I guess I'll include it in some future episode about free will and just quote Hart extensively in that episode. But to close it out, Hart says, It would make no sense to suggest that God, who is by nature not only the source of being, but also the good and the true and the beautiful and everything else that makes spirits exist as rational beings, would truly be all in all if the consummation of all things were to eventuate merely in a kind of extrinsic divine supremacy over creation. But God is not a god, [or as we would say, the God Above All Gods is not the Demiurge, is how we would put it in Gnostic terms]. And his final victory, as described in scripture, will consist not merely in his assumption of perfect supremacy over all, but also in his ultimately being all in all. Could there then be a final state of things in which God is all in all, while yet there existed rational creatures whose inward worlds consisted in an eternal rejection of and rebellion against God as the sole and consuming and fulfilling end of the rational will's most essential nature? If this fictive and perverse interiority were to persist into eternity, would God's victory over every sphere of being really be complete? Or would that small miserable residual flicker of Promethean defiance remain forever as the one space in creation from which God has been successfully expelled? Surely it would, so it too must pass away. All right, that ends this long episode, because I was trying to wrap up the entire book, which I almost did. Write to me, tell me what you think of this sort of thing. I'd especially like to hear from people who used to be Christians, or who were raised in the church, and who fell away from the church because of some of these very problems and conundrums that we've been talking about for the last four episodes. God bless us all, and onward and upward! If you find these gnostic insights meaningful, please donate to the cause. Cyd pays for these podcasts out of her retirement money, and the well is running dry. If I am to keep this up, I need your financial assistance as well as your good company. I thank my (very few) paid subscibers from the bottom of my heart to the top of my pleroma. Please help. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit

Universal Salvation, part 4 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I'm going to do my best to wrap up this review of David Bentley Hart's book, That All Shall Be Saved, Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. And I hope you understand, particularly those of you who are Christians that are listening to this, that I do all of this in the name of the Father. It's not to tear down Christianity. It's to uphold the mission of the Messiah, which has been lost over the past several hundred years of Christianity. And so this talk of universal salvation is a necessary component of believing in the glory of God. Because universal salvation of all souls, not only all humans, but the dogs, the cats, the birds, the grasses, all living things, have to return to the Father, or else the Anointed loses power. The Father loses parts of himself. Okay, let's get back to David Bentley Hart. So we're going to run through these four meditations that are the body of his book. The first meditation is, Who is God? He says, The New Testament, to a great degree, consists in the eschatological interpretation of Hebrew Scripture's story of creation, finding in Christ as eternal Logos and risen Lord, the unifying term of beginning and end. There's no more magnificent meditation on this vision than Gregory of Nyssa's description of the progress of all persons towards union with God in the one pleroma, the one fullness of the whole Christ. All spiritual wills moving, to use this loving image, from outside the temple walls to the temple precincts, and finally beyond the ages into the very sanctuary of the glory as one. Okay, let me jump in here to say, do you notice that the New Testament words, when you use the correct translations, are the same as the translations in our Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi? Logos is the eternal spirit of humanity and the risen Lord. The Fullness is the one pleroma, the whole Christ. And in this statement, it's saying that all that is spiritual, which includes the spirits that reside within each of us, will all move as one into the pleroma of the Christ. That's who Christ is to us. He's the head of our pleroma. And when I speak of pleromas, I always picture that pyramidal shape, that hierarchical shape, and the capstone is the head. We 2nd order powers are children of the 1st order powers. The 3rd order powers are the Army of Christ that have come to redeem us. When Paul spoke of this, he was applying it literally to the temple in Jerusalem, where there were the walls of the temple, and most of the people were outside of the walls, and some of the people were in the temple precincts. And finally, the very sanctuary of the glory, where only the priests were allowed. These are the three parts that were mentioned, and these are archetypal of the movement of humanity, Hart is saying, from the outside of the pleroma of the Christ, into the pleroma of the Christ, and then into the very glory of God through the Christ. On page 90, Hart says, If one truly believes that traditional Christian language about God's goodness and the theological grammar to which it belongs are not empty, then the God of eternal retribution and pure sovereignty proclaimed by so much of Christian tradition is not and cannot possibly be the God of self-outpouring love revealed in Christ. If God is the good creator of all, he must also be the savior of all without fail, who brings to himself all he has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to himself in all that goes forth from him. And that's the end of the chapter, Who is God? And that pretty much states my basic belief on why everyone is going to heaven, because we all come from the Father, and therefore we all must return to the Father because the Father cannot be diminished in any way. And if he lost us, he'd be diminished. Do you see? The second meditation is, What is Judgment? And the subtitle is A Reflection on Biblical Eschatology. And eschatology, that's one of those big theological words that just means the end times, the end of time. On page 93, Hart says, There's a general sense among most Christians that the notion of an eternal hell is explicitly and unremittingly advanced in the New Testament. And yet, when we go looking for it in the actual pages of the text, it proves remarkably elusive. The whole idea is, for instance, entirely absent from the Pauline corpus as even the thinnest shadow of a hint, nor is it anywhere patently present in any of the other epistolary texts. There is one verse in the Gospels, Matthew 25-46 that, traditionally understood, offers what seems the strongest evidence for the idea, but then now Hart's going to explain how that can't be true. And then he says there are also perhaps a couple of verses from Revelation, and he says nothing's clear in Revelation, so he's not going to go there. But, What in fact the New Testament provides us with are a number of fragmentary and fantastic images that can be taken in any number of ways, arranged according to our prejudices and expectations, and declared literal or figural or hyperbolic as our desires dictate. It's why people can make the case for eternal damnation, but you can also make the case for not eternal damnation, because it's so metaphorical. On page 94, Hart says, Nowhere is there any description of a kingdom of perpetual cruelty presided over by Satan, as though he were some kind of Chthonian god. On the other hand, however, there are a remarkable number of passages in the New Testament, several of them from Paul's writings, that appear instead to promise a final salvation of all persons and all things, and in the most unqualified terms. How did some images become mere images in the general Christian imagination, while others became exact documentary portraits of some final reality? If one can be swayed simply by the brute force of arithmetic, it seems worth noting that, among the apparently most explicit statements on the last things, the universalist statements are by far the more numerous. And then he lists a number of verses from the New Testament that speak of universal salvation, over 20 of them at least, and I'll give you just a couple. Romans 5.18 says, So then, just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings. And jumping in from the Gnostic sense, he doesn't say the fall of one human, he doesn't say through Adam, he says one transgression—and we would call that one transgression the Fall of Logos, the fall of the Aeon, which is a higher order being than we are. Or Corinthians 15.22 says, For just as in Adam all die, so also in the anointed Christ all will be given life. I would say where it says for just as in Adam all die, it's not because Adam ate the apple, it's that we humans who are outside of the Christ, we're outside of the walls of the temple, we are in the pleroma of Adam—we are in the pleroma of human beings. When you accept the anointed, then you move into the pleroma, or you nest up higher into the pleroma of the Christ. That would be the Gnostic way of saying that. Second Corinthians 5.14 says, For the love of the anointed constrains us, having reached this judgment, that one died on behalf of all, all then have died. And of course that one is the Anointed, and He died on behalf of everyone. Or even Romans 11:32, For God shut up everyone in obstinacy, so that he might show mercy to everyone. And there's a long discussion in the chapter about how God's chosen—the original elect, that being the Hebrew nation—has been obstinate about accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Anointed. And so he's saying that everyone is shut up in obstinacy, that's the Hebrews, so that he might show mercy to everyone. And that is, they're temporarily set up in obstinacy so that the message of the Anointed can be preached far and wide, before death and after death, we Gnostics would say, and not be just constrained to only the Hebrews. That's why the Hebrews are set aside for the moment, so that those outside the temple walls can also come to Christ. And then there are 19 more verses after this, and he lists them all between pages 96 and page 102. And if you are a theological scholar or a concerned Christian that wants to know if this is heresy or not, I really suggest you buy the book, That All Shall Be Saved, by David Bentley Hart, and read it carefully from cover to cover. Jumping to page 116, Hart says, There are those metaphors used by Jesus that seem to imply that the punishment of the world to come will be of only limited duration. For example, “if remanded to prison, you shall most certainly not emerge until you pay the very last pittance.” Or, “the unmerciful slave is delivered to the torturers until he should repay everything he owes.” And Hart says it seems as if this until should be taken with some seriousness. Some wicked slaves, moreover, “will be beaten with many blows, while others will be beaten with few blows.” Hart says, of course, everyone will be “salted with fire.” This fire is explicitly that of the Gehenna. But salting here is an image of purification and preservation, for salt is good. Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom from the Old Testament, and that is where, outside of the city of Jerusalem, the refuse was burned, and even carrion and bodies were burned. And that is why it is considered to be a hellish place. And it has become a metaphor in the time of Jesus for the purging fire, the Aeonian chastening for the good. Hart says we might even find some support for the purgatorial view of the Gehenna from the Greek of Matthew 25:46, which is the supposedly conclusive verse on the side of the Infernalist Orthodoxy, where the word used for the punishment of the last day is kolasis, which most properly refers to remedial chastisement, rather than timoria, which more properly refers to retributive justice. So, the fire of the judgment. What is judgment? The fire is the chastening fire, the fire of personal guilt and remorse over the sins one has done, that causes one to repent and turn to redemption. Hart says, It is not clear in any event that the fourth gospel, [and the fourth gospel, that's the gospel of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John], it is not clear in any event that the fourth gospel foretells any “last judgment,” in the sense of a real additional judgment that accomplishes more than has already happened in Christ. To see His words as pointing toward and fulfilled within his own crucifixion and resurrection, wherein all things were judged and all things redeemed. The kingdom has indeed drawn very near, and even now is being revealed. The hour indeed has come. The judge who is judged in our place is also the resurrection and the life that has always already succeeded and exceeded the time of condemnation. All of heaven and of hell meet in those three days. . . Hell appears in the shadow of the cross as what has always already been conquered, as what Easter leaves in ruins, to which we may flee from the transfiguring light of God if we so wish, but where we can never finally come to rest, for being only a shadow, it provides nothing to cling to. And he attributes that concept of hell being only a shadow to Gregory of Nyssa, although we would attribute it to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi which came before Gregory of Nyssa. Hell exists so long as it exists only as the last terrible residue of a fallen creation's enmity to God, the lingering effects of a condition of slavery that God has conquered universally in Christ and will ultimately conquer individually in every soul. This age has passed away already, however long it lingers on its own aftermath, and thus in the Age to Come, [and that's capital A, Age, which we would interpret as the Aeons to Come, the Aeonian Pleroma to Come], and beyond all ages, all shall come to the kingdom prepared for them from before the foundation of the world. And that's the chapter, What is Judgment? The third meditation or chapter of Hart is called What is a Person? A Reflection on the Divine Image. It says over and over in the Bible that we are made in the image of God. Man is made in the image of God. That is the divine image. On page 131, Hart says, Christians down the centuries have excelled at converting the good tidings of God's love in Christ into something dreadful, irrational, and morally horrid. [And we covered that in depth in the previous three episodes, if you want to go back there.] On page 132, Hart says, I suspect that no figure in Christian history has suffered a greater injustice as a result of the desperate inventiveness of the Christian moral imagination than the Apostle Paul, since it was the violent misprision of his theology of grace, starting with the great Augustine, it grieves me to say, that gave rise to almost all of these grim distortions of the Gospel. Aboriginal guilt, predestination, (ante praevisa merita), the eternal damnation of unbaptized infants, the real existence of vessels of wrath, and so on. All of these odious and incoherent dogmatic motifs, so to speak, and others equally nasty, have been ascribed to Paul. And yet, each and every one of them, not only is incompatible with the guiding themes of Paul's proclamation of Christ's triumph and of God's purpose in election, but is something like their perfect inversion. Well, isn't that interesting? Because we already know that the archons represent the inversions of the Aeons of the Pleroma. And so, although Hart doesn't realize he's implying this, to say that what has come down to us in Christian tradition through Augustine is the perfect inversion of what Paul was actually saying about universal salvation, which means, by definition, that it's the demiurgic or the archonic version of salvation. Isn't that interesting? I mean, that is what I have been implying, that what has been taken to be Christian tradition for the last couple of thousand years is actually a diminishment of the power of Christ and the power and love of the Father. By saying that people can be lost and condemned to eternal torture, that is sacrilegious to me. That is the heresy. And that is what Hart is saying here. He goes on to say on page 133, This is all fairly odd, really. Paul's argument in those chapters is not difficult to follow. What preoccupies him from beginning to end is the agonizing mystery that the Messiah of Israel has come, and yet so few of the children of the house of Israel have accepted the fact, even while so many from outside the covenant have. And Paul wonders, how is the promised Messiah rejected by so many, yet so many outside the temple walls have accepted the Messiah? There are far more Christians than there are Jews at the moment. Why is that? Paul was wondering. Hart says, Paul's is not an abstract question regarding which individual human beings are the saved and which are the damned. In fact, by the end of the argument, the former category, [that is the saved], proves to be vastly larger than that of the elect or the called, while the latter category, [that is the damned], makes no appearance at all. Jumping down the page, he says, “so then what if,” so now he's going to go ahead and quote Paul here, Romans 9:19, Paul says, So then what if God should show his power by preserving vessels suitable only for wrath, keeping them solely for destruction, in order to provide an instructive counterpoint to the riches of the glory he lavishes on vessels prepared for mercy, whom he has called from among the Jews and the Gentiles alike. For as it happens, rather than offering a solution to the quandary in which he finds himself, Paul is simply restating that quandary in its bleakest possible form, at the very brink of despair. He does not stop there, however, because he knows that this cannot be the correct answer. It is so obviously preposterous, in fact, that a wholly different solution must be sought, one that makes sense and that will not require the surrender either of Paul's reason or of his confidence in God's righteousness. Hence, contrary to his own warnings, Paul does indeed continue to question God's justice, and he spends the next two chapters unambiguously rejecting the provisional answer, the vessels of wrath hypothesis, altogether, so as to reach a completely different and far more glorious conclusion—God blesses everyone. Romans 10: 11, 12. And by the way, in Gnostic gospel, we would say the law is actually the Demiurge's rules for human behavior, because our self-will makes us otherwise uncontrollable. Because to the Father above, the only law is love. When we act out of love, all else follows. Going on, Hart says, As for the believing remnant of Israel, [Romans 11:5], it turns out that they have been elected not as the limited number of the saved within Israel, but as the earnest through which all of Israel will be saved. They are waiting for the Anointed to come and take the place of the King of Israel, King of the Jews. King of the Jews is one of the titles of the Messiah. That means the capstone of their pleroma. You see? It's all of these pyramidal shapes that are first designed up there in the Fullness of God, the pleroma. What Paul is saying is that the Jews that are in the pleroma of Israel, it's their remnant that makes them holy. It's their remnant that is the spiritual part, the higher part, the called part, the elect part of the pleroma of the nation of the Hebrews. And it is through those elect that all of the Jews will be saved, ultimately. Hart says, For the time being, true, a part of Israel is hardened, but this will remain the case only until the ”full entirety” [that is the pleroma] of the Gentiles enter in. The unbelievers among the children of Israel may have been allowed to stumble, but God will never allow them to fall. Hart's just saying that Israel's reluctance or slowness to believing that Jesus is the Messiah is just slowing down the progress of history to give everyone else a chance to catch up to it. Quoting Hart again, We're in Romans now, 11:11. This then is the radiant answer dispelling the shadows of Paul's grim what if in the ninth chapter of Romans. It's clarion negative. It turns out that there is no final illustrative division between the vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. That was a grotesque, all too human thought that can now be chased away for good. God's wisdom far surpasses ours, and his love can accomplish all that it intends. “He has bound everyone in disobedience so as to show mercy to everyone.” [That's Romans 11:32.] All are vessels of wrath precisely so that all may be made vessels of mercy. . . That Paul's great attempt to demonstrate that God's election is not some arbitrary act of predilective exclusion, but instead a providential means for bringing about the unrestricted inclusion of all persons, has been employed for centuries to advance what is quite literally the very teaching that he went to such great lengths explicitly to reject. . . Yet this is still not my principal point. I want to say something far more radical. I want to say that there is no way in which persons can be saved as persons except in and with all other persons. This may seem an exorbitant claim, but I regard it as no more than an acknowledgment of certain obvious truths about the fragility, dependency, and exigency of all that make us who and what we are. Oh, this is a very interesting portion. Okay, listen to this. Jumping to page 149. No soul is who or what it is in isolation, and no soul's sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of a potentially limitless number of other souls being ignored as well. And so it seems if we allow the possibility that even so much as a single soul might slip away unmourned into everlasting misery, the ethos of heaven turns out to be “every soul for itself”—which is also, curiously enough, precisely the ethos of hell. But Christians are obliged, it seems clear, to take seriously the eschatological imagery of scripture. And there all talk of salvation involves the promise of a corporate beatitude, a kingdom of love and knowledge, a wedding feast, a city of the redeemed, the body of Christ, which means that the hope Christians cherish must in some way involve the preservation of whatever is deepest in and most essential to personality rather than a perfect escape from personality. But finite persons are not self-enclosed individual substances. They are dynamic events of relation to what is other than themselves. And then Hart summons up the idea of a single recurrent image, he says, That of a parent whose beloved child has grown into quite an evil person, but who remains a parent nevertheless, and therefore keeps and cherishes countless tender memories of the innocent and delightful being that has now become lost in the labyrinth of that damaged soul. Is all of that, those memories, those anxieties and delights, those feelings of desperate love, really to be consigned to the fire as just so much combustible chaff? Must it all be forgotten or willfully ignored for heaven to enter into that parent's soul? And if so, is this not the darkest tragedy ever composed? And is God not then a tragedian utterly merciless in his poetic omnipotence? Who or what is that being whose identity is no longer determined by its relation to that child? [Skipping to page 153] Personhood as such is not a condition possible for an isolated substance. It is an act, not a thing. And it is achieved only in and through a history of relations with others. We are finite beings in a state of becoming, and in us there is nothing that is not an action, dynamism, an emergence into a fuller or a retreat into a more impoverished existence. And so, as I said in my first meditation, we are those others who make us. Spiritual personality is not mere individuality, nor is personal love one of its merely accidental conditions or extrinsic circumstances. A person is first and foremost a limitless capacity, a place where the all shows itself with a special inflection. We exist as the place of the other, to borrow a phrase from Michel de Certeau. Certainly, this is the profoundest truth in the doctrine of resurrection. That we must rise from the dead to be saved is a claim not simply about resumed corporeality, whatever that might turn out to be, but more crucially, about the fully restored existence of the person as socially, communally, corporately constituted. Each person is a body within the body of humanity, which exists in its proper nature only as the body of Christ. Well, that's pretty neat. See, we are nested fractal hierarchies of the pleroma of the Fullness of God. And if you've been with me a while, you know what that long and complicated sentence means. Picture a pyramidal shape, picture every living part of your body as building up the pyramid, and your conscious self is the capstone of that pleroma that makes up your body. Now, you are then nested along with all other humans into the pleroma of humanity, the body of humanity, also called the body of Adam. Just the way our cells nest up into building us, we nest up into building the great body of humanity. And then, Hart is saying this body of humanity exists in its proper nature only as the body of Christ, because when we then nest up and make Christ the king of our pleroma, we are nested into the Fullness of Christ. And that is what the final salvation resting point is. When we all finally pass through the final judgment and nest up into Christ, then we're all nested up into the pleroma, we're all nested up into the Son. And there we are. And we will still have our lives the way the Fullness has their lives. They dream together as one of paradise. And that's where we're headed. Hart says, Our personhood must truly consist not only in the immediate love of those close at hand, but also in our disposition toward those whom we, by analogy, care for from afar. Or even in the abstract, for the most essential law of charity, of love, when it is truly active, is that it must inexorably grow beyond all immediately discernible boundaries in order to be fulfilled and to continue to be active. And all of those in whom each of us is implicated, and who are implicated in each of us, are themselves in turn implicated and intertwined in countless others, and on and on without limit. We belong of necessity to an indissoluble co-inherence of souls. And I think that down here on the physical level, on the material plane, the demiurgic version of that shared coherence of all souls together is quantum entanglement. That's the Demiurge's material version of how we are implicated and intertwined with every other soul. And now he goes on to say something that's very Gnostic. On the next page, Hart says, There may be within each of us—indeed there surely is—that divine spark, that divine light or spark of nous or spirit or atman that is the abiding presence of God in us, the place of radical sustaining divine imminence, nearer to me than my inmost parts. But that light is the one undifferentiated ground of our existence, not the particularity of our personal existence, in and with one another. Oh, hey, there it is. That's what I'm always saying. This one spark, that's what we call the big S Self. And the particularity of our personal existence is what we here at Gnostic Insights label as our Ego. So we are made up of the Self that we share with all others and that we share with the Son, but we are also our own individual existence. That's why we can't just blink out into nothingness and not be missed, because we have our particularity, and it has its own place in the hierarchy. Then Hart says, But then this is to say that either all persons must be saved or that none can be. [He says,] God could, of course, erase each of the elect as whoever they once were by shattering their memories and attachments like the gates of hell and then raise up some other being in each of their places, thus converting the will of each into an idiot bliss stripped of the loves that made him or her this person, associations and attachments and pity and tenderness and all the rest. If that were the case, only in hell could any of us possess something like a personal destiny, tormented perhaps by the memories of the loves we squandered or betrayed, but not deprived of them altogether. [Jumping to 157, he says], I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If then anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. . . For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already and decisively gone down into that abyss for us to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair, and hence the love that has made all of us who we are and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Amen. And that's the end of the third meditation. Now the fourth meditation, we just don't even have time to get to. It's called, What is Freedom? And if you want to hear the fourth meditation in depth, please text me in the comments and ask for more David Bentley Hart That All Shall Be Saved. But as for now, this treatise on what is freedom? I'll actually just jump to the last page and skip all of the explanations. The fourth meditation, What is Freedom? is all about free will. I guess I'll include it in some future episode about free will and just quote Hart extensively in that episode. But to close it out, Hart says, It would make no sense to suggest that God, who is by nature not only the source of being, but also the good and the true and the beautiful and everything else that makes spirits exist as rational beings, would truly be all in all if the consummation of all things were to eventuate merely in a kind of extrinsic divine supremacy over creation. But God is not a god, [or as we would say, the God Above All Gods is not the Demiurge, is how we would put it in Gnostic terms]. And his final victory, as described in scripture, will consist not merely in his assumption of perfect supremacy over all, but also in his ultimately being all in all. Could there then be a final state of things in which God is all in all, while yet there existed rational creatures whose inward worlds consisted in an eternal rejection of and rebellion against God as the sole and consuming and fulfilling end of the rational will's most essential nature? If this fictive and perverse interiority were to persist into eternity, would God's victory over every sphere of being really be complete? Or would that small miserable residual flicker of Promethean defiance remain forever as the one space in creation from which God has been successfully expelled? Surely it would, so it too must pass away. All right, that ends this long episode, because I was trying to wrap up the entire book, which I almost did. Write to me, tell me what you think of this sort of thing. I'd especially like to hear from people who used to be Christians, or who were raised in the church, and who fell away from the church because of some of these very problems and conundrums that we've been talking about for the last four episodes. God bless us all, and onward and upward! If you find these gnostic insights meaningful, please donate to the cause. Cyd pays for these podcasts out of her retirement money, and the well is running dry. If I am to keep this up, I need your financial assistance as well as your good company. I thank my (very few) paid subscibers from the bottom of my heart to the top of my pleroma. Please help. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit

