Engage God Daily

We've arrived at the You Are Here dot on the Big Story timeline — and it turns out, we're still standing on it. This week's journey through Acts 1–2 wasn't just history. It's our story. In this wrap-up episode, Lisa invites us to reflect on the week, celebrate the God who keeps every promise, and consider how the four rhythms of the early church can take root in our own lives today. The same Spiri...

Three thousand people just said yes to Jesus. Now what? Luke gives us a six-verse snapshot of the early church that is one of the most beautiful pictures of community in all of Scripture. In this episode, Lisa explores Acts 2:42–47 and the four practices that shaped the first believers: teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. This wasn't a burst of enthusiasm — it was devoted, sus...

The crowd at Pentecost is confused and divided — some are amazed, some think the disciples are drunk. Then Peter stands up and does something remarkable: he weaves together Joel, the Psalms, and the life of Jesus to show that everything the Scriptures promised has just been fulfilled. In this episode, Lisa walks through Peter's sermon in Acts 2:14–41 — one of the most important theological declara...

Everything changes at Pentecost. The sound of rushing wind, tongues of fire, and suddenly the disciples are speaking in the native languages of people from every nation gathered in Jerusalem. In this episode, Lisa unpacks Acts 2:1–15 and traces the deep biblical echoes behind every detail — wind, fire, and language — showing how Pentecost begins to reverse what went wrong at the Tower of Babel. Go...

After the resurrection, the disciples were riding an emotional high — Jesus was alive. Then he told them he was leaving. Before he ascended, he gave them something to hold onto: a mission and a promise. In this episode, Lisa walks us through Acts 1:1–11, the moment Jesus redirected his disciples from asking when the kingdom would arrive to what they were called to do in the meantime. The ascension...

We close out the week by stepping back and letting the whole conversation with Nicodemus settle in. From a late-night encounter with a confused religious expert to one of the most sweeping declarations of love in all of Scripture, John 3 tells one coherent story — and it's been the story God has been telling since Genesis. This wrap-up episode gathers the week's threads, invites reflection, and po...

The conversation with Nicodemus ends with a choice. Jesus shifts from the language of birth and belief to light and darkness — language that echoes the very first act of creation. The light has come into the world, and everyone must decide what to do with it. This final passage clarifies something important: staying in the dark isn't passive. It's a decision. And the great irony is that the thing...

Jesus stops talking about what the kingdom requires and starts talking about how God makes it possible. He reaches back to a story Nicodemus knew well — a bronze snake lifted up on a pole in the wilderness — and tells him the same pattern is now unfolding on a far larger scale. Then he gets to the reason behind all of it. This episode sits with one of the most quoted verses in the Bible and tries...

Jesus reaches for a metaphor from outside the window — the wind — to describe the Spirit's work. You can't see it, control it, or predict it, but you can't miss its effects. Nicodemus pushes back. And Jesus's response is pointed: You are Israel's teacher, and you don't understand these things? The rebuke cuts deep because the problem wasn't intellectual. The Old Testament prophets Nicodemus had de...

A respected religious expert comes to Jesus with questions — and walks away with his entire framework upended. In this opening episode of the week, we listen in on Nicodemus's nighttime visit to Jesus and hear something that challenges anyone who has ever tried to earn their way into God's favor: the kingdom of God can't be entered by achievement, knowledge, or religious pedigree. It requires a co...

Scripture: John 11–12 (recap) | John 12:1–8 (Mary's anointing) Runtime: 8 min It's Friday — time to pull the week together and ask what we're going to do with it. We've walked with Martha and Mary through the worst days of their lives. We've watched Jesus weep, and then we've watched him speak death into retreat. This episode recaps the week's arc and then zooms out to what happens next: a dinner...

Scripture: John 11:38–44 Runtime: 8 min Jesus arrives at the tomb still full of emotion. He doesn't compose himself before he acts — he acts from the middle of real anguish. And then he speaks four words that death cannot refuse: "Lazarus, come out." This episode walks through the miracle itself — the prayer, the stone, the grave clothes — and traces what it means in the larger arc of the Big Stor...

Scripture: John 11:28–37 Runtime: 9 min Mary stayed home. When Jesus didn't come, she went quiet — and that silence was its own kind of statement. When she finally comes to Jesus, she falls at his feet and says the same words as Martha, but everything around them is different. No follow-up. No hint. Just the wound, laid bare. And then something shifts in Jesus. This episode looks at what grief doe...

