Better News Podcast

There are many misconceptions and false doctrines regarding prayer. The Prosperity Gospel teaches that if we have enough faith and ask God for material wealth and blessings, we're guaranteed to receive them. Then there are those that believe that prayer has little, to no effect, in this world and things will just happen as they're supposed to happen. As Pastor Ricky continues his in-depth study of...

Does prayer really work? It's a question many Christians don't want to ask. At its core, we want to say that we believe it does, but our lives often paint a different picture. Most of us spend very little time in prayer and it's often only a last resort. There are many different reasons but as Pastor Ricky suggests in today's message, our limited use of prayer most likely reflects a lack of faith...

Every loving parent knows that feeling of having their child come to them scared or in need. All we want to do is help them feel safe and provided for. Most of us would quickly drop whatever we're doing and take the time to comfort them and address their needs. As Pastor Ricky explains in today's message, our parental love reflects the way God views His children. He loves us with a deep sacrificia...

The gods that men create and imagine typically have power and authority in a form that men wish they possessed. These fake gods often sit on a pedestal, above their worshippers. They rarely, if ever, come down to the level of their subjects. Yet, as Pastor Ricky points out, the God of Israel loves to be amongst His subjects. He loves us so much that He endured the agonizing pain of the Cross, equa...

We were designed to have an intimate connection with God. Adam and Eve walked with Him in the Garden and talked to Him every day. The consequence of their sin was a break in that relationship. All of mankind displays an innate longing to return to that intimacy. As Pastor Ricky explains in today's message, it's exhibited in various forms but our quest to understand our world and the universe aroun...

One word that aptly describes our culture today would be, distracted. How many of us have spent more time watching shows or browsing social network feeds than we did reading the Bible and praying this week? As Pastor Ricky warns in today's message, these distractions while not bad in and of themselves, are designed to be addicting. If our time with God is taking second place to the diversions of l...

The family tree from David to Jesus is not a list of heroes. It is a list of liars, failures, outcasts, and broken people. The kind of names you would rather not find on the first page of the New Testament. Yet there they are because this is not the House of David, it is the House of God, and God has never built His family the way anyone expected. Not by blood, not by status, not by merit, only by...

David is on the throne, and he turns his attention to building God a house. It seems like a good idea. God's response is unexpected. He doesn't want David to build him a house; he wants to build David one. 2 Samuel 7 is one of the most sweeping promises in all of scripture, a covenant that reaches far beyond David and far beyond anything a dynasty built on human strength could sustain. What God pr...

Saul went looking for a word from God and refused the only word God had already given him. So many times we do the same thing. We are desperate for guidance, for comfort, for something solid to hold on to, and we reach for everything except the one place where it can actually be found. 1 Samuel gives us two men in crisis, making 2 completely different choices. One calls on the dead, the other stre...

Saul is facing the greatest military threat of his reign, and for the first time, he has no one to call. Samuel is dead. David is gone. The Lord has gone silent. So Saul disguises himself, slips out in the dead of night, and seeks out a medium to summon the dead. It is one of the most desperate moments in all of 1 Samuel. Most of us have never consulted a medium, but the impulse underneath it, the...

Foolishness has a way of multiplying. Nabal spoke without wisdom, David reacted without restraint, and now 400 armed men are marching toward a disaster that didn't have to happen. But a different voice steps into the middle of it, composed, clear, and grounded in the reality of God in a way that neither Nabal nor David had managed to be. The contrast between these two voices runs straight through...

Nabal is wealthy, self-important, and surrounded by people who depend on him. When David's men arrived with a respectful request, he dismisses them with contempt. In response, David straps on his sword, and 400 armed men begin marching toward a household that has no idea what it has just started. Most of us have said something we shouldn't have and felt the consequences close in before we could ta...

Saul's jealousy had already cost him his relationship with David, his own son Jonathan, and the trust of a nation, but it doesn't stop there. 1 Samuel shows us jealousy in its final stages—irrational, isolating, and utterly consuming. Then it gives us Jonathan, a man who had every reason to be jealous, who stood to lose the throne itself and whose contentment, in the face of all of it, is one of t...

