Engage God Daily

The Story Isn't Over: Living the Big Story Right Now Show Notes: We made it to the end. But the story isn't finished — not for us. In this final episode of the Big Story series, Lisa brings the whole journey together and asks the question every good story demands: so now what? This week we saw Jesus revealed in his full glory. We stood before the great white throne. We watched the New Jerusalem de...

Back to the Garden: How the Story Ends Where It Began Scripture: Revelation 22:1–5 Show Notes: If you've been with the Big Story since the beginning, today's passage is going to feel like coming home. In Revelation 22, John's vision takes us deeper into the new Jerusalem — and what he sees there is unmistakable. A river. A tree. The presence of God. No curse. We've been here before. This is the ga...

He Will Make Everything New: The Promise of the New Creation Scripture: Revelation 21:1–7, 22–27 Show Notes: The Big Story has never been just about judgment. From the very first moment things went wrong in the garden, God has been working not only to hold humanity accountable — but to bring his people home. Today's episode is the one we've been building toward. In Revelation 21, John sees a new h...

Nothing Is Hidden: God's Justice and the Book of Life Scripture: Revelation 20:11–15 Show Notes: We live in a world where it can feel like people get away with things. The powerful cover their tracks. The vulnerable are silenced. Justice gets delayed, diluted, or denied. And something deep inside us knows — this isn't right. That instinct is not just cultural. It's God-given. We are made in the im...

The King Revealed: Seeing Jesus in His Full Glory Scripture: Revelation 1:9–18 Show Notes: We made it. After months of walking through scripture from Genesis forward, we arrive at the final book of the Bible — Revelation. This week, Lisa opens the last chapter of the Big Story and what we find is breathtaking. In today's episode, the Apostle John — the same disciple who leaned against Jesus at the...

Big Story Pt. 3 | Week 8 | Ephesians 3:14–21 We've spent the week watching Paul build a case for the church's unity, image by image: shared grace, a demolished wall, a temple rising, a worthy walk. Today we step back, take in the whole picture, and let Paul's own prayer become ours. Because by the time Paul reached the end of chapter three, he couldn't keep describing. He had to stop and kneel. In...

Big Story Pt. 3 | Week 8 | Ephesians 4:1–6 For three chapters, Paul has been telling the Ephesians what God has done . Now, with a single word — therefore — he turns the corner. Everything that's true about who we are in Christ becomes the foundation for how we live with each other. In today's episode, Lisa walks through Ephesians 4:1–6, where Paul names four virtues that make community possible (...

Big Story Pt. 3 | Week 8 | Ephesians 2:19–22 The wall is down. But Paul isn't finished. Tearing something down is only half the work — something new has to be built in its place. So Paul reaches for three images, stacked on top of each other, each one going deeper than the last: citizens, family members, and a temple under construction. In this episode, Lisa walks through Ephesians 2:19–22 and exp...

Big Story Pt. 3 | Week 8 | Ephesians 2:14–18 Yesterday we stood at the ground floor: all of us were dead, and God made us alive by the same grace. Today, Paul turns that vertical reality horizontal. If the same mercy saved every one of us, what does that mean for how we relate to each other ? His answer is one of the most powerful images in the New Testament: a wall coming down. In this episode, L...

Big Story Pt. 3 | Week 8 | Ephesians 2:4–10 Pentecost lit the fuse — now comes the hard question: how do people this different become one? This week in the Big Story, we land in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, where he lays out the only foundation that can hold a divided world together: grace. Before Paul ever talks about unity in the church, he makes sure we understand what saved us. And the answ...

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...