Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

From Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan December 11, 1783 In his book Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, Daniel L. Dreisbach observes that the leaders of the American Revolution repeatedly referred to Micah 6:8. “The literature of the founding era has numerous references and allusions to this biblical text,” he wrote. This includes John Winthrop, John Adams quoted it frequen...

From Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan October 19, 1781 The Battle of Yorktown effectively ended the American Revolution. British General Charles Cornwallis, badly outnumbered and isolated, sent out a white flag and surrendered to George Washington. Israel Evans was there to preach a sermon of victory to the American forces. A native of Pennsylvania, Evans had served as a chaplain th...

From Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan August 29, 1776 After their humiliation in Boston, the British fleet retired to Canada to lick their wounds and repair their vessels, then sailed straight for New York City. Washington also moved his troops to New York and began building siege works along Brooklyn Heights. When British ships, carrying thirty- two thousand troops, sailed into New...

From Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan April 19, 1775 The opening shots of the American Revolution were aimed at a preacher and his congregation, who, bolstered by Scripture, were ready for the moment. Jonas Clark preached in the village of Lexington, Massachusetts, “with uncommon energy and zeal.” His voice “extended far beyond the bounds of his meeting house and could be heard dist...

From Bible Verses That Made America by Robert Morgan September 7, 1774 Amid fear and rising tensions, delegates from across the Colonies arrived in Philadelphia on September 4, 1774, to convene the First Continental Congress. Before tackling the weighty issues of the day, they acted on a motion by Thomas Cushing from Massachusetts to begin their business with prayer. Samuel Adams nominated a local...

From Nothing to Prove by Jeannie Allen on YouVersion The world’s message is simple: You are enough. All on your own, you are enough. But that mantra fails us either because we deep down know we aren’t enough or because our self-esteem inflates and we charge through life independent of God and people. Either outcome leaves us lonely and disappointed. So why are we working so hard to do life, to mak...

From Nothing to Prove by Jeannie Allen on YouVersion Enjoying His grace does cost us something. One thing: death. Death of our old selves. Death of our pride. Death of thinking we can be enough on our own. It’s hard; it’s messy. You will hate it for a moment. But you know what happens in your soul? You get free. You know what happens when you are free? Other people are set free. When you put your...

Encountering Jesus in the past year has built this new way for me, this new path to knowing Him better and living in His strength and abundant grace and letting the Spirit work through me instead of striving. But this new way actually is coming back to old things. We come back to the simple, common graces of what it means to walk with Jesus. I have found this pattern in Jesus’s life, one I had nev...

From Nothing to Prove by Jeannie Allen on YouVersion I am not enough. It is a terrifying phrase that goes through our heads on quite a regular basis about a plethora of things. Let me tell you a few of the stories I have heard just from my close circle of friends. Bekah leads boot camps. As she leads neighbors and friends through workouts, she also has seen them through cancer battles and through...

From Nothing to Prove by Jennie Allen on YouVersion Water. No human can survive three days without it. No other resource is more essential to sustain life. None. Here is the thing. The enemy promises water, but every time we go to his wells, they are empty. He gives us a sip of water, enough that we keep believing him. We have believed the lie that our cravings will be satisfied if we are enough a...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. —Matthew 24:10 Let’s examine this statement. If we look closely, we can see a progression. An offense leads to betrayal, and betrayal leads to hatred. Offended people build walls for protection. Our focus becomes self-preservation. We must be protected and safe at al...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion Where are you getting your worldview from? When we filter everything through past hurts, rejections, and experiences, we find it impossible to believe God. We cannot believe He means what He says. We doubt His goodness and faithfulness since we judge Him by the standards set by man in our lives. But God is not a man! He cannot lie (Num. 23:19). His...

From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion Offense is taken down when we see the world clearly. Jesus said our ability to see correctly is another key to freedom from deception. When we are offended, we often see ourselves as victims and blame those who have hurt us. We justify our bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, envy, and resentment as they surface. Sometimes we even resent those who remi...

Pride keeps you from dealing with truth. It distorts your vision. You never change when you think everything is fine. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the sn...

The possibilities for offense are as endless as the list of relationships, no matter how complex or simple. From Am I Offended? by John Bevere on YouVersion As I travel across the United States ministering, I have observed one of the enemy’s most deadly and deceptive traps. It imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, and widens our existing breaches. It is the trap of offense. Many ar...

From Kingdom Heroes by Tony Evans on YouVersion “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23) Not afraid. Those two words sum up how Moses grew to express such greatness. The parents who gave him life were “not afraid.” They lived with faith over fear. The DNA...

“And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.” (Hebrews 11:11) Our next exhibit in the Hall of Heroes illustrates this truth in a dramatic fashion. This hero’s name is Sarah. She started life as Sarai, and she married Abraham, who, again, began life as Abram. God promised both Sarah and Abraham a...

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8) Your life of faith as a kingdom hero will also involve how you choose to live. We read in Hebrews 11:9 that “by faith [Abraham] lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jac...

“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” (Hebrews 11:7) Many of us fail to live our lives as kingdom heroes simply because our faith has dried up. We go through the motions only to discover that our Christian walk has gone flat. We lac...

From Kingdom Heroes by Tony Evans on YouVersion “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Before we look closely at the lives who modeled faith as told in Hebrews 11, I want to give you a simple definition of faith: Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. It’s basing  actions on the belief that what He says is true. Faith isn’t mere...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion If there’s anything my life has taught me, it’s this: setbacks are not the end of your story. They often feel final, painful, or discouraging, but God has a way of turning what looks like defeat into the very soil where new beginnings grow. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in my life came right after seasons I thought would br...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion If there’s one thing we all have in common, it’s this: we will encounter difficult people. They show up at work, in families, in friendships, and sometimes even in church. Early in my life, I thought the solution was to avoid them, fix them, or outmaneuver them. But over the years, God’s taught me that dealing with difficult peo...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion For a long time, I thought I could control far more than I actually could. Maybe you’ve been there too, believing that if you plan well enough, work hard enough, or pray long enough, everything will fall into place exactly the way you want it to. But life has a way of reminding us that we’re not as in control as we think. Years...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion Life doesn’t always play fair. I learned that early. There were many days growing up when I wondered why I got such a raw deal. Why did I have to grow up in a dysfunctional home? Why was my father an alcoholic? Why was he so cruel to my mother? Why were we so poor? I didn’t ask for any of it, and I certainly didn’t deserve it. M...

From The Shift That Changes Everything by Ted Pagel Jr. on YouVersion I’ve learned over the years how quickly life can shift without warning and without asking my permission. Maybe you’ve noticed the same thing. One moment everything seems steady, and the next moment the ground beneath your feet changes. I’ve walked through seasons where the path I imagined for my life suddenly crumbled, leaving m...