Jase, Al, and Zach recount days without power, dangerous cleanup, and how quickly ordinary life can turn into survival mode. Jase shares a sobering close call with a chainsaw that he didn't even realize happened until later, forcing a hard look at how fragile life really is. The guys shift to Jelly Roll's bold Jesus moment at the Grammys and why shining publicly for faith is often met with resistance.  In this episode: Genesis 1, verse 3; First John 1, verses 5–7; John 15, verses 1–2; Romans 1, verses 21–25; Second Corinthians 4, verses 16–18; Mark 4, verses 39–41 “Unashamed” Episode 1261 is sponsored by: https://texassuperfood.com⁠ — Get 35% off your first order with code UNASHAMED today! https://smartcredit.com/unashamed — Get a 7-day trial for just $1, see how many points you can add to your credit score! https://bravebooks.com/unashamed ⁠ — Save 20% on your first order with code UNASHAMED ⁠https://cozyearth.com/unashamed  — Take advantage of an exclusive deal only available January 25th- February 8th with code UNASHAMEDBOGO! ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com⁠ — Sign up now for free, and join the Unashamed hosts every Friday for Unashamed Academy Powered by Hillsdale College Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://open.spotify.com/show/3LY8eJ4ZBZHmsImGoDNK2l Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 0:00 Life after the ice-pocalypse & eight days without power 5:40 Zach gets stranded & surviving the freeze 12:05 Jase's in-laws move in! 19:30 Clearing roads, fallen trees, & how dangerous the storm really was 27:10 Light vs. darkness & why storms reveal what you believe 33:40 Jelly Roll's public faith moment at the Grammy's 40:10 Being prepared physically & spiritually when control disappears 47:00 Lessons from the storm & an eternal perspective — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Have you ever loved someone very deeply, poured your heart and soul into their life, and have that met with ingratitude, or not have them love you in return? It's an all too common experience and can be very hurtful and disheartening. You might be surprised to find out that the apostle Paul experienced this too. As we'll see today in our study of Second Corinthians twelve the more he loved, the less he was loved in return. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

In today's fast-paced world, many of us find ourselves grappling with uncertainty and stress. In our latest episode, we explore the intersection of faith and mental health with Dr. Kathy Edwards from Cornerstone Psychological Associates. This insightful discussion aims to help Catholics maintain good mental health, especially in challenging times. Dr. Edwards emphasizes the significance of trusting in God's plan, even when the path ahead seems foggy. She acknowledges that many people desire clarity in their lives, often wishing for a detailed map to navigate through life's challenges. However, she reminds us that faith can serve as a powerful coping skill. As we enter a new year, Dr. Edwards encourages listeners to focus on mindfulness and the present moment. Instead of dwelling on past mistakes or worrying about future uncertainties, she suggests asking ourselves, "What do I need to do here?" This shift in perspective can lead to healthier decisions and a more grounded existence. Throughout the episode, Dr. Edwards shares practical tips for fostering connections with others. Simple acts of kindness, such as letting someone ahead of you in the grocery line or offering a smile to a struggling parent, can have a profound impact on our mental well-being. By reaching out and connecting with others, we not only uplift those around us but also create a sense of stability in our own lives. The episode also touches on the importance of empathy and intentional living. Dr. Edwards highlights that our purpose is often fulfilled through small acts of love and compassion, rather than grand achievements. By being present and showing up for both ourselves and others, we can cultivate a more meaningful life. As we wrap up this insightful discussion, Dr. Edwards encourages listeners to read Second Corinthians and Ephesians, which provide valuable wisdom on living with intention and purpose. These biblical teachings serve as a reminder that, despite life's uncertainties, we can find solace and strength in our faith. Tune in to this episode to discover how to navigate the complexities of life with trust in God's guidance and the support of community. Let's embark on this journey together, fostering mental health and well-being through faith and connection.

In today's fast-paced world, many of us find ourselves grappling with uncertainty and stress. In our latest episode, we explore the intersection of faith and mental health with Dr. Kathy Edwards from Cornerstone Psychological Associates. This insightful discussion aims to help Catholics maintain good mental health, especially in challenging times. Dr. Edwards emphasizes the significance of trusting in God's plan, even when the path ahead seems foggy. She acknowledges that many people desire clarity in their lives, often wishing for a detailed map to navigate through life's challenges. However, she reminds us that faith can serve as a powerful coping skill. As we enter a new year, Dr. Edwards encourages listeners to focus on mindfulness and the present moment. Instead of dwelling on past mistakes or worrying about future uncertainties, she suggests asking ourselves, "What do I need to do here?" This shift in perspective can lead to healthier decisions and a more grounded existence. Throughout the episode, Dr. Edwards shares practical tips for fostering connections with others. Simple acts of kindness, such as letting someone ahead of you in the grocery line or offering a smile to a struggling parent, can have a profound impact on our mental well-being. By reaching out and connecting with others, we not only uplift those around us but also create a sense of stability in our own lives. The episode also touches on the importance of empathy and intentional living. Dr. Edwards highlights that our purpose is often fulfilled through small acts of love and compassion, rather than grand achievements. By being present and showing up for both ourselves and others, we can cultivate a more meaningful life. As we wrap up this insightful discussion, Dr. Edwards encourages listeners to read Second Corinthians and Ephesians, which provide valuable wisdom on living with intention and purpose. These biblical teachings serve as a reminder that, despite life's uncertainties, we can find solace and strength in our faith. Tune in to this episode to discover how to navigate the complexities of life with trust in God's guidance and the support of community. Let's embark on this journey together, fostering mental health and well-being through faith and connection.

The Robertsons address the decay of America's biggest and most beautiful cities, pointing to lawlessness, failed leadership, and what happens when humanity gives in to its darkest desires without restraint. Jase admits that trusting Amish healing advice briefly turned him into something resembling a human blowtorch. The guys explore the difference between idolatry and dominion, arguing that when people surrender control to creation instead of cultivating it under God, chaos follows. They reflect on how God's light reveals truths we can't understand when we're determined to live in our own darkness. In this episode: Genesis 1, verses 1–4; Genesis 1, verse 28; Psalm 19, verses 1–6; John 1, verses 1–5; John 9, verses 35–41; Colossians 3, verse 4; Ephesians 2, verses 8–10; Second Corinthians 6, verse 1; First John 1, verses 1–7 “Unashamed” Episode 1243 is sponsored by: https://texassuperfood.com — Get 35% off your first order with code UNASHAMED today! https://ponchooutdoors.com/unashamed — Get $10 off your first order and free shipping! https://myphdweightloss.com — Find out how Al lost 80+ pounds. Schedule your one-on-one consultation today by visiting the website or calling 864-644-1900 and mention "FIX MY WEIGHT LOSS" https://smartcredit.com/unashamed — Get a 7-day trial for just $1 and see how many points you can add to your credit score! http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ — Sign up now for free, and join the Unashamed hosts every Friday for Unashamed Academy Powered by Hillsdale College Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://open.spotify.com/show/3LY8eJ4ZBZHmsImGoDNK2l Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 00:00-4:53 Al undermines Zach's parental authority 04:54-13:17 Jase becomes a human blowtorch 13:18-21:23 The reality of our perishable bodies 21:24-29:58 Pain becomes a platform for the Gospel 29:29-36:20 God doesn't play Blind Man's Bluff 36:21-47:25 Idolatry vs. Dominion  47:26-55:57 Jesus makes joy & possibilities endless — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this recent monograph Sarcasm in Paul's Letters (Cambridge University Press 2023, Matthew Pawlak offers the first treatment of sarcasm in New Testament studies. He provides an extensive analysis of sarcastic passages across the undisputed letters of Paul, showing where Paul is sarcastic, and how his sarcasm affects our understanding of his rhetoric and relationships with the Early Christian congregations in Galatia, Rome, and Corinth. Pawlak's identification of sarcasm is supported by a dataset of 400 examples drawn from a broad range of ancient texts, including major case studies on Septuagint Job, the prophets, and Lucian of Samosata. These data enable the determination of the typical linguistic signals of sarcasm in ancient Greek, as well as its rhetorical functions. Pawlak also addresses several ongoing discussions in Pauline scholarship. His volume advances our understanding of the abrupt opening of Galatians, diatribe and Paul's hypothetical interlocutor in Romans, the 'Corinthian slogans' of First Corinthians, and the 'fool's speech' found within Second Corinthians 10-13. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this recent monograph Sarcasm in Paul's Letters (Cambridge University Press 2023, Matthew Pawlak offers the first treatment of sarcasm in New Testament studies. He provides an extensive analysis of sarcastic passages across the undisputed letters of Paul, showing where Paul is sarcastic, and how his sarcasm affects our understanding of his rhetoric and relationships with the Early Christian congregations in Galatia, Rome, and Corinth. Pawlak's identification of sarcasm is supported by a dataset of 400 examples drawn from a broad range of ancient texts, including major case studies on Septuagint Job, the prophets, and Lucian of Samosata. These data enable the determination of the typical linguistic signals of sarcasm in ancient Greek, as well as its rhetorical functions. Pawlak also addresses several ongoing discussions in Pauline scholarship. His volume advances our understanding of the abrupt opening of Galatians, diatribe and Paul's hypothetical interlocutor in Romans, the 'Corinthian slogans' of First Corinthians, and the 'fool's speech' found within Second Corinthians 10-13.