Saul has just won, David slew Goliath, the Philistines have scattered, and Israel is celebrating, but as the army marches home, the women pour into the streets with a song that puts David's name above Saul's, and something breaks. Most of us have been there, not on the battlefield but in a boardroom, a family gathering, a holiday dinner, a social media scroll. Jealousy doesn't need much to take ro...

The good news of 1 Samuel 17 is not that you can be David, it is that you don't have to be. Jesus is the true and better David, the one who faced the world, the flesh, and the devil single-handedly and triumphed. But this passage doesn't stop there; it turns around and calls each of us to something. Not to be the hero of the story but to follow the one who is, with courage, with a plan, and with e...

David and Goliath is one of the most familiar stories in all of scripture and one of the most misapplied. The giant is not your difficult boss, your failing marriage, or the championship game standing between you and glory. Goliath represents something far bigger and far more personal than any of that. This passage is about the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the war every human being is alre...

Jonathan and his armor bearer stand at the bottom of the ravine, facing a Philistine garrison at the top. The enemy has invited them up as sport, as entertainment, expecting an easy victory. Jonathan's response is not what anyone expected. Where Saul saw nothing but an impossible situation, Jonathan sees something else entirely. What happens next is one of the most stunning reversals in all of 1 S...

Saul has been called a fool not because he did something obviously reckless but because, in a moment of fear and pressure, he acted as though God were not there. It is the diagnosis the Psalms give to the fool: in his heart there is no God. It is also, if we are honest, a condition closer to home than we would like to admit. The good news is that 1 Samuel doesn't leave us with Saul. It gives us Jo...

Saul is surrounded. A shrinking army behind him, a massive Philistine force bearing down, and one clear instruction from Samuel: wait. But he doesn't wait. What follows is one of the most revealing moments in 1 Samuel, where a king’s anxiety strips away everything and exposes what is actually governing his heart. Most of us know what that pressure feels like. Where we look in those moments determi...

Israel keeps looking for a third option—God’s way, mostly, with a little room left over for their own—but Samuel won’t give it to them. There are only two paths, and the difference between them is not a matter of degree but of direction. The good news is that God doesn’t deliver this message as a verdict, but as an invitation. His ways are not a burden imposed on His people; they are the path He h...

Samuel stands before Israel at a defining moment as they prepare to install a king, and he delivers one final charge. He walks them through their history—failure by failure, rescue by rescue—revealing the pattern they keep repeating. We do the same thing: tweaking the surface, rearranging the furniture, hoping something will change without ever touching what’s underneath. Samuel’s question goes st...

Saul was crowned king of Israel and went home—no charge to the nation, no march to the palace, no address to the people, just home. The avoidance is quiet but consistent, and it is costing him everything: his family is standing and the trust of a nation that needs a king. Then the Spirit of God interrupts the pattern. What follows is a reminder that it is never too late to step into what God has c...

Most of us would never say we are running from God, but Saul, chosen by God, confirmed with miracles, and given a clear charge, still hid when it was time to be crowned. When the nation assembled to make him king, they couldn’t even find him; he was hiding in the luggage. Running from God rarely looks like running. It looks like going quiet, staying busy, and hoping the moment passes. This message...

The Philistines captured the ark of God and placed it beside their idol as a trophy of war, certain they had absorbed the God of Israel into their world. But in the morning, their idol was found facedown on the ground. What unfolds from there is one of the most clarifying portraits of God in all of 1 Samuel—a God who cannot be contained, does not lose, and whose people ultimately have nothing to f...

Israel has just lost the battle, and the elders respond with a plan: bring the ark of the covenant to the front lines—surely God is on their side. It seems like a reasonable assumption, but it is about to be turned completely upside down. This passage exposes the difference between carrying the ark and actually knowing the God it represents, and it has something deeply uncomfortable to say about h...