Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

Paul pictures someone in Rome responding to his gospel this way: "As I listen to you, I hear you assuring me that God has provided all the resources I need to live a life that pleases God, but I'm such a weak person, and the forces that want to pull me away from Him are so strong that I don't feel confident that I'll make it to heaven. Paul, you sound so sure of your salvation. You talk like you a...

In these verses and in the chapters ahead of us, Paul shows us the mind of God. It's as though he had lifted us up into the heavenlies to observe the world from the perspective of eternity. As we read, time drops away, and all history lies before us, and we watch as God sets into motion His plan to save broken, sinful people and transform them until they become like His Son. Before we ever existed...

The word "elect" sounds cold and doctrinal, and it certainly has been used that way. The way some people use the term it refers to those few, happy, dare I say "lucky" souls who have been arbitrarily picked by God for salvation based on absolutely nothing in their lives. Those who teach this type of election say it is a wonderfully comforting doctrine that assures the "elect" that they did nothing...

The road to the promised land travels through a wilderness of suffering. And there’s no getting away from that reality. We aren’t in heaven yet. This planet is still cursed, and our bodies are still dying, so indeed suffering in one form or another comes to all of us – not because we’ve done something wrong, or because God has failed to protect us, but simply because we aren’t home yet. We’re trav...

God had a special goal in mind when He created the human race. It was no accident that we were made "in His image" (Ge 1:26,27), rational, spiritual beings who exist forever after begin conceived, persons who share enough of His personhood to interact with Him as friends. His great, loving heart wanted a bigger family–not because He needed us, as though somehow He were incomplete without us, but s...

I would be surprised if anyone could grow up in this sinful world without emotional scars. There's too much cruelty, selfishness, lust, anger and fear to escape. And even those who do grow up in a safe family sooner or later engage the larger society, and the damage begins. Not only are we wounded when bad things are done to us, but we also end up wounded when we do bad things to others. As the ye...

My flesh has a mind of its own, and becoming a Christian does not stop the flow of thoughts coming out of that mind. Sadly, it keeps generating bad attitudes, passions and images as long as I live. The good news is it won't be there after I'm resurrected into my new body. The bad news is I'll have to learn to cope with it and silence its voice day by day and moment by moment for the rest of my lif...

One of the greatest crises of Christianity is that we've lost our understanding of how to actually do what Paul Is teaching in this passage of Romans. I'm not exaggerating! By and large over most of the past 2,000 years church leaders have tried to make God's people holy by warning them not to do bad things and scolding them when they did which, as we all know, doesn't work. Like the man Paul desc...

This episode was originally recorded on the first weekend of Advent, that season of the Christian calendar when believers all over the world begin preparing their hearts to celebrate the "comings" of the Lord, both His first and second coming. For thousands of years believers waited for Messiah to come, and now thousands of years later we wait for Him to come again. We wait full of thankfulness fo...

This portion of Paul's letter is specifically addressed to the Jewish members of the churches in Rome. He is explaining to them a spiritual truth based on their common experience as Jews in reading and trying to obey the Law of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy). Today two thousand years later as we listen in on that conversation, it's easy to miss how it applies to us. But it does apply. In fact...

This episode was originally recorded around Thanksgiving! Paul describes his own frustrating experience as a believer who wanted to obey God but couldn't because the temptations of his flesh were too powerful to resist. And then he suddenly explodes with thanksgiving. Immediately after crying out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" He joyfully shouts, "Than...

Sin wraps us in chains and drags us places we don't want to go. It truly turns us into slaves, people held in bondage unable to do as we please. But becoming "God's slave" is a very different matter. He who gave us a free will so we could choose to love and obey Him in the first place does not take that freedom away when we become born again. God has absolutely no desire to have little mindless hu...

In communion (the Lord's Supper) Jesus gives Himself to us: "This is My blood shed for you," and each time we partake we receive those precious gifts afresh by faith. But in water baptism we give ourselves to Him; we offer Him our old sinful self so it can die with Him on the cross and be buried with Him in the grave. And this is where Paul says our new life begins: with our "death." It sounds mor...