In this recent monograph Sarcasm in Paul's Letters (Cambridge University Press 2023, Matthew Pawlak offers the first treatment of sarcasm in New Testament studies. He provides an extensive analysis of sarcastic passages across the undisputed letters of Paul, showing where Paul is sarcastic, and how his sarcasm affects our understanding of his rhetoric and relationships with the Early Christian congregations in Galatia, Rome, and Corinth. Pawlak's identification of sarcasm is supported by a dataset of 400 examples drawn from a broad range of ancient texts, including major case studies on Septuagint Job, the prophets, and Lucian of Samosata. These data enable the determination of the typical linguistic signals of sarcasm in ancient Greek, as well as its rhetorical functions. Pawlak also addresses several ongoing discussions in Pauline scholarship. His volume advances our understanding of the abrupt opening of Galatians, diatribe and Paul's hypothetical interlocutor in Romans, the 'Corinthian slogans' of First Corinthians, and the 'fool's speech' found within Second Corinthians 10-13. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Many of us have wondered what heaven is going to be like, and Scripture gives us just enough to whet our appetite! But imagine what it would be like to be taken on up to heaven, for a look around, but not being able to tell others about it. Such was the case for the apostle Paul, and we'll hear about this experience as we turn in our Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter twelve. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Notes - https://www.generationword.com/notes/Epistles/19-Second_Corinthians.pdf

Today on Abounding Grace we notice the great sacrifice that came with being an apostle. And it's a reminder to us of the great cost attached to ministry. Pastor Ed Taylor opens Second Corinthians eleven and if we had to sum up the latter half of the chapter in a word, it would be sacrifice! To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Let's examine ourselves to see if we're in the faith today on Abounding Grace. We'll finish our study of Second Corinthians. It's a good idea to examine ourselves from time to time, and we have that opportunity today with pastor Ed Taylor. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Is there someone in your life that you're having an issue with? I think it's safe to say, we've all been there.While many are quick to post their feelings on the matter on Facebook or Twitter, or type out an angry lengthy email and hit send, pastor Ed Taylor will suggest a much better approach today on Abounding Grace. And that is to go to the person directly, and take it to the Lord. Join us if you would in Second Corinthians chapter thirteen, for a helpful study on how to handle difficulties with others. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Have you ever loved someone very deeply, poured your heart and soul into their life, and have that met with ingratitude, or not have them love you in return? It's an all-too common experience and can be very hurtful and disheartening. You might be surprised to find out that the apostle Paul experienced this too. As we'll see today in our study of Second Corinthians chapter twelve the more he loved, the less he was loved in return. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

God has called some to serve full-time in the ministry, but is it ok for them to receive a salary from the people they serve at church? And are there times when the pastor may need to pick up a job on the side to meet their financial needs? We'll talk about that today on Abounding Grace as we near the end of our study in Second Corinthians. One thing that jumps off the page in chapter twelve is the apostle Paul's heart for the people he served. He didn't want to be a burden on them, not seeking what they have, though he gave everything he could to serve them. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

You can be sure that tough times are on the calendar for each of us… even godly Christians! And at times we may wonder why we're suffering, or why God doesn't remove a painful trial from our lives. Today on Abounding Grace we'll look at Paul's experience with a thorn in the flesh. He was suffering with it for over fourteen years, and asked God repeatedly to remove it. The Lord chose not to for a very good reason. Pastor Ed Taylor says there's something here in this story for us to hold on to, when we encounter difficult times. He's covering Second Corinthians chapter twelve. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Notes – https://www.generationword.com/notes/Epistles/19-Second_Corinthians.pdf

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent Isaiah 35:1-10, 1 Corinthians 4:1-5, St. Matthew 11:2-10 by William Klock Many years ago, as we were driving home from church on a Sunday morning, a very young Alexandra asked, “Dad, can Episcopalians cry?”  I thought, “What?  Of course we can. What makes you ask that?”  And she said something to the effect of, “The song said the Baptists cried”  “Ah!  ‘On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry…' and I found myself trying to figure out how to explain plurals and possessives and punctuation to a pre-schooler who couldn't read yet, and in the end I said something like—“No, the song is about John the Baptist, not Baptists, and he wasn't crying because he was sad, he was crying—like yelling out—to the crowds about how, in Jesus, God had come to save his people like he'd promised, so they'd better get ready by getting rid of their sins.” That hymn was written by Charles Coffin in 1736 for the Paris Breviary and was a hymn to be sung at Lauds—more or less what we call Morning Prayer—during Advent.  And it wonderfully blends the account of John the Baptist that we have in the Gospels with Isaiah's prophecies of the coming Messiah, his call to make straight the way of the Lord, and his promises of forgiveness and reconciliation, of healing and new creation.  Maybe it's because we reference the hymn by its first line, but somehow that first line—little Alexandra wasn't the only one—lots of people hear that first line and imagine poor John sobbing on the banks of the Jordan river, when what we're singing about is John, proclaiming with an urgent joy the coming of the Messiah and the fulfilment of Israel's hopes and longings. For thou art our salvation Lord, Our refuge and our great reward: Without thy grace we waste away Like flowers that wither and decay.   To heal the sick stretch out thine hand, And bid the fallen sinner stand; Shine forth, and let thy light restore Earth's own true loveliness once more.   It's certainly an appropriate image for this season of Advent as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Jesus and are reminded about the vocation he's given us to prepare ourselves and his creation for the day when he returns.  But I still wrestle with this passage and with today's Epistle from 1 Corinthians 11, every time the Third Sunday in Advent rolls around.  Last week's lessons are some of my favourites.  They remind us how important it is that we know and root ourselves in the story of God and his people.  But I always find today's lessons hard.  First we hear Paul rebuking the Corinthian Christians.  They'd rejected his authority and he writes them to say, “Hey, that's not the way I should be treated.  You need to regard me a servant of the Messiah and steward of God's mysteries.  Who are you to judge me?”  If we didn't know better we might think Paul's head was a little swollen.  And then in the Gospel we've got Jesus defending John the Baptist and his calling and ministry. And I know that the reason these lessons were appointed for the Third Sunday in Advent is because this is an ember week, one of those weeks that most people have forgotten about, that come around four times a year—the times when ordinations traditionally took place.  And so the lessons were chosen to remind us of the importance of those who serve as ministers in the church.  We prayed in the Collect, “Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may so prepare and make ready your way by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at your second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in your sight.”  That's a good thing to pray.  I hope that you pray for me and that you pray for our bishops and for those who lead and teach in our church—and all the churches.  But I get kind of uncomfortable standing at the pulpit and suggesting that I—or any other clergyman, by he a presbyter or a bishop—can talk that way about my ministry the way Paul could speak about his apostolic ministry and authority.  That was a unique authority given to Paul and the other apostles and to no one since.  Our duty—both mine and yours—is simply to faithfully proclaim the faith given to us by those uniquely authoritative apostles.  Ditto for Jesus' defense of John the Baptist.  I hope with all my heart that if a crowd of people were doubting my faithfulness, that Jesus was come to my defense.  But I can't presume to talk as if Jesus' words in today's Gospel mean that you all should see and respect me as a modern-day John the Baptist.  Every year when this set of lessons comes around, I can' help but think of the words of our Declaration of Principles, where it says that “this church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God's word...” And the second of those erroneous and strange doctrines is “That Christian ministers are ‘priests' in another sense than that in which all believers are a ‘royal priesthood'.” Brother and Sisters, together we are the body of Jesus the Messiah.  Some of us are ears or eyes, some hands or feet, some hearts or brains.  I may have pastoral training and authority granted by the church to teach and to administer the sacraments, but that doesn't make me more important.  The church, to be the church, needs all of us.  And the really important thing that we really need—all of us—to do is not to treat our pastors or our bishops as if they carry Paul's apostolic authority.  What we need to do is to see ourselves—all of us—in the same place as the Corinthians and submit ourselves to that apostolic teaching handed down by Paul and Peter and John and the rest of the apostles. Because our witness depends on it.  God's kingdom depends on it.  We are the stewards of the good news and we're stewards of God's Spirit.  We are the stewards of his kingdom and his new creation.  And as Paul writes, “it's required of stewards that they be found trustworthy”.  When Paul writes “steward” he's describing the manager of a household or an estate.  Think of Joseph, Potiphar's steward, put in charge of everything he owned, responsible for how it was all managed, responsible for the profits and losses, responsible for making sure all of Potiphar's assets were put to good and efficient use and not wasted, squandered, or damaged.  That's what Paul saw himself as when it came to the mysteries of God.  And not some highfalutin executive, but as a humble slave, graciously chosen by God to steward the gospel. And because you and I have been entrusted with that same gospel—handed down by Paul and Peter and John and the other apostles—we've become stewards too.  Not with the apostolic authority that Paul had and the ability to announce “Thus saith the Lord.”  But still a people called to work in the Lord's household or in his vineyard, entrusted with his mysteries—with the gospel, with his grace, with his Spirit—and called, each of us in our own way, to steward the Lord's good things faithfully. When we look at First and Second Corinthians, the folks in that church weren't doing a very good job.  Picture them.  A small church—probably a few dozen people at most.  Most of the people in it were converts from paganism.  They used to worship false gods who represented things like sex, knowledge, money, war, power, government.  The Corinthians all had their favourite sins: lying, cheating, anger, pornography, drunkenness, drugs, adultery.  You name it, they'd done it—often as part of their worship.  But then this funny Jewish man showed up preaching a bizarre message about the God of Israel and his son, the Messiah—the anointed king—who had been crucified and then raised from death.  And this man, Paul, he'd been abused, beaten, stoned, left for dead so many times for the sake of this message, this “good news” he was so earnest about.  He was a little frightening to look at, because he literally bore the marks of this gospel, the marks of Jesus on his own body.  But this good news was unlike any news they'd ever heard before.  This God, this Jesus, was unlike any god they'd ever worshiped.  He brought love, mercy, grace, and hope into a world of darkness, greed, selfishness, and brutality.  In Paul they saw and in hearing the good news he announced, they met God's new world and they were won over.  They were baptised into this God who is Father, Son, and Spirit and the new creation begun by Jesus was born in them.  Paul stayed and he taught them and they grew in Jesus and the Spirit.  And they lived as a little pocket of God's new age right there in the midst of brutal, wicked, dark, pagan Corinth.  And then Paul moved on.  And they started to struggle.  The temptations of their old pagan ways came back—as so often happens.  The new life of Jesus and the Spirit—so thrilling at first—became hum-drum and they started seeking after new experiences and new excitements.  That resulted in factions in the church: this group became a fan of that preacher and that group became fans of this preacher.  In the name of Christian liberty they became tolerant of sin—even some that were unspeakable to the pagans.  And that led to further divisions.  They began to use the gifts the Spirit had given them, not to build up the church, but to build up themselves.  Their worship became chaotic and dishonouring to God.  And when Paul heard what was happening and wrote to them.  Think of Advent.  He wrote to them: “Hey, you're living like you're still part of the old evil age, subject to the old false gods and the principalities and powers that Jesus defeated at the cross.  You're supposed to be living as heralds of God's new creation!  You're supposed to be a church full of John the Baptists, crying out, announcing that the Lord is night!”  And they wrote back a nasty letter telling him they were done with him—they didn't want to hear his “correction” anymore.  They had grown beyond his teaching and they were doing well on their own, thank you very much! And I think we tend to read about the Corinthians think, “Wow, what horrible Christians!”  And yet, I don't know that the modern church is all that different.  It's full of quarrelling and divisions.  We're jealous of other pastor's or other church's successes.  We use the gifts God has given to benefit ourselves rather than the body.  We lack holiness.  We're worldly.  We lie, we cheat, we steal, and we exploit in our business.  Our families are often a mess.  Unrepentant divorce is rampant.  Sexual immorality, pornography, drugs and drunkenness, abortion are nearly as prevalent in the church as they are in the world.  Bishops and presbyters abuse and lie and plagiarise and get drunk and engage in sexual immorality.  We say we've given our allegiance to Jesus, but we sell ourselves out to the materialistic and consumeristic and individualistic and political spirits of the age.  We take our cues from advertising and become dissatisfied with what God has given us and where he's placed us.  We take our cues from politicians instead of the Bible.  We see evil in the world, we see injustice in the world and instead of speaking out or doing something about it, we look the other way and refuse to act. Our worship is too often chaotic and man-centred rather than God- and gospel-centred.  We preach self-help instead of sin and grace, the cross and new creation.  Brothers and Sisters, the church is supposed to be the advance guard of God's new creation.  It's supposed to be his temple, the place where God and man, where heaven and earth meet.  We've been entrusted with the mysteries of God.  But we're too much like the old creation.  Our allegiance is half-hearted.  We are unfaithful stewards, squandering the gifts of God.  The principalities and powers of the old age often rule and govern the church more than Jesus and the Spirit do.  I don't think it's any wonder that—to use the analogy of John's vision in Revelation—I don't think it's any great wonder that Jesus seems to be taking away our lampstand here in the post-Christian West. And I know there's little if anything you and I can do about the church on a large scale, but we've been entrusted with our little corner of the church and we can do something about that.  Advent reminds us that as Israel was to listen to men like John the Baptist and prepare for Jesus first coming, the church now needs to listen to the scriptures—to the prophets and apostles—and prepare for Jesus' return.  As Paul warned the Corinthians that they needed to heed his apostolic authority, he might as well be warning us, too.  Hear the apostles and hear the prophets—and don't just hear; do.  Hear the words of Isaiah we read today: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.  The glory of the Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.  They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.” Maybe that doesn't mean much to us today, but for people who lived in the desert, those were words of hope.  New creation was coming.  God has promised to come and set the world to rights.  To bring his people back to the garden to live in his presence.  And so Isaiah tells them, “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not!  Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.  He will come and save you.” Don't be discouraged.  Don't lose hope.  Don't forget his promises.  Don't forget to whom you belong.  Don't give up on your holy vocation.  Don't forget that you are stewards of the good things of God for the sake of the world.  What he has promised he will do.  He will not let you thirst in the desert forever.  “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.  For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.  And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.  It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.  No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.  And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” John the Baptist saw that in Jesus God was beginning to fulfil this promise.  In fact, what John saw in Jesus—preaching good news, healing the sick, casting out demons—looked so much like the fulfilment of God's promises made through Isaiah and the other prophets, that he had confidence to announce to Israel that the kingdom was at hand. It gave him the confidence to preach, not just the joyful part of Isaiah's message, but to also declare the part about God's judgement coming and to call the people to repentance in preparation.  He was confident enough that he even called out King Herod's personal sins.  And that landed him in Herod's dungeon.  But when Jesus didn't break him out, he started to wonder.  I don't know that he really doubted the message, but it seems like he began to wonder and so he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one or should we look for someone else?”  And Jesus reminded them of all the Messiah things he'd been doing.  The blind received their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, even the dead are raised, and the poor are hearing good news for the first time.  And in case the crowds were doubting, Jesus reminded them of the absolute certainty John had shown.  “What did you go out to the wilderness to see?” he asked them.  Not a reed flapping in the wind.  Not some fop dressed in fine clothes.  You can find that in Herod's palace.  No, you went out to see a prophet—to see a man who knows God's faithfulness and wasn't afraid to proclaim both the joy of salvation and the sternness of judgement.  You went out because he was calling you to repentance in preparation for God's coming.  Yes, you went out to hear the one of whom it was written: “Behold, I send my messenger…who will prepare the way before you.”  In other words, Jeus says to them, “You saw what God is doing through me and so you went out to meet John, to listen to his message, to be baptised in the Jordan, because you knew that you need to be prepared for God's coming. And, Brothers and Sisters, we need to hear the same thing.  We've seen the goodness of God, we've seen his faithfulness in Jesus.  We've know the joy of being forgiven our sins and restored to fellowship with God.  We've received his Spirit and have known the beginning of new creation.  We've experienced the fellowship of this redeemed community.  We should be as certain as John was that in Jesus God's salvation has come, that in Jesus new creation has begun.  And we should be as certain as John was of the need to make straight the way of the Lord, to shout to the world with joy and also with earnestness: Repent, because the kingdom of God is here.  But I think we've lost that—or at least a good bit of it.  The joy has faded and we've become complacent. And so Advent is a call to remember the faithfulness of God that we have known, to remember the joy and love and hope we once knew, and to renew our allegiance to King Jesus and to his kingdom…and then to repent in dust and ashes for our sins and failures and betrayals and to commit ourselves as the church, as his temple to truly be the place where heaven and earth meet, the place that confronts the kingdoms of men with the kingdom of God, that confronts the principalities and powers with the victory of the cross, to be the people who know the redemption of sins and who go out into the world to make straight the way of the Lord.  Brothers and Sisters, let Advent remind you of the joy of your salvation; let Advent remind you of the kingdom vocation you've been given; let Advent be a time recommitment as you lay aside everything else and once again give your full attention and your full allegiance and your full self to the coming King. Let's pray: O Lord Jesus, Messiah, who at your first coming sent your messenger to prepare your way before you: grant that we being faithful ministers and stewards of your mysteries, might so prepare and make ready your way by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at your second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in your sight; who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

