Deeper

At the start of this Advent season, we take some time to see what areas we can "Make Room" for various people and practices in our lives. Today, Dan and Austin talk about the immediate importance of making room for Jesus in our hearts, regardless of what stage our lives are in.

In this double-episode, Dan and Austin go through the historical context of Boaz, the landowner that is cited as an example for us to aspire to. How far beyond what the law requires are we supposed to go to care for people in need? Pretty darn far, it turns out.

It's hard for us to give up our plans. What does it mean to have healthy, God-guided planning?

Faith without works is dead, which means that we really need to be involved with living our our biblical commands to love our neighbor and care for those in need around us. But what does that actually mean? Pastor Dan and Austin address all this and more.

With some of our first listener submitted questions today, Dan and Austin dive right in to examine how we subconsiously play favorites, how we can avoid that and how we can accurately judge- when do we use worldly standards? 

Our human anger will never be able to bring about God's Justice. That doesn't mean there's nothing that should make us angry, but it DOES mean that we have to be mindful how we let it motivate and guide us. Dan and Austin also spend some time today examining the relationship between our callings to care both about personal holiness and social responsibility. 

In this incredibly timely episode, Pastor Dan and Austin explore what to do when people's speech and actions fall short of the faith they profess. What is our responsibility when someone who shares our faith acts differently than they should? How do we make sure we are receptive to correction ourselves, and what does it mean to go through trials with hope? 

In our first ever video recording of the Deeper Podcast, Austin and Dan talk about the future of the podcast and practical ways to live out our FRIEND acronym.

We've officially wrapped up our series on being Clothed. How do we find encouragement with the vision of the future given to us in Revelation while still being in the thick of struggles

Love is far more than just the emotion we think of so often, it's a call to action. Though the ways we "do" love can different, the calling of "who" and "what" are very clear. Dan and Austin look at our calling to love, and specifically what it can mean to Love with our finances. 

We are back from summer vacation, and ready to dive back into things! Today, Dan and Austin talk about the ways we may find ourselves in the role of the Crowds that surround Jesus, instead of being the "main characters" that we often think of ourselves as. They also discuss the similarities of this story with the stories both preceding and following in Mark 5. 

Dan is on vacation this week, so we will be hearing instead from Skye Jethani- an author, pastor and commentator on themes we've discussed here in the Deeper podcast. Skye breaks down ways that we as Christians are tempted to take worldly tools to accomplish God's goals, how that's not biblical, and what our calling is instead.  We will be back with new episodes of Deeper on August 6th! Enjoy your...

As we roll into our summer series, Dan and Austin talk about what we do about inserting ourselves into God's plan- When do we act? When do we trust and obey? And how do we know if we've put our plans in the position God's plans should be? 

Our view on diversity is broken. The "Babel" mindset that we have as sinful humans is so persistent, but we are called to live with a more "Pentecost" perspective. Dan and Austin discuss diversity and how being made in the Image of God changes our attitude towards different people. 

The word "Blessing" is a fairly common one we hear in church circles. But what does it actually mean to be a blessing, or to receive one? 

Our society is one that is increasingly more individualistic and isolated, and lonliness is rampant in our society. How are we as believers supposed to combat that trend? 

We have hope that there will be a total renewal of our decaying world. But what does renewal look like, and how can we cling to that hope before it comes to be? 

While our modern society imagines the dead coming back to life as a very brutal, violent affair - which we see throughout our media in the Zombie context - our faith views the resurrection of the body to be entirely different. Our new lives are supposed to be life-giving, rather than life-taking. What does that mean for our advocacy or the people we dislike? 

We all are made to serve our community. From our local church to all of those made in the image of God, we've got a calling to be active and engaged in acts of service. But what if we aren't gifted to serve in the areas that we see immediately around us? Is there any difference between serving financally or with our time? And when do we say "no" to service? 

Because of Easter, and Christ's ressurection specifically, we are living in a new reality that totally upends the old ways of interacting with God, our neighbors and even ourselves. How do we live wisely in this new reality? 

As leaders, we are supposed to emulate Jesus' form of leadership- one that embraces peace, gentle subversion and service as a model instead of the Alexandrian domineering, powerful, iron-fist model. However, the latter seems to be the only type of leadership we see around us, especially in the public sphere. How do we navigate our call to humility when that's not the way society does things? 

While we work to prepare our spiritual gardens, we often fall into the pitfall of assuming things have to be fully done ourselves- or, on the other side, that we don't have to do anything and our spiritual gardens will grow just using "Fairy Dust". How do we build a helathy dependence on the Lord while also putting in a healthy amount of effort on our own? 

God set some pretty clear boundaries for us in scripture. What do we do when we can't agree on what those are?

After closing up our series on prayer, we move into the season of Lent. Fasting is a common practice during this time, but not one we are often familiar with. How do we fast well? How do we remain accountable without "going public"? And how do we know what we should fast from? 

We've talked a lot about WHY we pray. But when the rubber meets the road, practicing prayer is really important. How does practicing prayer resemble working out at a gym? And what can we do to de-center ourselves in prayer? Dan and Austin discuss this and more in this week's podcast.