Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

It’s the most natural thing in the world: People turn to God because they need something and want Him to use His power to help them. That’s actually the motivating factor behind most of the world’s religions, and has been throughout human history. People do something, or sacrifice something, or chant something until their god or impersonal spiritual force treats them favorably. And history has sho...

If you’ll recall, Mary is the one who listened carefully. While her sister Martha was busy serving the guests, she sat at Jesus’ feet and pondered His every word. The Gospel of Luke describes that exchange. Let’s hear it again: “Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s fee...

Human beings have always had a hard time getting along with each other. The same forces that separate us from God also separate us from people. The Bible uses a simple word to describe those forces; it calls them “Sin.” Bundled into that one word are three destructive attitudes that have been the source of our troubles from the first humans onward. Those attitudes are selfishness, rebelliousness a...

There are people who absolutely refuse to believe in Jesus Christ no matter what proof is presented. You can explain God's plan of salvation in crystal-clear terms, but they say it doesn't make sense to them. They might watch a miracle performed before their eyes, yet they won't repent. There are people who fearlessly acknowledge that the Bible warns them about what will happen to them if they die...

You aren't your body. You express yourself through your body; you are influenced by your body; you even have to take care of your body, but your existence is rooted in another dimension altogether. That's because God made you in His image, and He doesn't have a body. He is spirit (Jn 4:24). When He created Adam and Eve, He created rational, volitional, conscious beings who can know Him, obey Him,...

Anyone who serves God effectively has to have two important qualities: courage and caution. They have to be willing to die for Jesus but determined not to do anything careless that might end their ministry early. Without courage a person won't follow where God leads; without caution a person will create so much trouble for themselves that they have to stop. Caution is the careful analysis of a sit...

One of the most wonderful aspects of watching Jesus in action is that we're seeing how things ought to work. He never prayed a wrong request; no prayer of His ever went unanswered because of a lack of faith, and no spiritual opposition was too difficult for Him to overcome. Whenever we get into the subject of prayer the question always arises as to why some prayers are answered, and it appears, so...

Let's reflect for a moment on our walk with God. When was the last time that you or I did something because we felt God told us to do it, and then He showed up and did some sort of miracle or we would have failed? If the answer is never, or it was so long ago we can't remember, what we're going to talk about today may be challenging to understand, but we have to try, because according to Jesus hea...

“If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe Me, but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (Jn 10:37-38).  Jesus did not try to win people by impressing them with the brilliance of His logic. He didn't try to argue people to faith. He simply performed a miracle that was so solid,...

Does grace mean I can keep doing bad things and still go to heaven? Does God's love mean I don't have to stop? Does repentance mean if I say “I'm sorry” God will let me continue sinning? If asked those questions most of us would quickly answer, “No! Of course not,” that is until God told us to stop doing something we really wanted to do. In that case our answer might be less definite. We might sta...

It's confusing to hear people talk about God controlling everything because everywhere you look He has given so much freedom. He gave humans freedom; He gave angels freedom, and now we hear the Son of God telling us that He too had been given the freedom to choose whether or not to die on the cross. He says the Father gave Him authority over His own life, so that He could choose whether or not to...

You and I were not designed to live alone. When God created the very first human being, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Ge 2:18). And it's not! He placed within each one of us the need to be part of a community of people. That's where we are happiest. That's where we are the most productive. And that's where we are subjected to refining fires that burn away many of the impurities in...

There is only one way to come to God. There is only one door that leads to peace with our Creator. There has never been another way. At the very center of God's plan for the human race stands a cross, the cross of Jesus Christ. From Adam and Eve onward, for thousands of years, people offered animal sacrifices, and though they understood very little of what those sacrifices represented, every sacri...

Not only will sheep recognize the voice of the true Shepherd, but the true Shepherd knows which sheep belong to Him. He knows them “by name.” In John's description of Jesus' encounter with a man born blind, we observe this truth in action. On His way out of the temple Jesus saw a particular beggar and stopped. Now there would have been many beggars lining the entrance to the temple because people...

I have no idea what the number might be, but I know it's sizeable. How many people have walked away, not only from the church of Jesus Christ, but from God Himself, not because of something God did, but because of ungodly leaders? Lying, abuse of power, double-standards, slander, ambition, lovelessness, false doctrine, financial dishonesty, sexual immorality, etc. have often been the cause of a lo...

It's not easy to define “loyalty.” Try it. Nor is it easy to explain why some people are loyal and some are not. In fact that's one of the most puzzling aspects about loyalty. Sometimes it's those to whom we give the most who abandon us the quickest. People we had every right to expect would be loyal to us, weren't. But then there are those who turn out to be loyal from whom we would never have an...

I think we all ask the question. Our need to ask is automatic; it's instinctive; it comes uninvited. When serious illness strikes, or when we or those close to us are hit by tragedy, particularly if something happens to a child, we ask: “God, what did I do wrong? Why did You let this happen?” We assume it happened because someone sinned. Even those of us who feel very confident that God is a lovin...

For a human being to live in such a way that life has purpose, in order for someone to come to the end of their life and feel satisfied that they lived it well, he or she must have discovered the answer to these two questions: 1) Who is God? and 2) Who am I? Without knowing the answer to the first question it is impossible to answer the second, but just knowing the answer to the first does not mea...

Human hearts are not all the same. They vary widely. Some are so full of desires for the things of this world there is little or no room left to desire God. When truth comes and knocks on the door of that heart it finds no place to lodge; there is no interest, no welcome, no sense of need for that truth. That heart is already full; it's full of longing for other things but not for more of God.  Ot...

Forgiveness is a wonderful gift. Who among us is not grateful that God mercifully forgives our sins? Forgiveness means He will not punish us when we sin, though our sin may have set in motion forces that will bring much misery. It means He does not withdraw His presence from us, though from our side of the relationship our hearts may grow harder, and God may seem more distant. It means Jesus will...

When people speak about “witnessing for God,” they usually mean talking about Him. We think of a “witness” as someone who boldly declares their faith. And telling others what we believe is certainly an important element in witnessing, but words alone are never enough. People watch what we do far more closely than they listen to what we say, and there is one quality, above all, that they observe. I...

It's getting confusing: Many Christians seem headed in opposite directions. One group is becoming more and more legalistic, pointing to all the rules in the Old Testament and insisting that they are eternal which means they must be obeyed forever. Another group is becoming more and more lawless, pointing to the fact that when Jesus died for our sins He died for all of them, so it doesn't matter if...

Jesus was gentle with common people and sinners, but He became quite confrontational when He dealt with people who were very religious. In the passage we’re reading today it’s obvious He was very frustrated with the unbelief in this group of Pharisees who were confronting Him. We know from statements He made elsewhere (Mt 23:1-36) that He felt the Pharisees were damaging people, not helping them....

Soon after our family arrived here, nearly 25 years ago, someone shared with us a prophetic word that had been given to this church. The word was this, “You’ve been called to be a river, not a lake.” To be honest with you, my heart sank a bit when I heard that statement because I knew what it meant. It meant we were going to send people out about as fast as we took them in, which is a fine way to...

To the priests, Jesus was a political problem. They just wanted Him out of the way. But to the Pharisees, Jesus was a biblical problem. He kept putting the needs of people ahead of the rules in the Law of Moses. Yet the God who wrote those rules didn’t seem to be angry with Him. Jesus was performing miracles that were very hard to ignore. If God was angry with Him, it didn’t show. But up until now...