When God uses someone in your life, there can be that tendency within us to want to put them on some sort of pedestal. Because you're thankful. Or let's say the Lord is really using you and blessing your life… and people are thanking and praising you left and right. About that time you're tempted to think of yourself more highly than you ought to. Today on Abounding Grace we'll be encouraged to adopt a perspective modeled for us by the apostle Paul. He was humble, and just saw himself as a servant. He certainly didn't want to draw attention to himself or receive the glory for what God did in and through his life. Pastor Ed Taylor opens Second Corinthians twelve, and urges us to live with that mindset. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

Many of us have wondered what heaven is going to be like, and Scripture gives us just enough to whet our appetite! But imagine what it would be like to be taken on up to heaven, for a look around, but not being able to tell others about it. Such was the case for the apostle Paul, and we'll hear about this experience as we turn in our Bibles to Second Corinthians chapter twelve. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/302/29?v=20251111

For those watching on Youtube, there are some technical glitches in the video, but the audio is mostly fine. Jeremy's microphone settings weren't in the right place, so there's some noticeable clipping. Also, Jeremy's voice was not in the best shape during this recording. But we trust everything will be alright! In this episode, Jeremy responds to a recent promo video for a discussion between Doug Wilson and Gary Demar on the subject of eschatology. Jeremy takes the opportunity to launch into a bit of a Bible study about one item in particular that is brought up as a main point in the video: the Christian's future judgment. For more discussion on this topic, see the article written by Jason Bradfield over at reformation.blog: https://www.reformation.blog/p/darrens-surprise-garys-shrug-and Do Theology is part of Foundations Media. Learn more at https://foundationsmedia.org https://dotheology.com https://store.dotheology.com https://www.buymeacoffee.com/DoTheology Contact Us: show@dotheology.com https://twitter.com/dotheology https://facebook.com/dotheology Subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/DoTheology 0:00 Introduction 1:30 Preterism 3:30 Context of the Video 7:13 Confusion about Judgment 17:46 Confusion about Timing 21:19 Confusion about the Day 25:17 Romans 14 28:43 Second Corinthians 5 33:44 First Corinthians 4 38:35 Revelation 19 43:41 First Corinthians 3 51:23 John 14 55:10 Uniqueness of the Pre-Trib View 1:02:46 Conclusion #Theology #Podcast #EndTimes #Eschatology #Judgment