Scripture: John 11:17–27 Runtime: 8 min Martha doesn't wait at home. The moment she hears Jesus is coming, she goes to meet him on the road — and the first thing out of her mouth is both a confession of faith and an accusation of absence. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." This episode sits with Martha's complicated, honest, deeply human response to Jesus — and what Jesu...

Scripture: John 11:1–16 Runtime: 11 min There's a particular kind of pain that comes not from a stranger's silence, but from someone you trusted — someone who knew and didn't come. That's exactly where Martha and Mary find themselves when Jesus stays put after hearing that their brother Lazarus is dying. This episode opens the week in John 11 with a question that still hits hard: What do you do wh...

Scripture: Matthew 5:17–20; Luke 4:14–30 (Week in Review) Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes It's Friday — time to step back and take in the full arc of what this week revealed. We started on a mountainside where Jesus told His followers He came not to throw out the story but to fulfill it. We moved to a synagogue in Nazareth where He read Isaiah's words of jubilee and...

Scripture: Luke 4:24–30 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes Jesus could have performed a miracle. He could have healed someone in the synagogue, silenced the doubters, won Nazareth over. Instead, He told two stories from Israel's own history — and the room went from amazed to furious. Why? Because the stories He told made the same uncomfortable point: God's grace has ne...

Scripture: Luke 4:20–23 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 7 minutes The scroll is rolled up. Every eye in the synagogue is fixed on Him. And Jesus says one sentence: "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Not someday. Not when the Messiah eventually arrives. Today. In this episode, Lisa slows down to sit with one of the most extraordinary sentences in the Bible —...

Scripture: Luke 4:14–19 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 8 minutes Jesus walks into a synagogue in His hometown. The scroll handed to Him is Isaiah. And the passage He reads — Isaiah 61 — wasn't just a scripture. It was the passage. The one that carried centuries of exile, longing, and hope. Every phrase was loaded: good news for the poor, freedom for captives, sight for the b...

Scripture: Matthew 5:17–20 Series: Big Story, Part 3 — Week 4 Estimated Runtime: 11 minutes When Jesus says He didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, most of us nod along without feeling the weight of what that actually means. But to the people standing on that mountainside, it was a staggering claim — because the law wasn't just a rulebook. It was a story. A centuries-long narrative ab...

Scripture: Mark 5 (Week Recap) Est. Runtime: ~8 minutes This is the wrap-up episode for one of the most layered weeks in the Big Story series. In Day 5, Lisa brings the full arc of Mark 5 into focus — from Jairus's desperate fall at Jesus's feet to the hemorrhaging woman's hidden reach to the quiet Aramaic words spoken in a dead girl's room — and draws out the bigger picture these stories are pain...

Scripture: Mark 5:35–43 Est. Runtime: ~11 minutes While Jesus was still speaking to the woman he had just restored, the message came: Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore? Day 4 brings us to the conclusion of Jairus's story — and to the most dramatic moment of the week. A little girl is gone. The mourners are already wailing. And Jesus walks into the house, takes her by the hand,...

Scripture: Mark 5:30–34 Est. Runtime: ~7 minutes The physical healing happened in one verse. What follows takes five more. That's not an accident. Mark is a spare, fast-moving writer — and when he slows down and gives five verses to what happens after the healing, he's telling us where the real weight of the story falls. Because Jesus didn't have to stop. The woman was already healed. Jairus's dau...

Scripture: Mark 5:25–29 Est. Runtime: ~9 minutes She had no name. No status. No advocate. And she'd been suffering for twelve years. In Day 2, Lisa introduces the second character in Mark's carefully interwoven story — a woman who had spent more than a decade financially ruined, physically deteriorating, and cut off from the place where God's presence was thought to dwell. Her condition of chronic...

Scripture: Mark 5:21–24 Est. Runtime: ~9 minutes Jairus had everything to lose. As a synagogue leader, he had reputation, authority, and social standing in his community — and by this point in Mark's gospel, the religious establishment was already suspicious of Jesus. But his daughter was dying. And desperation has a way of stripping everything else away. In Day 1 of this week's study, Lisa walks...