Good intentions aren't enough. Wanting to please God and live a clean life isn't enough. The incessant pressure we face is simply too much to withstand. It's like swimming against the tide. I may be able to hold on for a while, but sooner or later I'll grow weary and be carried along against my will. Unless we understand this and humbly accept our own weakness, we'll never live victorious Christia...

Just as Abraham's faith brought him righteousness and great blessings, those who have faith in Jesus Christ also receive righteousness and great blessings. Yet as Paul reminds us in this passage, our faith doesn't always protect us from suffering. In fact, some times we suffer because we have faith. We still live on a rebellious planet, in rebellious bodies and during a season of time in which Sat...

Just as faith is a choice, so is unbelief. Both begin and are sustained by a decision. I decide to believe, or I decide I will not believe; I decide to look for evidence of God, or I decide to look for evidence there is no God. In effect, faith and unbelief are both forms of faith and require constant reinforcing... an ongoing pattern of choosing... an ongoing pattern of looking for evidence of Go...

There are realities within God's own heart, ingredients in His eternal nature, which cannot be ignored or changed, even by Him. They are essential elements of who He is, and who He is forms the foundation of all creation, of the spiritual and the physical worlds. Justice and love are both completely true of God, but love is His dominant trait. Above all else He loves. This is why we exist; this is...

God's grace sets people free to be honest... honest with Him... honest with ourselves... and honest with others. And the reason is simple: I no longer have to be afraid. Because of Jesus Christ, I no longer have to lie, or blame, or deny, or hide, I can let God shine His light into the deepest recesses of my heart and show me the unvarnished truth about what's really there... without being afraid....

Like a doctor diagnosing a disease, Paul in chapter one revealed the process by which the human heart rejects God. Then he showed us that rebellion doesn't lead to freedom but rather to deeper and deeper forms of slavery. Now, in chapter two, he shows us that people can remain rebellious while at the same time being very religious. Again like a doctor, in this chapter he catalogues the symptoms. A...

People often run away from God because we want to be free, but instead of freedom we find ourselves captured by our own passions. Appetites, fears, temper, envy, ambition, greed, lust, etc. rise up and take control. Every area of our personality is affected, but one of the deepest and most obvious areas is our sexuality. Over time our lusts cause us to do things with our bodies that have nothing t...

In this remarkable passage, Paul explains how people walk away from God. He lays out the tragic sequence of steps that carry us away from our Creator. And the main point of Paul's blunt analysis is clear: God didn't move away from us; we moved away from Him. He didn't reject us; we rejected Him because we wanted a different god, one we could control, one who wouldn't demand that we live holy lives...

There's a huge difference between flattery and a sincere compliment. Flattery is a form of manipulation where someone showers praise or attention on a person in order to ingratiate themselves or gratify the person's vanity (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary). It's the motive that's wrong. I say something positive to gain a person's trust so I can influence them or protect myself. I assume all of...

If we were to put Paul's teaching in the first three chapters of Romans into one simple statement, it would be this: Everybody needs the Lord. We all need the Savior, or we'll face God's justice for our sins. He shows how Gentile cultures walked away from the truth of God, and then how the Jews who had God's truth revealed In Scripture also failed to obey what they knew to be right. When Paul is f...

It would be easy to brush by this simple statement because these few words seem to summarize an attitude that anyone who reads the Bible becomes familiar with rather quickly. Put in a single word, that attitude is "favoritism." Said in many different ways, it sounds as if God especially loves those who are physically descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and really doesn't love other people gro...

Paul suffered much persecution for telling people the truth about Jesus Christ. Many Jews hated him for saying God's plan included crucifying their Messiah, and Gentiles were furious when he turned hearts away from pagan gods and laughed at him when he told them a man had risen from the dead (1Co 1:23). There were even so-called Christians who rejected his emphasis on salvation by faith and travel...