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 7-10 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible podcast! In today's episode for Friday, November 17th—day 321 of our journey through the Bible—Hunter invites us into a time of reflection, encouragement, and prayer rooted in Second Corinthians chapters 7 through 10. Together, we explore the themes of generosity, spiritual strength, and the source of true Christian living found in Christ. Hunter reminds us of the promises we have in Jesus, guiding us to cleanse our hearts, embrace holiness, and rely on God's power for a life that is both generous and resilient. Through thoughtful prayer and insightful commentary, we learn that we have all the riches and strength we need in Christ, empowering us to serve, give, endure, and heal. Prepare to enter a new day with God's word spoken over you, uplifting prayers for yourself and the world, and encouragement to walk in truth, peace, and hope—trusting in the deep love God has for you. Let's continue this journey together, discovering joy and strength in every step. TODAY'S DEVOTION: Do you want to live a life that is generous and strong? Can you afford to live a generous Christian life? Do you have strength to defend yourself against spiritual attack—or, forget about spiritual attack, just plain old discouragement, depression, or self-loathing? We all need strength to overcome these things, whether spiritual or otherwise. Paul reminds us in the previous chapters where our riches for generous living and the strength for our struggles come from. They come from the One who alone is rich enough and strong enough. They come from Christ. Christ in you. So, do you want to live a life that is generous and strong? Then Christ will be the source of your strength and the source of your riches—your heart partnering with him to serve, to give, to endure, and to be healed. Yesterday's reading sets this up for us: it says that God's power is working in us. And now, in today's passage, 2 Corinthians 7:1, we read, "Because we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. Let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God." So, what's the promise? It's the promise of Christ's presence in you. What are the earmarks of holy living? Generosity and strength. Because Christ lives in you, you are able to cleanse yourself from everything that defiles your body and spirit. Now, you have the strength and generosity to move forward and to experience real change. Because you fear God, because Christ lives in you, you have what you need. Can you afford a generous life? It depends on how rich you are. Do you have the strength you need to move forward? Well, that depends on how strong you are. How rich are you? How strong are you? If Christ is in you, then you have all the riches you need and then some. If Christ is in you, then you have all the strength you need and then some. And I'm here to tell you, Christ is in you. As John said, "The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." So because we have these promises, we can live the Christian life. Let's be awakened today by the presence of God in you, your true life which is hidden in Him. You have been fully embraced in Christ just as you are in Him. You are a new creation, and because of Him, you can be wise and generous—strong. And the prayer of my own heart today is that we will all begin to see this just a little bit more today than we did yesterday. That's the prayer I have for my own soul. That's the prayer I have for my family—for my wife, my daughters, my son. And that's the prayer I have for you. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 3-6 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible podcast! In today's episode, Heather invites us into a time of Scripture reading, reflection, and prayer on this 16th day of November. We journey through Second Corinthians, chapters 3 to 6, exploring profound themes of transformation, reconciliation, and the call to come home to God. Heather draws beautiful parallels between nature—like the instinctive return of salmon and migrating birds—and our own spiritual longing to return to our Creator. With warmth and sincerity, she reminds us that God has placed a homing device in all of us, drawing us back to himself, and that we're entrusted with the message of reconciliation—inviting others home as well. Alongside heartfelt readings and honest reflections, Heather leads us in prayers of gratitude, guidance, and intercession, affirming the truth that we are loved, restored, and sent out to extend that love to the world. Whether you're joining from Oregon, or anywhere else in the world, this episode is an invitation to fix your eyes on Jesus, experience His transforming love, and remember—you are not alone, and you are loved. TODAY'S DEVOTION: God is calling us back home. All of creation seems to understand this ache, this homing pull. On the Oregon coast, salmon and migratory birds instinctively know to return to the place where their journey began, even though they can't explain it. It's as if they're responding to a deep inner voice—come back, come home. Within each person there is a spiritual homing device, meant to lead us to our true home in God. The ache for home was damaged through Adam, but in Christ it has been mended. We are no longer lost; God has reconciled us to Himself and made a way for every man, woman, and child to return to the origin of their design. As Heather shared from 2 Corinthians, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. Now we have the great privilege and calling to share this ministry of reconciliation, to invite others toward home. Responding to God's call is like the salmon's journey. When they leave the salt water for fresh, transformation begins—they are being prepared by nature for the final leg of their journey. In the same way, the Spirit transforms us as we turn toward God, as we say yes to the call to come home. That new life takes root as we walk this way—a life that is a gift, a life reconciled, restored, forgiven. Heather reminds us: the ache is real, and so is home. God does not leave us broken and wandering, but comes to mend us, to give us direction, to make us whole. Now, through His Spirit and love, we are equipped and commissioned to encourage others to hear that same invitation—come home to God. As we journey toward Him, transformation bears fruit in our hearts; new life is born. Let us remember the call and extend it to those around us. Let our lives and our words speak of this amazing reconciliation, of God's relentless love and mercy. May the Spirit unscramble our hearts, guide us, and give us strength for the path. That is my prayer today—for my own soul, for my family, and for you. May we hear the voice and step boldly toward our true home in God. May we invite others and find joy in the journey together. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. My name is Spencer and I'm one of the pastors here. We are continuing through our Remember series. We're in the last couple of weeks of this series. We're walking through our membership commitments and what binds us together and belief and practice as a church. We're in the 13th commitment. Today we've got this and then next week our 14th commitment. And then we'll launch into our gift series for December. But I want to read the 13th commitment before we begin. It says, I will practice and grow in generosity by financially supporting Jesus mission in church in our city and the world. Therefore, I will consistently and sacrificially give to Mill City Church of Cayce and to Mill City Church of Cayce family as they may have need. So this is what our church commits to. But this really embodies the people of God for centuries. This is our story. If you haven't thought about this before, much of actually Western culture is impacted and shaped by the generosity of Christians. Like the majority of hospitals over time were started by churches and denominations. That's why so many in many cities have a Baptist hospital, a Methodist hospital, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, all at one point were they begun as seminaries. They were training grounds for pastors and educating laypeople in theology. The Salvation army was started by Christians in an effort to wage war on poverty in the London's east end over 100 years ago. The YMCA and the 19th century began as an effort to help Christian men. So it's the Young Men's Christian Association, Christian men who've been negatively impacted by the Industrial Revolution. Samaritan's Purse was started to wage to help kids that were affected in Korea by starvation. Habitat for Humanity was started by Christian missionaries who were building homes and then brought that back to America and has impacted many people for the last few decades. The majority of orphan care, orphanages, adoption agencies were started by Christians that have been run by Christians into the day. The examples go on and on. If you just think locally for a moment, the organization that's had the most impact on homelessness in the city of Columbia, without a doubt has been Oliver Gospel Mission. They've been doing it for over 137 years, since 1988, started by a Methodist minister. Our own hospital, Baptist Hospital, was started by the denomination that we belong to, the South Carolina Baptist convention, years over 100 years ago. So this is a part of the people of God. This is our story. And there are many examples of how this shows up. And our 13th commitment is in line with what God's people have done for Thousands of years. So today I want to show you where this comes from in the Scriptures and why we're called to live with sacrificial generosity. We're going to do a fairly quick blitz through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation to see this theme. This is going to be a biblical theology of generosity, this theme that gets pulled from Genesis all the way through Revelation, the end of the Bible. So we're going to see where this comes from, where we're commanded to live like this. And then I want to take a step back and examine ultimately why and how we're supposed to, as the church, live this out. So let me pray for us, and then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us see the gift that it is to live a life that is generous, that is not about self, but about ultimately you and your purposes here and beyond. And I pray that you would speak to us in a way that would disarm us and instruct us, and we wouldn't just be hearers of the Word, but would leave here as doers. And that's going to come through your work. So we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.Okay, so starting in the book of Genesis. One of the earliest examples we get of generosity in the Bible is in Genesis 14, when Abraham is. He wages. He's in a battle. And after they win that battle, there's a king and a high priest named Melchizedek that comes to him. In Genesis 14, it says,> And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Genesis 14:18–20, ESV)And Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. So this is one of the earliest examples we see of giving up your material blessings. Abraham gives up a tenth of what he has in response to this priest. This type of generosity gets enshrined into the Old Testament law When you read past Genesis, into Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers. When you read these books, you see throughout the law, this type of commanded generosity of the people of God. When you get to numbers 18, it's one of the places that commands the people of God to give of their finances to support the work of the priesthood. You see, the Levitical priesthood, that tribe did not have an inheritance from the Lord. That was land Their inheritance was to serve the Lord. And the people of God and the promised land were commanded to give to sustain the work of the Levitical priesthood. So you see this in the Book of Numbers and other places. In Leviticus 19, you see that the giving that God calls us is not just to help those who are priests, like Melchizedek, like the Levitical priesthood, but it is also to help one another. As you read Leviticus 19, this command to be holy as I am holy, there's a bunch of different parts in it. But one of the things that shows up in verses 9 and 10 says,> “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:9–10, ESV)It's just built into the law that as you harvest, don't take all of it. Don't be about the enrichment of self, but realize that there are the poor, the widows, the sojourners among you that do not have food and make sure that they can come and take part in the harvest as well. You see this in other places, like Deuteronomy 15. Deuteronomy 15 says,> “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” (Deuteronomy 15:7–8, ESV)Do not harden your hearts against your brothers who are in need. Throughout the law, you just see how God is commanding his people to think about one another in a way that is beautiful. And when you read the law, I'm picking places that I can't go to, all of it. But you read it. You read about the redemption laws, you read about the year of jubilee, you read about all these things that God commands of his people so that they might take care of one another, take care of the priesthood, who ministers on behalf of you, and then also take care of one another together. That's all over the Old Testament law.As you keep flipping through the Old Testament, you see examples of how this is lived out. But one of the places that you'll get to is in the wisdom literature. You won't just see that generosity is commanded, but generosity is also wise. It is wise to be someone who lives generously. In Proverbs 3, 9 and 10, it says,> “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” (Proverbs 3:9–10, ESV)I so appreciate that it's proverbial, which means it's not a promise or a guarantee. But what he just said there is that if you honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce, that first fruits language shows up in the Old Testament law as well. That is the idea that you take the first of your harvest, not the leftovers. And that theme carries throughout the Bible as well. Don't give the Lord your leftovers, give him the first fruits, the first and best of what you have. If you do this, then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine, which means, again, proverbial. Generally, if you will be willing to be generous, the Lord will provide for you over and over again. So we don't treat it like a formula, but we see that it's wise that those who live generously, the Lord provides for them again and again and again. We see this in 11:24.> “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” (Proverbs 11:24, ESV)Again, proverbial. But the idea here is that if you are giving freely, the Lord is taking care of you. But if you are greedy, if you withhold, if you are self interested, you will only suffer want. And there are plenty of other proverbs that hit different aspects of what it means to the wisdom that is bound up and not living for the enrichment of self, but living generously.Now, the Old Testament law, you see this from start to finish in the Old Testament law. This theme of God's people who were called to live generously. Then we get to the New Testament and then Jesus comes and begins teaching. And one of the most consistent teachings that Jesus has is on money and generosity over and over again. And Jesus doesn't just get to the commands, he gets to the hearts behind the commands. Because when you get to Matthew chapter six in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,> “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19–21, ESV)So Jesus gets the heart of the matter, which is, do not, do not live for the riches of this present world. Everything that your heart so quickly desires, all the shiny objects and things in this life, all of it will end up in a landfill. It will decay. But if you will put your heart where God's heart is and the kingdom of God in eternity, you will store up riches that will never spoil or fade. Put your heart there. He gets to the heart of it. And this teaching that we get in Matthew 6 that is so helpful, helps us see, this is what we're called to be, is to put our heart in the things that God cares about that last into eternity. And listen, if you just do the Gospel of Matthew, I'm gonna do just some quick hits of just how he teaches this over and over again. But if you go back to Matthew 5:3, he says,> “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3, ESV)You get to Matthew 5:42. He says,> “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42, ESV)You get to chapter six, verses one through four. He says,> “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” (Matthew 6:1–4, ESV)which is the teaching that we should give not to be seen. That we should not strut to the offering box and say, look at what I have done. That we should not let everyone know on GoFundMe that I'm the one that has given. We shouldn't make it known to everyone that I am giving, but we should do it in secret, because ultimately our giving is to the Lord and not to be seen by others. And he continues, I mean, 6:19, 24, we just read do not lay up treasures in heaven. 6:24 we read earlier is,> “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Matthew 6:24, ESV)6:25–34 he says, do not be anxious about material needs. Seek first the kingdom of God. In Matthew 13:22, when he's teaching the parable of the sore sower, talking about the seeds of faith that are sown, one of the seeds that gets choked out is by the thorns, which is the riches and the cares of this present world. And that's a warning that if we care so much about material blessings in this life, we care so much about money and riches here, it will snuff out our faith. In Matthew chapter 19, we get an example of what that looks like. When a rich young man comes to Jesus and says, I want to follow you. And he gives his resume of all he's followed the law. And then Jesus goes straight to the heart and he says, okay, so sell everything you have. Come, follow me. And he says, no, it went away sad because he had great wealth. And then Jesus goes on to say in teaching that he says, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And listen, that's the eye of a sewing needle. Have you ever heard some prosperity? False prophets say, that's a tiny little door in Jerusalem. That's a lie. The whole point there is that, no, you cannot be saved as a rich man in your own, your own self. It comes through faith in Jesus Christ and him shaping us and our approach to how we think about money. That's just the Gospel of Matthew, but if you keep reading the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John, Jesus continuously, repetitively, aggressively, at times teaches on riches because there's a lot at stake now.Jesus goes to the cross, he dies for our sins. He rises from the grave, conquering the power of death and its grip on us. And then when he ascends to the right hand of God the Father and the Holy Spirit descends upon the church. In Acts 2. We've been in this passage multiple times throughout this Remember series. We see the early church embody Christ's teachings on generosity. In Acts 2:44, it says,> “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44–45, ESV)They believe it. They are all in on what Christ taught. And they just say, give it away. I'll sell this and I'll give it to you. Make sure that the saints are taken care of, make sure that the gospel can go forward. They believe this wholeheartedly and they begin to live this out. And when you read the rest of the book of Acts, you see this. And when you read the rest of the New Testament letters, Romans all the way through, you're going to see this over and over again. I can't hit all of it, but I just want to show you a few different parts of the New Testament letters that teach this theme of generosity. In Second Corinthians, chapter eight, Paul put he's talking to the church at Corinth, which is a very wealthy church and a wealthy city. And when he's talking to them, he uses the Macedonian church, which is in a different area that is not as wealthy, as an example to spur them on to generosity. And in chapter eight, verses three and four, it says,> “For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.” (2 Corinthians 8:3–4, ESV)That little phrase is one of My favorite phrases on generosity in the Bible, that this church was begging, they were eager. We cannot miss out on this. Can we give? The saints in Jerusalem were struggling, they needed help. And they said, I want all in on this. Can we be a part of this? And he's trying to help the Corinthian church. Do you not see how we're called to live? And if you read different parts of the New Testament in the letters, you're going to see this call to give to the efforts of gospel ministry and give to one another, to take care of one another. I mean, when you read the book of Philippians, y', all, we spent time a couple years ago in the book of Philippians, wonderful, beautiful theological insights, wonderful, beautiful passages. But when you get to the end, you see that it wraps up like a support letter because he's thankful for their partnership with him in the gospel. In 4:15, he says,> “And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.” (Philippians 4:15, ESV)And he's just thankful, thankful for the church at Philippi and how they've invested in his ministry efforts. Paul at times had to be a tent maker, but he did need money to live on. He needed money to travel. And in First Corinthians 9, at one point when he's talking to the church at Corinth, he makes the point that it is my right as a minister of the gospel to be paid. And it makes that clear in the New Testament. Ministers of the gospel, those who do gospel work, should be paid to make their living by the gospel. But he tells the church of Corinth, I'm not demanding that of you because I know that's a stumbling block for you. I want you to believe the gospel. I don't want you to think I'm money hungry. And that is something that even shows up today. It's hard for pastors at times to talk about money because you don't want to fall into the category of money hungry pastors. But God talks so much about it and it's so important. So we will. Throughout the New Testament, you see this commanded generosity, these examples of generosity for the advancement of the gospel, moving forward through caring for one another, and all of that. As you read through the N terminates in the Book of Revelation. And if you were with us the last year as we walked through the Book of Revelation, those final three chapters is a vivid picture of where all this is going, that God's people get to experience the eternal generosity of God unendingly, that we get to have a feast with our God, that He provides for us, that we get to have eternal dwelling with our God, that He provides life and light and riches beyond imagination. Our God freely, lovingly, joyfully, gives to his people forever and ever and ever. Amen. And that is how the Bible ends. And you see from start to finish this thread that is pulled of generosity, of how God's people have been shaped by this and really how we've lived this out for thousands years.But all these examples that are wonderful and beautiful, all these commands that are powerful and all these teachings that shape us, it is also important to realize it's pretty dang hard to live this out. It just is because we're just so self interested. We're just self interested people. I know I am. I mean, I see it like I y', all, I see when my. Give you an example. When my kids, when there's a dessert in our household, they, they, they become feral. It's it's mine. Like you ever seen a, you ever seen a raccoon that's eating trash pizza? You come up on a raccoon eating trash pizza and you try to meet my children with a dessert, it's theirs. Do you know where they got that from? My wife? No, I'm just kidding. They got that from me. One of the most infamous stories in my family is when I was in college, I was home for Thanksgiving, my mom made this chocolate pie and she made it for me to take it to college back for exams. And I had it and my stepdad and my sister saw it and they said, ooh, I want a bite. And I grabbed it and I licked the whole thing. Which in my family was claiming it. I know in your family that might not have stopped anyone, but in my family that stopped everyone because this was mine. And that self interested instinct is all over how we think about riches. It's all over how we think about money. This is what we do, y'. All. That's why when the pandemic hit, what was the first thing to leave the shelves? Toilet paper. That's just everyone's like, gotta get it. I gotta get in my house. It's what we do. This is a human infection that we pass down from generation to generation, from forefathers to their children and grandchildren. This desire for the enrichment and care of self. We have a Bible reading plan that anyone in our church is welcome to go through, but a few of us have gone through over the last few years and I'm in this Bible reading plan the other few weeks ago, and we come up to 1 Timothy, chapter 6. And I'm reading it, and I just. Was just slayed. I read it, and I just want to read. Gets right at the heart of this. It says,> “But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (1 Timothy 6:6–10, ESV)Do you hear that? That's a warning. That riches can become your ruin. The desire for them can become a ruin for you. Verse 10. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pangs. And it's like, I just. I read that. I went, oh, my God, woe is me. If you, if you don't read that and tremble if you don't receive that and go, I. Where. Where have I fallen in love with riches and, and money in a way that is. That is literally risking me walking away from the Lord, then we're. We're not reading it correctly. It's a. It's a real danger. And if you, if you realize the danger of our. Of our. Of our besetting sin in our hearts. It's not enough just to look at the whole Bible and look at all the examples, because those examples, enough, even those commands are not enough for us to take our eyes off of the riches of this present world. We have to get to the heart of why. Why are we commanded to live this out? Why should we do this? And the example that we have of why is found in, in Jesus Christ. When you read 2 Corinthians, chapter 8, it says,> “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9, ESV)That teaches that Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity, left the glory and the comfort and the heaven to become man and dwell among us in poverty. That he left the riches and the comforts of heaven to live a lowly human life in need constantly. And then he goes to the cross where he has nothing. The garments that he has are divided amongst the people below and he's crucified for our self interest and greed and desire for the riches of this present world. And he resurrects to conquer the power of sin so that we might not be slaves to riches, we might be slaves to our desires for this present world, but we might be resurrected in faith to have new eyes and a new heart. That we might see that he is better and that following him and putting all of our hopes in eternity is better than anything this present world could have to offer. And that by the power of the Holy Spirit he might break us of a desire for things that will spoil and fade and fix our eyes on eternity. We read 1 John 4:19 the why is we love because he first loved us.> “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19, ESV)The only hope we have to grow in being generous people is to look at the example we have in Jesus Christ and put our faith firmly in him as our only hope. That is one and that is the why which shapes our commitment. I will practice and grow in generosity by financially supporting Jesus mission and church in our city and the world. Therefore I will consistently and sacrificially give to Mill City Church of Cayce and to Mill City Church of Cayce family as they may have need. God, who loves us, who came to rescue us, who saves us from our own selfish desires, sets us apart to follow him and calls us to trust him, to yield to him open handedly that he will provide for us and to lift our gaze to the heavens, to store our riches there, where one day we will taste and see of things that we could not passively dream, possibly dream or imagine about. That is what guides us and the hope that we have in this commitment as a church.So if that is why I want to end with how. How do we practically take steps to grow in this? It begins with giving. And one of the things that we say is in the language we have in our commitment is to is to sacrificially give. We use the language of sacrificial giving in our Give series in a few weeks. That's a language that's going to show up. That's a language we've used for years. We do not use the language of tithe. And if you grew up in the church, that's a very common phrase. It shows up all over the Old Testament law. Tithe, that just means a tenth. It goes back to the example of Melchizedek and Abraham. But you read the Old Testament, it says to give a tenth. The New Testament actually doesn't command the tithe. It embodies the heart of generosity from the Old Testament. But the language we see consistently in the New Testament is one of sacrificial giving. Therefore we command from the scriptures. You need to sacrificially give. And I think that's more helpful language than the time I do. I think that calls us to consider what we should give before the Lord in a way that is, that is meaningful. And I think for some whom God has blessed in this church, making money that you never thought you could make, if you say that giving is the tithe, you have limited yourself and you are not actually growing in sacrificial giving. For some of you, the tithe is the floor, it's not the ceiling. And you should be looking for ways to continue to grow in giving. And for others, like that's. If we just use the language of tithe, that's a hard place to get to. If you're not giving anything at all, that's a tough thing to accomplish. We want us to take steps of faithfulness and growing and sacrificial generosity. We do not dictate how much you should give. We do not dictate exactly where you should give. You see, the language that we got here is I will consistently and sacrificially give to Mill City Church of Cayce and Mill City Church of Cayce families. And above it, it says I will financially supporting Jesus mission in the church and the city and the world. So we're not saying that you've got to give all of your money to formally the local church though I would caution, I have heard and seen this over the years that some folks will say, ah, I just, I, no, I'm not, I don't know if I can, I don't know what the church is doing. I want to be able to dictate where my money can go. So I'm going to give to people in my church, I'm going to give people to my community. I'm going to give to orphan care, I'm going to give to missions. But I really, I don't know if I can give formally to the local church. I just, I don't know how. And I just want to caution you, if you have any bit of that zone in your heart, I want you to consider what functionally that means. It means that you do not trust the leadership of this church and work with our boss team, our boss Business Oversight and Sustainability Squad, that's our team that oversees finances in our church. So the elders and our boss team, I don't trust them to be able to give to the local church. And I just want to caution you on that, because I'll be honest, if I was a part of a church and I didn't trust the leadership of that church to handle the finances, I wouldn't be there. I just. I was like, if I can't trust you with money, then I can't trust you, period. And if that's the position of your heart, I want you to evaluate that and I want you to reckon with that argument, because I think you should trust the leadership of this church. You should formally give. You should give in the give boxes, you should give online. You should give to the local church and the ministry efforts entrusting us to figure out what is the best use of how these gifts have been given to use and distribute in a way that accomplishes the purposes of the local church. You should also give to your church family. You should be saving up regularly to give to your church family. You should be looking eager, like that Second Corinthians language. If I'm eager to jump in and give at a moment's notice to someone who is in need, y'. All. One of the benefits I have as a pastor is that I regularly get to see people who are embodying Matthew 6, not being public, letting the left hand know what the right hand is giving. So they come to one of the pastors and say, hey, I just. I want to be able to bless this person. Can you make sure they get this? Can you make sure that this person gets this? I see this all the time. I've lost count of how many cars have been given away in this church, how many washing machines, how many medical bills have been paid off. I've watched people just live it out in beautiful and wonderful ways. We should do that. You should be looking for ways to just bless people in our church who are in need and to see the beauty and the wonder and the glory of just joining in in God's mission and caring for his people, just as they did in Acts Chapter two.And beyond that, we should be eager to give beyond our church, beyond the local mission. That's one of the reasons why we give regularly to 1040 HOPE. 1040 HOPE is the mission organization that Ben Johnson, one of the members of our church, leads. It's on the meets on the third. They have office space on the third floor of our building. And we give to them, and we encourage you to give to them because we want to see the gospel Reach every nation, tribe and tongue and the areas of the world where there are not Christians or anyone that even knows the gospel. We want to be about all of it. So we. That's what. That's what it means to. That's how we should do this. We should give, firstly, meaning of your first fruits. Do not give your leftovers. We should give consistently, which means that some of you should set up regular giving and we should give sacrificially, meaning we should be considerate of giving in a way that we feel it, that it actually is a sacrifice. This is something we should grow in and take steps of faithfulness in. So if you're in a place where you're like, I just, I can't. I just. I literally can't give right now. I want to say very clearly that's a problem. But that's a problem we'd love to help you with. We have a financial care team that will sit down with you, that'll sit with you in your budget, that will help you figure out how you can take steps of faithfulness here. We want to help you to be able to do this. And when I'm coaching people up on this, that's why I think language of tithe can be discouraging at times. Because if you're like, I'm going from 0 to 10, I don't know how I'm going to get there. Just take steps of faithfulness. Start by giving 40 to 50 bucks a month. Do that and commit to it. And you might have to cut things out. But of how much you spend on Starbucks and Amazon prime and Netflix, and if you total all of that up, and that's more than what you give to the mission of God, that's a value statement. That is a problem and it needs to change. So we need to do some soul work in this. And I say, take steps of faithful. So I'm coaching people on this. I'm like, start here. Maybe next year you can carve out 1% of your budget and maybe the following year you can take a step of faith and double it at 2%. And maybe in three years you could double it again and get to 4%. Maybe in four to five years, if you're really figuring this out, you could jump up to eight. Figure this out before the Lord and ask the Lord what he wants you to give. But we can take steps of faithfulness and growing in this. It's worth it for our own souls to not fall in love with the riches of this present world. Some people will Say, like, I don't know if I can get. I don't know when I'm gonna have enough to give. I don't know if I'm gonna get there. And I will say to you very clearly, we have to be trusted with the small things that we're given so we can step into the greater things. The idea that if I make more down the road, I'll be able to give. It's not how we logically work. It's not how the scriptures teach this. We need to be faithful with little so we can later be faithful with much. We need to take steps of faithfulness to grow in this. I was talking with Raz Bradley. Raz, one of our pastors, was in Florida for a conference a few weeks back, and he got to meet a guy and hear his story, and I got to watch this video of this guy's story. But this. This man was. Him and his wife, years ago, were going to be missionaries. They're excited to go on the mission field. And as they're gearing up, ready to go on the mission field, his father sits down with him and his brother and says, hey, I'm retiring. He had a small mom and pop crane company. Because I'm retiring, and it's either y' all are taking this over or it's gonna end. But, like, I mean, we're. And he had a decision to make, and he prayed, do I go on the mission field or do I take over this business and use it for the glory of God and funding missions? And much to his wife's dismay, they didn't go on the mission field. Him and his brother took over this crane company, and they started out from the very beginning. They said, this is what we're going to do. We are not going to build this company for the enrichment of ourselves. We are going to take the profits. So about half invest it back into the company itself, and the other half we're going to give away. We're going to invest in gospel efforts. Now, a normal company, you do the first half, you've got to invest money back into the company, otherwise it won't make it. But the other half is yours. You get to keep the profits. And that's what it means to be a small business owner. And they said, no, we're going to take salaries and we're going to grow this company, and we're going to see the Lord grow this company over the years. We're going to see what he's going to do with this. And they did this for Years and tens of thousands turned into hundreds of thousands of profits, which turned into millions of dollars in profit to this year. They've given away over $70 million this year to mission efforts across the world. And it's like all along the way, it took salaries, they took decent salaries for a long time. He had $100,000 salary. You see the video of his house. It's a normal house. His car, it's an old beater car. And they had their most need. They had, you know, kids are going to college. He had a good salary of $150,000. And then when his kids were done with college, he went back down to $100,000. But they are handling tens of millions of dollars a year. And they're saying, I don't want it. I want to put that in the kingdom of God. And to think if this continues that for years to come, that they might invest a billion dollars into mission efforts across the world. Can you imagine the riches that they are storing up in heaven? What a life to live. What a legacy to leave behind. And y', all, the heart that is bound up in those men and their story is the same heart that is bound up. If you remember the story of Jesus and the widow's mite, the widow who comes to the temple and has only a few pennies to give, and she gives all of it. And Jesus points to her and says, look at it, look at her heart. This is what it means to be generous. And she gives all of it away. That's the same heart that was embodied there. It's the same heart that is bound up in the Christian who is looking at their budget and they're saying, you know what? I want to grow in generosity. I want to give to the church, to orphan care, to missions, which means I might drive the same car for the next 10 years and my co workers might have nicer trucks and nicer cars. But I'm going to take it on the chin here. I'm going to drive this thing until the wheels come off because it matters that I have the margins to give to what God wants us. This is the heart, the same heart that is in that. And that man is the same heart that sent a young Christian who's figuring out money for the first time. And they realize that the normative pattern that we've just accepted, that I just upgrade a phone every two years doesn't have to happen. So I'm holding this phone for three, four and five years so that I can have the ability to give and give generously to others. This is the same heart that's in the Christian right now that's looking at their budget and looking at inflation and going, I don't know how we're going to make ends meet, but I'm not cutting my money to this missionary. I'll cut my Starbucks habit before that happens because it matters to invest in the kingdom of God. That is the heart that shapes this commitment. Let me read it one more time. I will practice and grow in generosity by financially supporting Jesus mission and church in our city and the world. Therefore, I will consistently and sacrificially give to Mill City Church of Cayce and to Mill City Church of Cayce family as they may have need. Let's be a people that forsake the love of money and the love of riches in this present world, that look to Christ as our hope to change us and then take steps of faithfulness to be the generous people that God has called us to be.Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us submit something that is so dear to our flesh, something that we don't like to talk about, something we don't like anyone else talking to us about. But let's take seriously the teachings about money and riches in this life and let's be a people that embody the heart of generosity that flows throughout the scriptures that you perfectly exampled and that you hold out for us all the way to the new heavens and the new earth. In Jesus name, amen. The band's going to come up. We're going to sing one final song together. I hope as we consider these teachings this week, as they may be difficult for us to receive and even more difficult to live out, that we would seriously consider them, that we would not hear them and discard them, but we would actually let the Holy Spirit, as we sing right now, do some work in our heart that as we leave this place, we would sit quietly before the Lord and ask God, how do you want me to grow? What steps do you want me to take? And if you need pastors or financial care or anyone to help you figure that out, we'd love to sit down and help you do that.

