Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

One of the key ingredients for true discipleship is learning how to be part of a family—whether that be our natural family or the family of God. Learning to live in a committed way with people is a tremendous challenge for all of us. Nothing confronts our character so much as living with other people. Our weaknesses are exposed, our selfishness confronted and our love is tested. But as ironic as i...

If we’re going to be free and inherit our promises we’re going to have to learn to fight. Just because something is God’s will for us doesn’t mean it will come easily or without opposition. In fact, there are always forces which oppose the advancement of God’s kingdom. Whenever God’s power is breaking into darkness with salvation, healing, restoration, deliverance, love, guidance or provision, we...

Definition of Thanks: 1) Sees the good; 2) Sees the grace: acknowledges the reception of something undeserved; I don’t need to thank someone for what I deserve or pay for; 3) Sees the source: this is generated by someone other than me; I was given this, I didn’t produce this; 4) Sees the need to speak: I need to communicate to the person who provided it   Life always seems to offer us a mixture of...

Last week we learned: God uses people to deliver people; a “deliverer” is someone who: sets free from restraint, rescues from evil or unburdens the oppressed; God uses suffering, failure and frustration to prepare deliverers. This week we’ll learn that God calls those who are His deliverers: In chapters three and four we’ll see God call Moses to his role in delivering Israel from Egypt.   There ar...

What does it mean to “deliver” someone? set free from restraint; rescue from evil; lift off a burden.

God knew Israel would not leave Egypt just because He asked them to. They would have to undergo a deep attitude-change before He could give them the promised land. After all, they had lived in Egypt for 400 years. It had become home to many generations and they had prospered there. Their families grew large, their livestock flourished and they built fine houses to live in. Yet, God did not want th...

The first step on the road to freedom is that a person must desire to be free. This may sound like an unnecessary statement because we assume everyone must want to be free. After all, who in their right mind would want to remain in any sort of bondage if they had an opportunity to escape. Yet, when we actually look more closely at the human heart we frequently find just the opposite. Since freedom...

The book of Exodus is a model of the Christian life. It starts with people being set free from slavery (salvation). Next, we see God put them in situations where they will learn to grow in faith (Ex 13:17). Then, once their faith reaches the point where they have the courage to follow God, He leads them to possess the blessings He has promised. Becoming free is a process, not an event, because rea...

  What is the relationship between speaking in tongues and the baptism with the Holy Spirit? When we observe people being baptized with the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts the gifts often mentioned as immediately accompanying this experience are speaking in tongues and prophecy (Ac 2:4; 10:46; 19:6). When these early Christians encountered the power of the Spirit they burst out in inspired speech...

  The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is a blessing from God which causes ordinary people to become extraordinarily effective as witnesses for Jesus Christ (Ac 1:5, 8). By it God equips believers today with the same power we read about in the New Testament. Since the Day of Pentecost (Ac 2) God’s plan has been to supernaturally equip every believer so that the ministry of Jesus Christ may continue th...

1 - How to be Born-Again A Step-by-Step Guide for Leading a Person to Salvation   Being born-again is more than simply chang-ing one’s attitude toward God. A person may have positive feelings toward God, His Son Jesus, and the Bible, and may even attend church regularly but have never received the inner miracle called the “new birth.” This is because it only occurs when the Spirit of God comes ins...

Why be baptized? The most important reason for a believer to be baptized in water is because Jesus commanded it. In His “Great Commission” Jesus instructed that all who became His disciples are to be baptized (Mt 28:19). Since every true believer chooses to obey Jesus as “Lord” no better reason can be given. If He wants me to be baptized then I will gladly be baptized.  

The death of a relationship can bring on depression. Times when friendships and families are broken or loved ones die seriously  affects us. Pastor Steve discusses this type of depression and teaches how to go to the Lord for comfort.

Pastor Steve offers practical steps to help depression like worshipping often, watching nutrition and sleep, and quitting the masking of symptoms with caffeine, sugar and pain relievers. 

A lot of healing from depression comes from healing in the soul. Pastor Steve discusses soul ties, a term that describes an inappropriate bond to another person at the emotional, psychological level. 

There is a complexity to someone being healed of depression. And all the problems with depression are not spiritually based. Since a person is made up of body, soul and spirit, the solution can be a lot of different things. Pastor Steve explains some different ways the Lord has directed people to deal with depression and gives some very practical ways to help their depression lift.

Until the soul is healed, until the issues are attended to, a depressed person is still prone to depression. Pastor Steve shares his own experience with depression and how God healed him, and explains that God can indeed heal a person of depression. 

In addition to sharing his own experience with depression, in this series Pastor Steve offers some godly counsel and practical advice on understanding and overcoming depression.

In addition to sharing his own experience with depression, in this series Pastor Steve offers some godly counsel and practical advice on understanding and overcoming depression.

Over and over again the Bible presents us with snapshots of the world as it will look when the Messiah comes to establish the kingdom of God on earth. But until then, the world we live in is a badly damaged version of the one in which God intended us to live, but it has become so familiar to us that we forget it isn't normal. In fact, compared to what God originally designed, it's very subnormal....

I’ve lived through seasons in which people were absolutely sure that Jesus was coming back any day. It was very exciting and, for some, particularly the young, very disturbing. Any thought of planning for the future went out the window because, after all, what was the use? The end of history, as we knew it, was at hand. It stirred evangelism and put the fear of God in some whose moral life had dec...

No two people are alike. God designed us that way. He loves variety. There aren’t two snowflakes, or blades of grass, or grains of sand that are alike. No two people have the same fingerprints, let alone the same personality. Everything about us is different, including the path He has planned for our lives. But those differences have nothing to do with favoritism. Everything God does, which is not...

Some of us may think, "If I didn't have drive, ambition and fear motivating me, I'd do nothing." That's absolutely false. We trade in these attitudes to the Lord for something else: faith. We no longer walk by ambitions, drives and inner fears. We begin to walk in faith. As we walk with God and in His power, we will accomplish things far beyond what we are even capable of accomplishing. We will do...

Many of us are plagued with a memory of something we did in the past which we can’t seem to get out of our minds. Even though we may have confessed it to the Lord and are confident He has forgiven us, the memory of that event still lingers and every so often rushes back into our thoughts to torment us. For some reason we have not been able to free ourselves from it. It still influences our thinkin...

When we say “yes!” to Jesus, He enlists us into His mission of saving, healing and loving people, and that can be hard, dangerous, tiring work. It can wear us out. But as we watch Jesus serve breakfast to a group of hungry disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee we learn something very important about our Lord. He is not indifferent to our sufferings. He is not passive or thankless. He knows...