Deep Spirituality

We need to come to know God through personal experience. If we don’t make the effort to make our relationship with God personal, we end up becoming “zombie Christians”—people who go through the motions without much heart. As “zombie Christians,” we lack the spiritual power that enables us to faithfully conquer the everyday challenges we face.  Check out our newest Mini Quiet Time to learn mor...

No matter what we’re feeling, God understands us. In fact, he understands us better than we can imagine. Listen to these powerful verses of the Bible that show us God’s intimate understanding of our hearts. Scriptures read: * Psalm 139:1-2 The Passion Translation * Isaiah 40:27-28 New Living Translation * Hebrews 4:15-16  - Contemporary English Version * Romans 8:27 - Contemporary English Ver...

There are a lot of scriptures about worry and anxiety, but it’s important to understand before diving in that the Bible is not a self-help book. Though it’s good to find scriptures that calm our minds, we are meant to embrace the transformative change of our will, character, and desires that comes from walking with God. God changes lives, he doesn’t merely improve them. In today’s Mini Quiet Time,...

In today's episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most necessary yet difficult parts of our spiritual lives: facing and defeating doubt. Doubt leads us to question ourselves, to question why we’re here, and to question whether we’re really loved. Check out this week's Mini Quiet Time to learn from Jesus how to defeat your own doubts, and come out the other side powerful and confident like h...

It's hard to feel alone. The Bible tells us that what we all want most is to feel unconditionally loved for who we are, and God wants to give us that love. But this can feel easier said than done — how do we stay open about who we are when it leaves us vulnerable to being hurt, rejected, or misunderstood? In this week's Mini Quiet Time, we'll look at a story where Jesus had to choose to be vulnera...

In the Bible, David was a guy in the Bible who had a real “best friend” relationship with God. So how do we build this kind of friendship with God? David wrote many of the psalms in the Bible. They were often his prayers, and we can learn from them how to build a close friendship with God ourselves. In today's Mini Quiet Time we'll look at Psalm 13, one of the psalms where David talked to God abou...

The book of Psalms is full of the prayers of people trying to take difficult emotions to God. Check out our new Mini Quiet Time, where in Psalm 32, David comes to God to help him deal with the clutter of his heart.

Sometimes people make it hard for us to love them, and it’s very easy to respond in ways that don’t help us or them. The best way to let God teach us to love is to look at how Jesus loved. In today's Mini QT, we're looking at a story of Jesus choosing to love someone a lot of other people had written off: a notorious sinner named Zacchaeus. Though Zacchaeus came with baggage, Jesus’ decision to lo...

Do you ever feel like you can’t live up to the epic stories of the faithful people in the Bible?  If you actually read the stories of these people, though, you’ll see God didn’t choose them because they were so strong and capable, but because he was. Through little decisions to have faith and trust God’s process, each of these regular people became the great heroes we see in the Bible. ...

Some of the hardest feelings to deal with are the ones you feel about yourself. Hannah was a woman in the Bible who experienced not feeling good enough. She couldn’t have children, and in her day that meant she would have been seen as inferior and flawed. What are the things that make you feel inferior or flawed? How do you respond when you don't feel good enough? Join us as we explore Hannah's jo...

In our next episode of our "Back to School Special" podcast series, we seek to answer the question: "Where is God When I'm Insecure?" Whether it's high school or college, school can be a time of conflicting emotions. We get stressed about class but excited about seeing friends. We are discovering who we are while being unsure of where we're headed. All of these emotions can lead to a lot of insecu...

How do you find God when you're overwhelmed with stress? In this episode, we discuss the inevitable stress that comes not only with going back to school, but also in any stressful time of life. Stress comes out differently for everyone, and we all need tools that help us remember God, stay calm, and not go it alone. Join us to learn more about how to find God when you're stressed.

We all have things that we think will make us happier, and it’s not necessarily bad to pursue them. But sometimes our love gets out of order, and we put things first in our lives that really shouldn’t be there. God wants to help us change that so we can find the joy and satisfaction we are actually looking for. In the story of Martha and Mary, we can learn from Jesus how prioritizing our relations...

Sometimes our experience of Christianity can feel like a lot of rule-following. Some of us respond to this by throwing ourselves into mastering these rules. We learn the “strategies” of Christianity, the things we have to do to get ahead easier or win the approval of God or other people. Others of us might feel frustrated and defeated by Christianity because we feel like we’re constantly failing a...

In this new series about parenting teens, Russ and friends discuss the myth of the perfect family. Many of us become parents with preconceived notions of what a family should be like, or what constitutes "normal." It's important to get spiritual perspective about family because when we compare ourselves to others, get self-piteous, or lose sight of what God's doing we become discouraged. We are li...

Guilt is a tricky thing to handle, but it’s something everyone experiences. It’s very easy to try to defend ourselves or blame others for our sins and mistakes so that we don’t have to face the consequences of them. Or, we may get overly emotional when we feel guilty, drowning in despair rather than simply owning up to what we’ve done and resolving the relationship. God doesn’t want us to be trapp...

The Bible gives us a powerful story about a woman who had reasons to feel bad about herself and faced criticism from other people, but Jesus didn’t see her the way other people saw her or even the way she might have seen herself. He loved her for who she was, and his forgiveness and care led the woman to give that much love back. The story of the forgiven woman and the Parable of the Forgiven Debt...

When you think of a feast, what do you think of?  Most of us probably think of fun, friends, and good times. These feelings of joy, connection, and fullness are what God is inviting us to access in his Kingdom, rather than rules and restrictions that so many of us often associate with religion.  When we aren’t honest about our desires, motives, and values, we will make excuses and miss o...

The Bible talks a lot about being lost—not just physically, but spiritually. We can lose our sense of who we are and what really matters. Even those of us who are Christians can lose our way, going through the motions but wondering if we can ever find our way back to faith in God. Feeling lost is frustrating, confusing, and lonely. But God never leaves us hanging. Jesus tells us over and over agai...

One of the most important choices we can make is what we’ll do with the things God has given us. God wants to give us a full life, and he can work through not only our talents, but also our experiences and even our weaknesses and mistakes to make a difference in the world. Our choice is whether or not we’ll trust him and use these things for good, or live a small life held back by fear or selfishn...

Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to go to get experienced advice about building a strong marriage. In this episode, we learn how to live a life of faith that is manifested in our marriage and family with special guest Al Baird, author of A Lifetime of Love: Building and Growing Your Marriage . Unless the LORD builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the LORD protects a city, gu...

By now, we all know what it feels like to try to communicate while wearing a mask. It’s not always easy; sometimes we get insecure, frustrated, or discouraged when we can’t understand other people or they can’t understand us. The same can be said about masking our real thoughts and feelings. It’s a frustrating experience to feel like you can’t be yourself around other people or around God. But God...

In today’s podcast, Russ and friends continue our Parable Series as they discuss the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  Though this may be one of the more well-known parables about change, it’s easy to overlook what it teaches us about how we view God. When we view God as transactional, we lose sight of connection and relationship.  This outlook leads us to becoming entitled, expecting him to give us w...

Do you remember when you first met your best friend? It may have been awkward at first, but the more you spend time together, make memories together, and go through hard times together, the closer you feel.  That’s because the best of friendships are built on persistence. This is the kind of friendship God wants with us. He persists with us, and he hopes we’ll persist with him. To him, this is wha...

Sometimes many small things build up and knock us down, and other times really big storms like physical or mental health challenges, financial troubles, or relationship problems come our way. And still, other times, we’re not even sure what’s knocking us over, but we keep snapping, lashing out, or melting down, and we don’t know why. Learning how to handle life’s ups and downs is a skill everyone...