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: Job 41-42; 2 Corinthians 1-2 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible podcast! In this November 15th, 2025 episode, your host Hunter invites us into day 320 of our Scripture journey, guiding us through the closing chapters of Job and the beginning of Second Corinthians. We'll witness Job's remarkable transformation from grief to restoration, his humility before God, and the generous blessings that follow as he prays for his friends. Then, in Paul's heartfelt letter to the Corinthians, we explore themes of divine comfort, forgiveness, and the call to embody grace for others. Along the way, Hunter reflects on where we turn in times of need and encourages us to become sources of comfort and forgiveness in our own lives. The episode closes with a thoughtful time of prayer and a reminder: we are deeply loved and called to share that love with the world. So whether you're tired, seeking comfort, or simply looking for a fresh word of encouragement, join us for a rich, hope-filled encounter with Scripture and prayer. TODAY'S DEVOTION: Where do you go when you need forgiveness? Where do you turn when guilt and shame threaten to overwhelm your heart? It's an important question, and Hunter draws our attention to it today. Not only do we need a place for comfort and forgiveness, but so do the people in our lives. Are we known—are you known—as someone who offers grace, kindness, a listening ear when someone has stumbled or is hurting? The invitation in today's scriptures is clear: where you go for comfort and forgiveness will help determine where those around you go when they're in need. If you turn to your gracious Father, receive comfort from the Spirit, and drink deeply of forgiveness from Christ, then others—those who may be carrying heavy burdens of sorrow or failure—will know they can come to you. When your life is rooted in grace, it becomes a place of sanctuary for those seeking mercy. Hunter urges us: go to the cross, go to Christ, go to your loving Savior. He forgives freely and does not treat us as our sins deserve. As the psalm says, "He does not repay us according to our iniquities." If you're daily receiving grace and mercy, you'll become someone others trust to receive it from too. Paul asks, "Who is adequate for such a task as this?"—the task of comforting, restoring, forgiving. There's only one who is truly able: Christ alone. Yet Jesus invites us to participate with Him in sharing His comfort and grace. When we go to Him, we're empowered to offer the real comfort and real forgiveness the world aches for. That's a prayer Hunter has for his own soul, for his family, and for all of us. May we become people who are known as vessels of Christ's comfort and forgiveness—not just for our sake but for the sake of a world in need. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Hi, I'm John Sorensen, President of Evangelism Explosion International, and you're listening to Share Life Today. The holiday season is here—the time for gratitude, joy, and connection. As we gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's also a time when hearts are softer and conversations go deeper. This is the season to share. God's Word tells us in Second Corinthians six two (6:2), “Today is the day of salvation.” People all around us are searching for peace and meaning, and the message of Jesus—the One who came to bring hope to the world through His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead—is exactly what they need to hear. So this holiday season, look for those God-given moments to speak about His love. Share how Jesus has changed your life and invite others to experience that same joy. Because there's no better time than now—the season of gratitude and grace—to share the Good News of the Gospel. For resources, visit sharelife.today.

You can read the whole text here: https://dougapple.blogspot.com/ +++++++ I'm Doug Apple...and my heart is on fire. (Luke 24:32) My daughter was working the front counter at the Swan and Dolphin Resort at Disney World when a large family approached. An older woman stepped forward and simply said, “Shulas.” My daughter quickly intuited that they were coming for dinner at Shula's Steak House which was right around the corner inside the resort. So she pointed where to go, and off the woman went, the family trailing behind her, including an older man in a wheel chair. A few minutes later my daughter saw the family coming back. The older woman stepped forward again and said, “No, we ARE the Shulas. We're checking in to the resort.” My daughter hadn't recognized Florida royalty, the Don Shula family! She was talking to Don Shula's wife, and the Hall of Fame football coach himself was there in the wheelchair. I said he was Florida royalty, but every day people are born who have never heard of Don Shula. He was one of the best coaches in NFL history, and the only coach so far to lead his team to an undefeated season, which he did with the Miami Dolphins in 1972. The other day I was looking at a photo of one of their games. It was a photo of the Miami Orange Bowl taken high above the stadium. The people were just specks. I thought, “There's Don Shula, one of the specks.” Then I thought of Larry Csonka. He was a big, bruising running back and one of the stars for the Dolphins. He was a little bigger and a little stronger and that's why he was a star. But looking at the whole scene from just a few hundred feet above the stadium, it made no difference if one person was a little bigger or a little stronger. They were all just specks in the mass of humanity. In the end we are all just specks in the mass of humanity. What difference in the world does it make if one man is a little bigger or a little stronger? One person is considered better looking by mere millimeters of flesh being in this place rather than that place. We put our values, and even build our lives on these millimeters that in the long run don't matter. Second Corinthians 4:18 says that, as Christians, we should spend our time looking at things “which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” One translation says, “For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” The Miami Orange Bowl is gone. It was demolished in 2008. Most of the adults that were cheering on the Dolphins in 1972 are gone. Don Shula is gone. Even that Shula's Steakhouse inside the resort is gone. First John 2:17 says this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But whoever does the will of God will live forever. Lord, please help me do Your will; not my will, but Your will. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Lord, help me do this, set my mind on things above, not on things on the earth. Jesus said in Luke 16:15, “For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” Lord, please, I want to highly esteem what You highly esteem. How can we get our values straightened out? We need to turn toward God and diligently seek Him. We need to get know His ways and His words. We need to spend time with God, like it says in Matthew 6:6, getting alone, shutting out distractions, and talking to our Father. One man said, “I worked so hard climbing the ladder of life, only to realize it was leaning against the wrong building.” Heavenly Father, please help me follow You closely. I want my values to be Your values. I want to focus on the main eternal things, and I don't want to waste time on things that You do not highly esteem. I am open to Your paradigm shift, and I am trusting You to lead me every step of the way. In Jesus' name. May God bless you today. I'm Doug Apple.

The War With Pride, 1 of 5 from November 2, 2025 “In a world fighting by arrogance and deceit, we triumph by meekness and integrity.” 2 Corinthians 10 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)SUMMARYThis sermon explores the themes of humility, conflict resolution, and spiritual integrity as addressed by the Apostle Paul in the context of Second Corinthians. Pastor Michael discusses the challenges of maintaining unity and peace within faith communities, emphasizing the power of meekness and Christ-like humility in overcoming pride and divisive influences. The sermon encourages listeners to measure success and approval against Jesus's standards rather than worldly ones.REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

God's grace can meet all our needs, which is especially important when we are suffering hardships of all kinds. In this passage from Second Corinthians 12, we find an amazing revelation about the Apostle Paul's amazing revelation! He is too humble to claim ownership of it lest he be accused of boasting, but he describes his experience in unmistakable terms. We see that God did not answer His prayers to remove the "thorn in the flesh" for a reason--so that he could experience Christ's power in his weakness. We see that sometimes, God uses suffering to keep us humble, and may allow it to continue. It is at those times that we discover His strength and even take pleasure in our sufferings. Suffering is a part of everyone's life, but God's grace can carry us through it. He has an abundance of grace for any and every need. This message will give you a biblical perspective on your own suffering and how God can use it for your good. (We apologize for a few minutes of silence that are not crucial and are explained in the slides.) #Suffering#GraceLifeMinistries#SimmplybyGrace#Thornintheflesh

Pastor Harden preaches about the story of Marietta First United Methodist Church. If someone were to ask you to tell our story, what would you tell them?First United Methodist Church of MariettaGiving link: https://onrealm.org/mariettafumc/-/form/give/nowChurch website: ⁠https://www.mariettafumc.org/

“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” The Book of Second Corinthians is largely dedicated to Paul's defense of his ministry.  But it also contains the largest section on stewardship and financial giving in the entire New Testament. Is tithing strictly an Old Testament idea? Is it part of the Mosaic Law? And is it still relevant today?  Decide for yourself, as Ron dives into this passage today as part of his continuing series, “The Ultimate Road Trip Through The Bible: The Pauline Epistles.”   

In his first letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul was disciplinary. In his second, he was defensive. What changed? The Apostle Paul wasn't always an apostle. He was once Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted the followers of Christ and did so in the name of God. After his conversion and subsequent rise to a position of authority in the church, some in Corinth still doubted his credentials.  Paul wrote Second Corinthians to defend his ministry, and Ron takes us there next, as he continues his teaching series, “The Ultimate Road Trip Through The Bible: The Pauline Epistles.”  

In his first letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul was disciplinary. In his second, he was defensive. What changed? The Apostle Paul wasn't always an apostle. He was once Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted the followers of Christ and did so in the name of God. After his conversion and subsequent rise to a position of authority in the church, some in Corinth still doubted his credentials.  Paul wrote Second Corinthians to defend his ministry, and Ron takes us there next, as he continues his teaching series, “The Ultimate Road Trip Through The Bible: The Pauline Epistles.”   

