Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

Here are the Four Stages of Discipleship we have covered this week. The Infant Stage The Maturing Stage The Others Stage The Disciple-Making Stage Matthew 28:19 tells us to go and make disciples of all nations. Mature Christ followers have a deep conviction that they’re called to make disciples. If you don’t graduate to the disciple-making stage, you’re really not a mature disciple. Disciples don’...

Every stage of your walk with the Lord is part of the growing process. No matter where you find yourself as you’ve been reading over the last several days, don’t be discouraged! Take one practical next step to continue to grow! Today, we are talking about the third stage of discipleship—the others stage. In this stage, the Christian knows a lot about the Word of God and they’re applying it to thei...

From Are You A Cultural Christian Or A Follower Of Jesus by Herbert Cooper But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. – Hebrews 5:14 No parent wants their kid to stay stuck as a baby. They can’t wait to watch them take their first step, say their first word, and lose their first tooth. Yet imagine if you just stayed there; riding t...

Over the next several days we will look at four stages of discipleship. Pay close attention to your own life and ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you are in your walk with Jesus so you can take your next steps and grow as a disciple. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. – Hebrews 5:13 The first stage for a new believer is...

From Are You A Cultural Christian Or A Follower Of Jesus by Herbert Cooper Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. – Matthew 16:24 When you hear the term “follower,” you probably immediately associate it with a social media number or popularity gauge. Because being a “follower” can be reduced to following some...

As I wait for my flight I watch the parade of people. Disgruntled teenagers with caps pulled down over their eyes trailing behind determined parents. Bright-eyed couples holding hands with the honeymoon sun still on their faces. A group of grey-headed ladies in pink matching t-shirts laughing and exchanging stories while they sip coffee. I wonder about all of them. Where have they come from? Where...

The rough wooden boardwalk is cool beneath my feet as I make my way to the sand. The sky is still the thick, deep blue of night, and gray shadows sway in the salty wind. I’m not a morning person, but I’m at the beach, and I’m determined to see the sun climb like a rising warrior above the waves at least once. As I get closer to the shore, I can see more people who have decided to forsake pillows f...

I hold a list filled with words written in black ink on cream paper. The page is small but the sentences scrawled on it feel big, more than I can handle. I’m part of a group and our assignment for this week is to write down our fears. The facilitator says, “Okay, we’re all going to read our lists out loud.” I panic for a moment. Read them out loud? Where people can hear? For a second I consider ru...

The phone call comes with hard news. Someone I love is in a difficult situation. By the time I hang up, I feel a weight on my shoulders, like it all depends on me. I begin to worry. This is what I can do, isn’t it? I can carry my worry around like a dog with an old bone. I can gnaw and twist, bury it and dig it up again. Surely this will be helpful, certainly this will save the day. But into that...

Do you have faith and yet experience fear? For so long I didn’t understand why God tells us, “Do not be afraid” and yet gives us bodies that are physically wired to experience fear. Our nervous system triggers our flight-or-fight response. It’s automatic and always involves fear. This protects us and helps us survive. If a bear comes charging through the door, we need to feel fear. So if we’re “wo...

If Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV) sounds like an empty promise to you, there’s a good chance one last obstacle to your freedom is standing in the way—control. Maybe you (like me) tend to turn God into a vending machine. Where you decide you’ll put in a certain number of songs worshipping or hours praying and, in ret...

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the...

From Free Me From Me by Ryan Wekenman What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”  “Their throat is an open grave; they use thei...

From Free Me From Me by Ryan Wekenman And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and...

From Free Me From Me by Ryan Wekenman But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather...

He Is Risen! The Reality of the Resurrection by Daniel Kolenda How does one respond to the resurrection? It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. You can experience the power and the presence of the risen Christ, and it’s as simple as ABC—Acknowledge, Believe, and Confess. First, you must acknowledge that you have messed up and gone in the wrong direction—away from the Go...

The heart of the gospel, the good news, is Christ was raised from the dead. He is risen indeed! That means faith is fruitful rather than futile; preaching is powerful rather than pointless; the disciples were dependable rather than deceptive; salvation is certain rather than imaginary, and death is defeated rather than victorious. Because Christ rose from the dead, those of us who believe are of a...

From He Is Risen! The Reality of the Resurrection by Daniel Kolenda And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not b...

The crucifixion of Jesus was a very important historical event. We usually hear more about the cross than the empty tomb in the church world, leaving the resurrection for Easter. But the resurrection is not just an Easter message; it lies at the heart of Christianity, even in one sense eclipsing the significance of the cross. For without the resurrection, the crucifixion was just an execution. Lot...

Did Jesus really die and rise from the dead? Some say there is no evidence for the Christian faith, but actually, from a historical perspective, the resurrection of Jesus is probably the most well-documented fact in antiquity. People have tried to dispute it numerous ways—Jesus wasn’t really dead, the disciples went to the wrong tomb, or the disciples stole His body. However, none of the theories...

We can get through just about any pain or suffering if we know the Lord is in it with us. But when we feel forsaken or abandoned, our pain becomes unbearable. In Genesis 39, you see the recurring phrase, “The Lord was with Joseph.” Joseph’s entire story rests on these five words. They will prove to be an anchor in turbulence and reconciliation in what seems irreconcilable. Then the Lord said to Ab...

As you read today’s passage, be on the lookout for God’s providential hand throughout the narrative. It’s easy for us to think of God as being “way up there” in the heavens on His end of the universe while we plod along in our daily lives with little intervention from Him. But here in Genesis, long before the incarnation of Jesus, we see God at work on earth. We see Him moving in specific location...

Today we step onto the soil where Joseph grew up. We find him as a seventeen-year-old tending sheep with his brothers in the midst of complex family dynamics, many of which stemmed from the favoritism of his father and the jealousy of his brothers. If you’d hoped we could ease into Joseph’s story with a cup of chamomile and a “once upon a time” opening line, the author of Genesis gives us no such...

From Finding God Faithful by Kelly Minter Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any oth...

Joseph’s story welcomes us with open arms, summons us into the living room, and invites us to sit down awhile and listen. So many have found a dear companion in Joseph because his life displays much of the human experience. We all “get” Joseph on some level. We can relate to him. We’ve probably never owned a multicolored robe that nearly cost us our lives or traveled as a slave by camel to a forei...