Excel Still More

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today we are comparing the Pharisees (along with some Priests and Rich folks) to true Disciples (even an outside looking in Gentile woman). The Gospels, and Jesus Himself, demand that we come face to face with the difference and choose who we want to be.  In today's episode we look at several stories I'll note and r...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Mark's Gospel is powerfully and precisely written. It packs a ton of information into shorter spaces than the other Gospels.  (A great Gospel for ADHD sufferers!). Mark also uses the power of COMPARISON to make his points super strong. In Mark 2, he compares the Pharisees with Jesus by showing the questions they asked Hi...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Let's go back - way, way back - to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. It is so fascinatingly placed! Before it is the Garden of Eden (God comes down to establish a covenant), then Sin, then The Flood. Right after it is God coming down to make a covenant with Abraham that would effect us all. That's a 500 year jump be...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! So how have the last five years treated you? It has been unpredictable and wild for most of us. You might not have thought you had five years left - five years ago. But you did. And now you are here. How did it go? Did you have a vision, a plan, a path? Has it led you to wonderful and encouraging new places, new knowledge, ne...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! We all want faith without limits. We want faith that isn't affected by fear and doubt. We want to believe the best is possible and the promises of God are inevitable. We want to know Him and be known by Him and for that to control everything else.  But how do we get it? One of the problems is believing we can get it. You...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I referenced Pat Geslinger's book, The Juggling Act . Here's a link. It's terrific.  If someone told you they were feeling distant from Christ, what would you tell them to do? That's not a particularly tough questions is it? We would tell them they need quality time with Jesus. They need to set aside time...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Help me do a solid for a friend and check out my friend Joseph's podcast: Under Review Podcast (website) Under Review Apple (for iPhone users) Relationships live out the story of God's grace in the world around you. The way we treat others, any others, and all others, ought to be a direct extension of the way God ha...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Up top, let me give you a link to Jacob Hudgin's book " The School of Christ " This is it. This is the most important thing I have to share with you - maybe all year. Many of us have to reprogram our brains when it comes to the comparison of God's Grace with anything of myself: faith or works. His goodness...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Let's keep digging in on this flashpoint idea. Firstly, let me share with you a little more about how emotional experiences of all types and spiritual experiences collide. There is a powerful sense in which the two, in the heart of a believer, are not separable. Finding God in all emotion and reaction and change - that i...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! If you would like to read Stephen Arterburn's book "Flash Points" you can find it here . Note:  As a caveat, I am not aware of his doctrinal views nor whole sale support all of the content. But it's got some powerful and encouraging ideas. I hope to address different flash points in upcoming episodes. Thin...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today it is my pleasure to read Psalm 107 for you in the New Living Translation. (I'll explain why). Four times the text says "LORD, help!" - These represent four situations in life where people get discouraged. So often our hope and faith flourish in blessings, but when trials come, we falter. This can often p...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Happy New Year! And welcome to season 5 of the ESM podcast! Have you ever piloted an aircraft? It's quite a thrill. But properly using the instruments is crucial to success. By success I mean: landing the plane instead of crashing it! One of those instruments is called an Attitude Indicator. It shows you where you are re...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! The topic of God's Grace is beautifully complicated. It is simply too great to fully understand while we live here in the limitations of the flesh. But giving up on understanding grace can lead to big mistakes. Maybe we believe God covers everything not matter how we live. That's not right. But neither is the other...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I hope you are excited for a productive and incredible 2023. This starts with a proper planning. And great planning includes evaluating the people in your life. Today's episode takes us back to one of our earliest episodes: "Your Inner Circle." We need to evaluate the people who are healthy to have close to you...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! "How do we raise faithful kids?" I have asked that many times and been asked that many times. We often answer with environmental factors. We need to raise them in a Christian home. We need to surround them with Christian people. We need to give them a daily serving of the Word of God. All of these are great. They ar...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! I really hope you enjoy this investigation of the Gestalt Effect. The triangle image for the episode is a practical example of how the eye fills in the details. I first came upon this while reading an excellent book on modesty. I'll share a link for that book: Secret Keeper by Dannah Gresh The word Gestalt simply means s...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Israel was baptized through the Red Sea. They sang a song of victory and rejoiced in the grace of God. But... most of those celebrating that day did not make it home to the promised land. Why not? Pride. They began to feel entitled, and that caused them to turn attention from God to themselves.  Part of our episode today will...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Crazy Busy Book Let's turn our attention back to planning through the end of the year and preparing for an amazing 2023. Part of this is spacing out your goals to avoid being "crazy busy." That is not a compliment. Crazy busy people make unneeded sacrifices and end up not enjoying the journey nor the destinatio...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! "Denominational" Baptism. "Church of Christ" Baptism. We come up with lots of adjectives before the word baptism that are not found in Scripture. This often leads us away from the simple truth of the Gospel. It leads to labeling, party system, and sectarianism.  The temptation to implement our judgments on...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! We are getting down to the last couple of months in 2022.  This is an outstanding time to evaluate the year and start working on plans for 2023. I don't like waking up in January jumping in to something new. I want to work on it, plan it, and get it set up now... so the New Year starts with excitement and structure.  A f...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! "Where's the beef? - Do you remember the old Wendy's commercials from the '80's? An older lady sees a tiny patty and asks where is the rest of it!? Sometimes people say that about grace, when referencing the preaching, teaching and Christianity they grew up with. But maybe that isn't a fair judgm...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Today is wedding day for some great friends of ours: Beau Barnes and Hannah Holt. I have been asked to officiate and I'm up here at the building practicing! Right in the middle I thought - Hey I want to share this with all my friends! So, here's my wedding sermon.  First and foremost, we need much more optimism! God...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Perfect Prayer Plan I have attached a file so that you can print out the perfect prayer plan. This has been a fruitful staple in my life for a decade now. I commend it to you. All of it comes straight from the life of Jesus. Remember, #5,#6 and #7 are crucial for your own life - but also the exact things you should be praying...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! University Oaks church of Christ (October 16-19, 2022) Sunday 9:30 / 10:30 / 5:00pm.  Mon-Wed 7:30pm. Please take a moment to watch the YouTube video of the recording of "In Need" In need of grace, in need of love In need of mercy raining down from high above In need of strength, in need of peace In need of things t...

Reach Out: Please include your email and I will get back to you. Thanks! Ooh, I'm excited to talk about this today! Simon Sinek has been a help to me in many ways over the years. His work on "Always Speak Last" and "Start With Why" continue to affect the way I think and live. One of his newer books, "The Infinite Game" shares ideas that have become immediately re...