When you think about it, sowing seed and then reaping a harvest is all about multiplication. You sow one seed, you reap a hundred. But the extent, the quantum of the multiplication factor, has an awful lot to do with the way that we sow the seed in the first place.   Lord of the Harvest Over the last few weeks we have been working our way through a series called, “Reaping God's Harvest in My Life”. A couple of weeks ago we looked at how Isaac sowed seed in the middle of a drought and reaped a harvest. And again last week we looked at figuring out exactly what the drought is about because sometimes we go through seasons of drought; seasons where we're not experiencing God's blessing the way we should be and we think, “God what's going on? Why am I going through this? And sometimes Dad is trying to get our attention. Sometimes God knows there's something wrong in our lives; we've rebelled in this area, maybe with our finances or maybe we're living in un-forgiveness or maybe we are living in some sort of rebellion. Maybe we are not spending the time with God that we need to be and God thinks, “I love my child so much, it's time to get his attention; it's time to get her attention,” and so we start going through this drought thing and … “God, what's going on?" And we need to figure out what that drought is about. Those seasons of drought are very important times because there's power in sowing seeds of faith during the drought. The power comes from the faith that we place in God and His desire to bless us. So if you've missed those couple of programs, you can actually purchase this series on CD, because it's one of those teaching series that I believe all need to experience so that we know what it is to live with the Lord of the harvest; so we know what it is to reap God's harvest in my life. This week we are going to take a closer look at two things. The first one is – what exactly is God's harvest? I mean, how do we know when we are in harvest time? What does God's harvest look like? Good question! And the second one is the importance of not only sowing seeds of faith but looking at how we sow those seeds. I'm really excited about being together today because when we speak about God's harvest, we're talking about His grace and His power and I hope you're excited too, so stick with me over the next twenty minutes or so. Jesus called God "The Lord of the Harvest" and the notion of sowing and reaping, is one of those consistent principles that we find right through the Scriptures; Old Testament and New Testament – it's a pretty straightforward proposition. You buy some seed, you put it in the ground, you wait for the rain and the sun and it grows into a plant that gives you more seeds. You don't sow, you don't reap the harvest! The question is: is it worth sowing in the first place? I mean, why should we bother? Going out and buying seed – it costs money. Sowing seed in the ground is hard work. You know, it's not always convenient to sow seeds. When God says to us: “Go and forgive that person,” it's not always convenient. We don't always want to do it. Invariably, when God says: “Sow seed", it involves some form of sacrifice. It involves something that we really don't want to do. And so it's not unreasonable to say, “Well, do I really want to sow seed? Maybe this drought thing isn't so bad. Maybe I can just survive it on my own. Cor … sowing seed, taking a risk, spending money, spending emotional energy and then God has this crazy idea, instead of feeding my need, He wants me to plant His seed somewhere else. Oh, I don't know.” So when we are making a decision as to whether we should plant this seed; whether we should experience seed time and harvest, we have to weigh these things up. On the one hand we look at the cost of the seed, the effort of sowing, the risk of loss and on the other hand, we look at the value of the harvest. We balance those two things and we think: is it worth it? So what does God's harvest look like? Is God's harvest about money and a big house and a nice car? We all have physical needs – there's not doubt – and you may be listening; you may be someone who has really acute, physical needs. This program goes all over the world. This program is listened to by wealthy people and people who don't have enough food to eat. God is in those physical things. God wants to meet our needs but we all know that when the physical provision – the food, the shelter, the security, the money – when it gets to a certain level, to meet our need, after that all the other luxuries, all the other things are lovely and nice and they're wonderful icing on the cake, but they're not the things that ultimately satisfy us. They're not the things that fill us up. So what does God's harvest look like? Well, Paul, the Apostle, in Romans chapter 14, verse 17, he wrote this; he said, “The Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Now remember, Jesus taught that we should ask God for our daily bread. God is into our physical needs, but what Paul is saying here is: Beyond all of that, come on, let's get it straight – the Kingdom of God, the reign of God in our lives, is not ultimately about physical things. It's not ultimately about food or drink, even though God's heart is to provide for us and God does provide for us. The main game,” says Paul “is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Righteousness is that sense of completion and goodness that we have when we know, we know, we know that what Jesus did for us on the cross has made us whole, has given us forgiveness, has given us a clean slate and when we live out that goodness and that righteousness as God's Word calls us, we experience a peace and a joy in the Holy Spirit that words can't, can't describe. I mean, peace – who doesn‘t want that? Who doesn't want the deep, powerful, wonderful peace; the peace of knowing no matter what happens in life, I'm going to be ok? Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want joy; the free gift that God puts in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit? Now that's a harvest! Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If we were all reaping that sort of harvest in every part of our lives, the rest wouldn't matter, would it? Let me ask you: righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – is your harvest abundant in those areas? Are you full, overflowing type of harvest or do you want to come up higher in the harvest? Do you want more righteousness; do you want more peace; do you want more joy; do you want to experience God's goodness more and more? I know that I want that! In a sense, I can't have more righteousness than I already have because it's all done for me on the cross. I'm free – I've got eternal life but, we want to live that out too, don't we? We want to see our lives change to be like that; to experience the peace. So, food and drink; the physical stuff is fine but that's not really the main game. Its righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – that's life. How do we get that? How do we experience that?   Give and It Will be Given Well, we are talking today about reaping God's harvest and we saw before, that the main game in the Kingdom of God is not food and drink; it's not physical things, even though God wants to provide for us, its righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Oh, fabulous; now that is a harvest worth having! The question is, exactly how do we sow in order to reap that sort of a harvest – of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? It's a good question and it's a question that Jesus answered directly. If you have a Bible, open it at Luke chapter 6, verses 37 and 38. Let's have a read. This is what Jesus said. He said: Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure with which you give, will be the measure with which you get back. Now, often you hear the second verse; the bit about "the good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap", you hear that in terms of God's financial blessing. I've often heard it used that way. Now, do I believe God blesses a giver? Absolutely, yes I do! And we'll look at that later in this program. But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. He's talking about three things – He says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged, don't condemn and you won't be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven. Give like this and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. With whatever measure you give that's the measure with which you will receive." Judgment, condemnation and forgiveness - if we give these in the right way then we'll get back in the same way. Isn't it interesting? He's talking about some really interesting concepts here – judgement, well that's criticism and bitterness. That's when I judge you and I demand recompense because you have wronged me. I judge you because you've got some weakness and I think, “You just have to fix this, you owe me buddy.” You know, I need my pound of flesh from you – that's judgement and when I judge you it hurts and when you judge me, it hurts. Question: do you like being around judgmental people? Are they your first choice to be close friends? Well, obviously not, but we all love to judge and what we do is we focus on people's failings and ignore all their good points. That's what judgement is and Jesus said: “Do not judge and you will not be judged.” How is it, that we stop judging? Well, the only way I figured out is to let people's weaknesses and failures wash by me; go right through to the keeper. It doesn't mean that I'm not aware of the strengths and weaknesses of people, but instead of getting all tied up in knots about someone's weaknesses and getting all tied up in knots about their failings and getting all tied up in knots about things that are never going to change – because that's the way they are – we can compensate for those weaknesses. We can lift them up; we can bless them, right? Now that is hard sometimes, it is really, really hard but we've got to stop judging. You want righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? Well, righteousness and peace and joy don't happen when we are out busy doing something Jesus said, “Don't do”. Righteousness and peace and joy don't happen when we are busy doing things that ruin the peace and "judgement" ruins the peace. The second thing Jesus says, "don't do" is, “Don't condemn.” It's the next step after judgement. Condemnation is when we write them off, “that's it, I've had enough. I'm not dealing with that person any more.” And we shut ourselves off, don't we? We do that; we write them off and we condemn them. It's like a death sentence to the relationship. “Instead,” said Jesus, “forgive and you will be forgiven.” Forgiveness is giving up our right of anger and retribution and getting even and condemnations. Forgiveness is wiping the slate clean, forgiveness is making peace. Forgiveness says, “That person who wronged me has exactly the same standing with me as though they had never done what they did.” Does that sound vaguely familiar? Because that's what Jesus purchased for us on the cross with His life and He's calling us to exactly the same thing. Judgement and condemnation are enemies of the harvest of righteousness and peace and joy. They are in direct opposition and Jesus is saying, “Instead forgive, instead sow good seed; faith-seed into the harvest field,” and that is hard some days, right? It is hard to forgive, it is hard to let people's weaknesses wash by, it is hard not to criticise them, it hurts not to condemn them – do it anyway, ‘cause Jesus asks us to, ‘cause Jesus did it with His life. We are going to talk more about exactly that this next week. Let's look at it again. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Imagine a good measure of forgiveness, a good measure of peace, a good measure of joy, will be given to you, pressed down, shaken up, flowing over will be put into your lap and it depends on whether we sow seeds of judgment and condemnation because if that's what we sow, that's what we'll get. That's what Jesus is saying. You sow those things and that's what you will get back. You sow forgiveness and that's what you'll get back – seeds of righteousness and goodness and forgiveness, but it turns out that how we sow, how we give, the intention of our hearts, counts too.   God's Multiplication Factor When you think about it, sowing and reaping is about multiplication. You take one grain of wheat, you put it in the ground, you plant it, you water it, the sun shines on it and that head of wheat has fifty or a hundred grains of wheat on it. But how we give; the heart with which we give, impacts on God's multiplication factor. Again, if you have a Bible, flick it open to Second Corinthians chapter 9, verses 6 to 10. This is what the Apostle Paul writes. He says: The point is this, the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also read bountifully. Now, let me just say that this is the context – he's going around and he's talking to the church in Corinth about raising money for the church in Jerusalem because there's a famine happening in Jerusalem and they're all starving. And so Paul is going around to the different churches that he was involved in – that he either planted or that he had ministered at – raising money for Christians in Jerusalem who are starving in the famine. Which is amazing in itself, because these are the people who ultimately end up locking him up and sending him to Rome where he was killed. Anyway, that's the context he is talking about it in. He's talking about giving money. The point is this – “the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly, not under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing, in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, He scatters abroad, He gives to the poor, His righteousness endures forever. He, who supplies the seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.” Powerful stuff! Look at it! Let's just break it down for a minute. Verse 6, he says: If you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly and if you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully. In other words, if you sow one seed, you might reap a hundred, you sow fifty seeds, you might reap five thousand, you sow a hundred seeds, and you'll reap then thousand. The more we sow, the more we reap. How much should I sow, how? And he says, “I'm not going to put a guilt trip on you. Make up your mind – make up your mind with God as to how much you should sow. And I always encourage people, you know, when they are giving to God's work, when they are giving to the poor, get with the Holy Spirit, get with God and say, “God, I just feel you calling me to give to this particular work that you are doing in someone's life right now. How much do you want me to give?” Because that is between God and His child – God and the giver – God and the sower. It's God that gives, so we need to get with God and say, “God what do you want me to give?” But how? How should we sow? Look at verse 7 of chapter 9 of Second Corinthians: Each of you must give as you have made up your mind to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a cheerful giver! When someone come to you and gives you something begrudgingly, do you enjoy that? Is that great fun? No! It's awful, isn't it, when someone gives grudgingly, it's really awful? God wants us to give out of the abundance of our hearts – God wants us to give out of joy and peace and wanting to be there willingly. God's like that. Now look again at the harvest, verse 8, it says that: God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you will always have enough; so that you'll always be able to give out of your abundance. Not just money but righteousness, peace and joy and look at verse 10 – I love this bit: For he who supplies the seed to the sower and the bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. So Paul is making a link here between – I'm calling you, I'm asking you to give to the people who are starving in Jerusalem, but in doing that; in planting that Spiritual seed, the money for the starving; the money for his ministry – maybe in our lives, the money to help someone poor or someone at church or someone who's struggling – a friend or family – you sow a seed like that and you're not just giving money, you're sowing a seed that will bear a harvest of righteousness. God will take that – you're sowing one field where God calls you to sow and He, all of a sudden, brings harvest to all these other parts of our lives. And the same is true in other areas. If God says, “I am calling you to forgive this person,” and we struggle and we finally forgive and we obey God, God brings a harvest of blessing into a whole bunch of other parts of our lives. Why wouldn't He? He's God, He can do that. He loves us – He's busting to bless us. That's why He does this stuff and He calls us to sow our seed in His field, rather than feed our need, because He wants us to put Him first and He wants us to put our faith into the God who is the God of blessing. And Paul goes on in verses 11 and 12. He says: You will be enriched every way for your great generosity which will produce thanksgiving to God through us, for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God through the testing of this ministry, you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them in Jerusalem and all the others while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that He has given you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable blessing. In other words when we give it unlocks thanksgiving, it unlocks blessing, unlocks God's grace and He just pours it out of heaven because He just delights when we give in faith, the way He's calling us to give. Whether it be money or whether it be anything else that He is calling us to be obedient to in our lives. And sometimes we don't see it as sowing seed but it's exactly what it is. When we are obedient to God, we are sowing a Spiritual seed; we're putting it in the ground. God does something amazing with it, the plant grows and there's a harvest of a hundred fold. It's God's way. Can I encourage you? I just really feel the talk about forgiveness, right now - maybe you're listening and you are holding onto some un-forgiveness in your heart, I encourage you to listen to God's Word and to plant a Spiritual seed and forgive that person and God will take that and use that and give the most amazing harvest out of that. Then how do we do it? Two ways – not sparingly but bountifully and it's up to us and God. You know, when we forgive someone, we can go the whole hog and we can really forgive them but if we forgive them sparingly, well, it's not really forgiveness, is it? And the second way is cheerfully – not grumbling, not whinging, not complaining – go the whole hog, lash out, do it cheerfully and joyfully, with a smile on our faces, even though planting seed is always about sacrifice. The Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. What a harvest! What an amazing notion, that we can go and plant seed into God's Spiritual field, simply by being obedient to what He's calling us to do – even when it's not convenient, even when it's tough, even when we don't feel like it, even when the flesh says, “No, no, I don't want to do it,” just do it. Because when we plant that seed in God's field, His plan is to bless it and to grow a harvest that we can scarcely even imagine, so sow the seed in the field that God is calling you to plant it in and with everything that is in me, let me say, that the God of righteousness, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, is just busting to bless you with the most amazing harvest, because that's who He is. Go on, sow the seed!

In this Spirit-led teaching, Dr. Leelo Bush unpacks the idea of thought conflict—what psychologists call cognitive dissonance—and shows how believers can resolve it through God's truth. By contrasting worldly pressures (like secular accreditation) with biblical principles, she guides listeners to embrace God's way without hesitation. Through scripture, practical tools, and encouragement, she explains how thought conflict is actually evidence of growth and transformation.     What You'll Learn How to recognize thought conflict and why it creates discomfort The biblical perspective on double-mindedness (James 1:8) Why saying “yes” to God quickly brings peace and promotion How “bridge thoughts” help transition from old beliefs to new ones The science of neuroplasticity and how it confirms Romans 12:2 Why perseverance through thought conflict is proof of growth     Quotable Moment “Thought conflict isn't failure. It's preparation. It's the sound of growth in progress.”     Scriptures Mentioned 2 Corinthians 6:14 — Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers James 1:8 — A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways Matthew 5:37 — Let your yes be yes and your no be no Romans 12:2 — Be transformed by the renewing of your mind     Resources PCCCA Courses: https://pccca.org/courses/ Healing the Grieving Brain Guide: https://griefcoachu.com/healing/ The Comprehensive Christian Coach Handbook (Dr. Leelo Bush): Amazon link Courageous Christian Coaching Tribe (Facebook group): facebook.com/groups/courageouschristiancoachingtribe Transcript   If you've been researching coach or counselor training and certification programs, you may have noticed the thought conflict that comes up when you're trying to pick the right training. If you're a Christian, you know God's Word is clear that we should build on truth, not compromise. Second Corinthians 6:14 tells us, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers than what we allow into our hearts and minds during training. Yet at the same time, the world shouts loudly about accreditation from secular organizations, and many people feel torn. On one side, we want to follow God's truth. On the other, we're afraid we'll miss out if we don't follow what the world says is important. That back and forth can create so much thought conflict that some people even give up before they start, simply because they're not 100% sure what the right choice is. This is just one example of thought conflict, and there are many others. Resolving them is today's topic. Welcome to the Christian Coaching School podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Leelo Bush. I'm a master coach, author, curriculum creator and the number one authority on Spirit-led Christian coaching. I've trained tens of thousands worldwide since 2003, and if you are ready to uplevel your skills, find greater fulfillment, and employ the most powerful coaching available to mankind, let's go. I'm Dr. Leelo Bush, and you're listening to the Christian Coaching School podcast, where we talk about Spirit-led coaching tools for transformation, and how to live and lead with joy and purpose. And before we go further, I would love to invite you to leave a review of this podcast. When you do, you'll be entered into our new listener drawing. I'll be announcing winners right here on the podcast, and you could win a gift card just for sharing your feedback. So let's dig into this idea of thought conflict. Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance, but I prefer to put it in plain language. It's when two opposing thoughts collide inside your head and create discomfort. One part of you says this is the right way. The other part says, no, that's too risky, stay where you are. It's like being pulled in two directions at once. And doesn't that sound exactly like what James wrote about in chapter 1, verse 8? A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Here's the key, though. When we pick God's way, even if it doesn't agree with the world, it's often a test. God uses these moments to see if we are ready for promotion, or ready for the next level of responsibility in His kingdom. If we choose wrong, if we keep wavering, we often find ourselves circling around that same mountain again, repeating the same lesson until we finally learn to say yes to Him. And thought conflict makes this hard because it feels like a battle inside your mind. But friend, the truth is that battle is the very evidence that growth is happening. Jesus said in Matthew 5:37, let your yes be yes and your no be no. When God calls you to something, the best thing you can do is settle it quickly in your spirit. Yes means yes and follow through. The longer you linger in indecision, the more exhausting that thought conflict becomes. Let me give you a picture. Imagine two shores with a river in between. On one side are your current beliefs, the ones you've held for years. On the other side are your new beliefs, the ones God is calling you to embrace. To get across, you have to step into that river of discomfort. That's that conflict. It's uncomfortable. It feels risky, but it's also the only way to cross over. If you avoid the river, you stay stuck on the wrong side, looking at the life you want but never entering it. And sometimes you don't cross in one leap. That's where what I call bridge thoughts come in. If your old thought was, “I can't do this,” and the new thought is “I can do all things through Christ,” you may not fully believe that yet. So you start with a bridge thought, something like this: “With God's help, I can try.” That's believable. That's a step of faith. Over time, that grows into confidence. It's the way God builds endurance in us, step by step, faith to faith. Science actually helps us understand why thought conflict feels so uncomfortable. Our brains are wired for efficiency. The neural pathways we've been using for years—the old thoughts, the old beliefs—they're like well-paved highways. Your brain can travel them quickly without much effort. But when you introduce a new belief, it's like hacking a trail through the woods. At first, it feels awkward and clumsy, and your brain resists because it prefers the smooth, familiar road. That's why it feels so hard to let go of old beliefs and embrace new ones. It isn't just weakness on our part. It's our brain doing what it thinks is best to conserve energy. The problem is left unchecked, that instinct will keep us trapped in the same patterns year after year. This is exactly why Romans 12:2 tells us, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Notice it doesn't say one-time renewal. It's a continual renewing, over and over, creating new pathways of thought until the truth of God's Word becomes the natural highway your brain takes—or you might consider it a default setting. Think about it. Every time you practice a new thought, like “With God's help, I can do this,” you are literally building a new neural pathway. At first, it's faint and fragile. But as you keep practicing, that pathway strengthens, while the old one begins to weaken from lack of use. What once felt impossible eventually becomes second nature. So when you are experiencing thought conflict, don't interpret that discomfort as failure. It's actually proof that your brain is in the middle of rewiring. You're pulling away from old lies and teaching your mind to align with God's truth. And yes, that takes effort, but it also means you're on the right track. Let me encourage you with this: the same God who designed your brain gave you the ability to change it. Science calls it neuroplasticity. Scripture calls it renewal. Both point to the same truth—that you don't have to stay stuck in old ways of thinking. Through Christ, you have the power to be transformed, not just spiritually, but mentally, emotionally, and practically. So instead of fearing thought conflict, see it as evidence that your brain is doing the hard but holy work of change. You're tearing down the old highways and building new ones that lead directly to the destiny that God has prepared for you. And speaking of stepping into what God's called you to do, this is exactly why I am so passionate about equipping more Christians to serve with confidence in their calling. Right now is enrollment season for our Christian coaching, counseling, and specialty coaching training and certification programs. These are the very programs that give you the skills, tools, and credentials to help others create transformation, all while growing in your own walk and purpose. If you've been feeling that nudge from the Lord to step forward in ministry or coaching, this is the perfect time to say yes. You can find all the details and enroll today at pccca.org/courses. You can also find this link in our show notes. Let's get you trained, certified and ready to make an even greater Kingdom impact. Now let's bring this back. Thought conflict is not something to fear. It's part of the process of growth. Every time you set a goal, every time you move toward your calling, your old beliefs will rise up to challenge your new ones. It's perfectly normal. The enemy wants you to think it's a sign to quit, but really, it's a sign to persevere. Because once you cross the river, once you settle your yes with God, you'll look back and realize that what once felt impossible is now second nature. So my encouragement to you today is this: next time you feel that inner tug of war, pause and ask, “Lord, which way is Your way?” And when He shows you, don't hesitate. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Say yes quickly. Step forward, even if it feels uncomfortable. Because that is how God promotes you, grows you, and moves you into the life He has prepared for you. So as we close, remember thought conflict isn't failure. It's preparation. It's the sound of growth in progress. Don't run from it. Embrace it as part of the process of becoming the person God has called you to be. And before you go, remember to leave a review of this podcast to be entered into our new listener drawing. I'll be announcing winners here on the show, and you could win a gift card just for sharing your feedback. I'm Dr. Bush and you've been listening to the Christian Coaching School podcast. Carry what you learned today into the lives of those who need it most, and I will meet you in the next episode. Before you go, I want to personally invite you to join our private Facebook group, The Courageous Christian Coaching Tribe. This is where bold, Spirit-led coaches and aspiring coaches gather to grow, get equipped, and stay anchored together. Inside, you will find exclusive tips for training, supportive community, and the kind of Kingdom-minded conversation that you just can't find anywhere else. If you're feeling called to coach, or if you want to stay sharp in your calling, this is your place. Our group culture is “each one bring one.” So invite a friend to join you. The more the merrier. Just go to facebook.com/groups/courageouschristiancoachingtribe. Or just tap the link in the show notes. But don't wait, because the sooner you join, the sooner we can start pouring into you. And I will see you inside the tribe.

Grace and Truth

We come to what is a difficult subject for some, and a sore subject for others. Giving! While we realize many have been wrongly taken advantage of, even in church settings, we don't want to dismiss what God has to say about it. But rather just faithfully deliver His Word to you. As you'll see, you'll be blessed if you go along with God's will for you in this area. We're in Second Corinthians chapter nine. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1459/29

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: Proverbs 28-29; Ps 60; Romans 16 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible with your host, Hunter! On this June 4th, we're marking day 156 of our journey through the Bible together. In today's episode, Hunter invites us to open our hearts as we read from Proverbs 28 and 29, Psalm 60, and Romans 16. More than just words on a page, we're drawn to encounter the living Word—Jesus, the one who offers us rest, hope, and strength even in our weakness. Hunter shares encouragement from scripture, reminding us that God is able to make us strong, especially when we feel our weakest. He reflects on Paul's message that God's power is made perfect in our weakness—a truth that meets us in whatever we're facing today. After the scripture readings, we'll spend time in prayer, resting in God's presence, and Hunter will also share a heartfelt thanks to the community of listeners who make this podcast possible. Whether you're seeking peace, a fresh perspective, or just a reminder that you are not alone, today's episode is here to help you start your day centered in God's love and strength. So grab your Bible and join Hunter as we read, reflect, and pray together. TODAY'S DEVOTION: He is our strength—even in weakness. Do you need some good news today? Here it is: you can be strong. God's people are being offered strength through Christ today. As Paul writes at the end of Romans 16, “Now, all glory to God who is able to make you strong.” This is the message held out to the church, to Jew and Gentile alike: there is strength for us, right here, right now, for whatever we are called to walk through. This strength isn't mustered up, it isn't conjured by willpower or striving. In fact, it often arrives most clearly when we feel weakest, when we have come to the end of our own resources. Paul knew this well. In his own life, as he tells us in Second Corinthians, he pleaded with God to remove the hardship he called his “thorn in the flesh.” But God responded, “My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.” So Paul learned to boast all the more in his weakness, for it was there that God's strength was most visible. When we feel inadequate or overwhelmed, this is not the moment to despair. It's the moment to draw near and rest in the strength of Christ with us and in us. The invitation is to abide, not strive; to trust, not panic; to walk moment by moment with the One who strengthens our hearts. His power is not constrained by our conditions. In our frailty, his sufficiency shines even brighter. Whatever you are facing today, whatever you feel you can't endure on your own, Christ stands ready to strengthen you. You are not abandoned. God is present in your struggle. He wants to meet you there, in the midst of your weakness, and reveal his power, his sufficiency, his sustaining love. All he asks is that we abide and trust him enough to take the next step. That is the prayer I have for my own soul. That is the prayer I have for my family, for my wife, my daughters, my son. And that is the prayer I have for you. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord of life, you have awakened me again to the gift of this day. You go before me, walk beside me, and dwell within me. Let me walk slowly in your presence. May I resist the hurried spirit of this world and instead breathe deep of your peace. Open my eyes to beauty, my ears to your voice, and my heart to the quiet work of grace. Help me not to strive, but to abide, not to achieve, but to receive. Today, let my words carry your kindness. My actions reflect your mercy. My thoughts be anchored in your truth, that I am yours, and you are with me. Amen. And now as our Lord has taught us, we are bold to pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.   OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Still labeling yourself by past mistakes or family baggage? In Christ, “the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). You are not “just that way” anymore—God rewrote your story the moment you trusted Him. Key Reflections New Creation, New Identity – Gal 2:20 says your old self was crucified; Christ now lives in you. Let God Define You – Scripture, not your past, assigns your worth. (See Eph 1.) Capture Toxic Thoughts – Take every thought captive (2 Cor 10:5) and replace lies with truth. Progress Requires Renewal – Daily renew your mind (Rom 12:2) to walk in who you already are. Join the Conversation What negative label do you need to lock up today? How are you choosing to see yourself through God’s Word instead of past mistakes? Share your thoughts with us on Instagram using #LifeaudioNetwork—let’s encourage one another to live as new creations!

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: 1 Samuel 13; 1 Chronicles 2-3; 2 Cor 12 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to another episode of the Daily Radio Bible with your host, Hunter. Today, we continue our journey through the scriptures with Day 102. Hunter,  will be guiding us through readings from First Samuel 13, First Chronicles 2 and 3, and Second Corinthians 12. Together, we'll explore stories of leadership and challenges faced by Saul, discover the lineage detailed in First Chronicles, and delve into Paul's reflections in Corinthians about relying on God's grace amidst his own struggles. Join us as we dive into the word, seeking wisdom, encouragement, and a deeper understanding of God's presence and love in our lives. Whether you're at home, on a walk, or commuting, we're glad you're here with us on this spiritual journey. So grab your Bible and let's get into today's readings! TODAY'S DEVOTION: What do you really want? Is it comfort, security, pleasure, recognition? Maybe it's something related to your family. Maybe you want healing for a child or a spouse for yourself. Paul wanted something too. He wanted it badly. He pleaded for it. He wanted this thing that was bothering him to stop. He called it his thorn in the flesh. And the origins of this thing came from Satan himself, we're told. We're not exactly sure what it was, but the description seems to cover all the bases. We all have needs, physical and spiritual needs, and we all end up crying out to God, asking him to deliver us, to take that thing, to correct that thing, to heal that thing, whatever that thing is, and we see that Paul was no different. He pleaded and pleaded and continued to plead. Whatever it was, Paul felt that it was holding him back. This is what Paul really wanted. He saw God delivering and providing and doing miracles that were both spiritual and physical for others. Why didn't God do the same for Paul? Why doesn't he do the same thing for you, for me? Maybe it's because there's something Paul and you and I need that's more important than what we want. Paul needed to know the power of grace in his life. God tells Paul, not once, but three times, grace is what you need. My grace is perfected in your weakness. And so Paul began to treasure even his weaknesses because they became a doorway to the grace, the presence, the love of God. Maybe there's something that we need that's more important than what we want. And the prayer of my own soul to his is that I will have the wisdom, the courage, the grace to receive it. And that's the prayer that I have for my family, for my wife, and my daughters, and my son. And that's a prayer that I have for you. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: 1 Samuel 11-12; 1 Chronicles 1; 2 Cor 11 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to this episode of the Daily Radio Bible, where we're diving into day 102 of our immersive journey through the Bible with your host, Hunter. Today, we take a look behind the pages of First Samuel chapters eleven and twelve, explore the genealogies in First Chronicles chapter one, and reflect on the profound insights from Second Corinthians chapter eleven. From Saul's stirring leadership in times of crisis, to the long lineage of faith, and Paul's candid testament of strength found in weakness, each reading brings its unique perspective on our walk in faith. We'll also spend time in prayer together, seeking guidance and strength for the day ahead. So, settle in as Hunter unravels the scriptures and invites you into a deeper experience of God's word. Let's continue to open our hearts and minds to the transformative power of these ancient texts. TODAY'S DEVOTION: It's an upside-down world. Paul's being lowered in a basket through a hole in the wall outside of the city. As he's being lowered, God is lifting him up. We've been invited into an upside-down world. It's a world where those who are lowered down are being lifted up, while those who lift themselves up are being lowered from within. Paul very briefly talks about his elevated days. He reminds his readers just how elevated he was, that he was like those super apostles. But Paul wants them to know that this elevated status did nothing for his soul. In fact, he was descending from within, even while on the outside, his status was soaring high. Paul tells us that it was while he was being lowered, descending on the outside, accused and scorned and whipped and stoned and shipwrecked, hungry alone on the outside, even as he was being lowered in a basket, it was in these moments that God showed himself most present in his life. It was there that Paul knew God's strength the most. He experienced God's love most intimately when he was being lowered in that basket outside the city. It was a defining moment for Paul. God does his deepest work in our lowering, and anyone, super apostle or not, who tells us otherwise, might want to be avoided. See God in the lowering. Experience the fellowship of his suffering there. He is faithful to bring about his good purposes in all of our circumstances. And the prayer of my own heart today is that I will participate with him in faith, even in the lowering. That's the prayer that I have for my own soul. That's the prayer that I have for my family, for my wife and my daughters and my son. And that's the prayer that I have for you. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: 1 Samuel 3-5; Psalm 77; 2 Cor 8 Click HERE to give! Get Free App Here! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on 'The Daily Radio Bible' for a daily 20-minute spiritual journey. Engage with scripture readings, heartfelt devotionals, and collective prayers that draw you into the heart of God's love. Embark on this year-long voyage through the Bible, and let each day's passage uplift and inspire you. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to another enriching episode of the Daily Radio Bible. I'm Hunter, your brother and Bible reading coach, here to accompany you on day 98 of our transformative journey through the Bible. Today, we're diving back into the historical and spiritual depths of scripture, focusing on pivotal stories and teachings that have shaped faith throughout time. We'll explore the call of young Samuel and the divine messages he received, the fierce battles involving the Philistines and the fate of the Ark of the Covenant, and we'll reflect on the profound words from Psalm 77. We'll also uncover lessons on generosity from the early churches in Second Corinthians chapter eight. Let's get ready to immerse ourselves in these timeless lessons and gain insights that can guide our lives today. Thank you for joining me on this journey of discovery and spiritual growth. Let's dive in. TODAY'S DEVOTION: You are rich. Did you know it? Paul says that those riches were achieved because someone else became poor, and that someone is Christ. Christ became poor so that by his poverty, he could make you rich. Jesus took our poverty upon himself in order to bestow on us his riches of sonship. That makes you wealthy. That makes you blessed. That makes you his. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because you are united with Christ. These are heavenly riches, but these spiritual riches work their way into our physical lives. They free us up to live generous lives here right now. And to the extent that we truly understand this will result in generous hearted living. Paul wants us to follow through with the generosity that was born in our hearts. He doesn't want us to stall out. He wants us to finish whatever it is that God inspired you to do. Maybe it's offering a meal to someone who's sick, spending time with someone who really needs it, giving financially to someone in need, helping to advance the cause of the gospel, as was the case of this particular passage. Whatever it is, don't stall out. Finish what God has inspired you to do. Live out your generous life because you are rich, and your spiritual wealth comes from him. May this inspire you to live out the riches that are yours in Christ. Don't stall out on those things that God inspires you to do, but rather live them out in the joy and the strength and in the presence of Christ who dwells in you. That's a prayer that I have for my own soul, and that's a prayer that I have for my family, for my wife, my daughters, my son. And that's a prayer that I have for you. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

(Isaiah 46:11) Scripture is full of prophecy and sincere Bible students must not neglect it. Today, we uncover five definite blessings connected to the study of prophecy. Our goal is to learn more than end time events; it is to know more deeply the eternal God. (0968250318)  ----more----  The World's Fascination with End Times Hollywood has made a small fortune imagining what the end of the world is going to look like. In fact, it seems every week. Something new in printed form or media comes out about the end of time, and yet I think it may be smarter if we ask the one who started time, how time is going to end. That is the eternal God, the creator of all things. What does God say? What does the Bible say? About the end of time, about last things.  Biblical Prophecy: An Overview As you read and study the word of God, you're gonna be shocked, I think, to see how much of the Bible is prophetic - I mean by that telling us about things to come. Sixteen Old Testament books are considered to be prophetic books. You have what is commonly referred to as the major prophets and the minor prophets. But prophecy's not restricted just to those books. In fact, prophetic elements are found all through the word of God. In the Psalms there are prophetic psalms. Moses was referred to as a prophet, so that's hearkening all the way back to the beginning of the Old Testament. When you come to the New Testament, about 1/20th of the New Testament is prophetic. Now, obviously the revelation of Jesus Christ the apocalypse the final revelation. That's prophetic, but there are prophetic elements in the teachings of Christ and the writings of Paul. You can't neglect scripture. When it comes to prophecy. I heard someone recently say, what gives us the right I. To pick and choose which verses we wanna believe. What gives us the right to pick and cho choose which verses we want to study and apply and live. No, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. So what is the profit of us studying what the Bible says about the end of time? Lemme give you several profitable things that it'll do in your life.  The Sovereignty of God in Prophecy First of all, if you study what the Bible says about prophecy. It's going to reveal something to you about the sovereignty of our God, that He truly is on the throne. He has a plan. He's all wise and all powerful. He knows exactly what he's doing. Listen to the words of Isaiah 46, verse 11. The Bible says, "Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executed with my counsel from a far country. Yay, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it. I will also do it." Now, the context of this text is in a prophecy to the nation of Israel. But listen to the revelation of God himself, the one who's giving the prophecy, he said, I've spoken it. I'm gonna bring it to pass. I've purposed it. I'm going to do it. When you begin to study prophecy, one of the things immediately that is revealed is that our God is not arbitrary. He has an eternal purpose in the ages. This is not some emergency plan with our God. From the very beginning, before time started, God knew exactly how it was going to end. So his purpose is being fulfilled. That ought to help you not just to know events, but to know the God of the Bible in a greater way. Closely akin to that, let me give you a second profitable thing.  Faith in Bible Prophecy In the book of Acts chapter number 20, we're told this beginning in verse number 26, the Apostle Paul says, "Wherefore, I take you to record this day that I'm pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." One of the things that happens when you start seeing what the Bible says about prophecy is it increases your faith in the word of God itself. And the Apostle Paul said, Acts 20:27, "I've not shunned to declare all the counsel of God." May I say to you, we should not shun all the counsel of God. Study all of the Bible. Seek to understand all of scripture. Teach and preach all of the Bible. Why? Because God has a message for us in every part of scripture that includes prophecy, faith cometh by hearing by the word of God. Your faith is gonna grow as you see God fulfilling what he foretold and everything. God foretells, he fulfills. When you see all the prophecies that have been fulfilled to this point, do you know what it says? It says that the same God who never lies, who always tells the truth and always keeps his word, is going to fulfill the rest of the prophecies. So it reveals the sovereignty of God. It increases our faith in the word of God. How about this? This is a very practical thing.  Hope in Bible Prophecy When you begin studying what the Bible says about prophecy, it's gonna give you some hope and comfort. I'm talking about living through difficult days. It's gonna help you. Second Corinthians 4:17 says, "For our light affliction, which is, but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." What does prophecy do? Prophecy makes you get your eyes off of time and on eternity. It makes you go to the end and work your way backward to find out what truly matters in light of eternity. It brings both a challenge and a comfort at the same time. He repeats that emphasis when he writes to the church at Thessalonika. First Thessalonians chapter four, listen to the words beginning in verse thirteen. He says, "But I would not have you to be ignorant brethren concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this, we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ, shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." Did you notice the first verse we read in 1st Thessalonians 4:13 has the word "hope" in it, and the last verse we read, verse 18 has the word "comfort" in it? Studying prophecy is going to give you hope and comfort. It's not just about knowing the sequence of events. Or what to look for next. In fact, we're not looking for an ending. We're looking for a new beginning. I'm not looking for the world to end. I'm looking for Jesus to come. I'm looking for everything God has prepared for us. That gives me hope and comfort living in difficult days.  The Purifying Affect of Prophecy And then I would say this studying prophecy, what the Bible says about the end of time will purify the believer. Yeah, one John chapter three, beginning in verse number two says this, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him, purify himself even as he is pure." The hope is not just for us to feel better. The hope is for us to live today. In light of eternity, it's gonna help you make today count. If you realize today could be your last day on earth, today could be the greatest day you ever live, which is the day Jesus Christ face to face. Let me give you one more study.  Loving Jesus More Through Prophecy What the Bible says about last things is gonna help you love Jesus more. Listen to Revelation 19, verse 10, "And I fell at his feet to worship him and he said unto me, See thou to it. Not I'm thy fellow servant and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." People who want to talk about prophecy in the end time, but they don't wanna talk more about loving Christ or winning souls or living holy, have missed the spirit of prophecy. The spirit of prophecy is not about having a head full of knowledge. It's about having a heart alive and on fire with passionate love for Christ and souls around you. It will make a difference in the way you live this day. So I'm excited about our studies. We begin to talk about what the Bible says about last things, but I wanna challenge you. Don't just study it, live it. Don't just consider considerate, apply the truth to your life today. Let what the Bible says affect what you give your energy and attention to this very day. Outro and Resources Repeating what other people have said about the Bible is not enough. We must know the biblical reason behind what we believe. We hope you will visit us at etj.bible to access our Library of Bible teaching resources, including book-by-book studies of Scripture. You'll also find studies to watch, listen to, or read. We are so grateful for those who pray for us, who share the biblical content, and for those who invest to help us advance this ministry worldwide. Again, thank you for listening and we hope you'll join us next time on Enjoying the Journey.