Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

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...

The best way to learn how to pray is by listening to people who know how. It's more caught than taught. Mature pray-ers have certain attitudes in the way they approach God. They are obviously confident He hears them and that their prayers are making a diference. There is an intimacy and warmth in the way they converse with Him and a profound trust that He is good and loving and is there listening...

We hear it all the time: "God loves you." So often, in fact, it loses its impact because we take it for granted, at least in our heads. But quite frankly our hearts are another matter. There most of us usually feel loved only in fleeting moments of worship or prayer or maybe after doing some act of service. I think this struggle in our hearts occurs because we find it very hard to overlook our own...

There are few questions that have arisen over the course of human history that have caused more controversy than, "Who is Jesus?" As you well know, there is a wide variety of opinions on this matter, but not for Paul. The gospel he preached has as much to do with who Jesus is as it does with what He did. By the second verse of this letter, he's already begun to clarify who this Person is who is hi...

Paul died with dreams of future ministry still burning in his heart. Old age had not "aged" his spirit at ail. As we read this letter to the Romans, we know something Paul didn't when he wrote it. We know he would be arrested when he traveled to Jerusalem (Ro 15:30-32; Ac 21). He would arrive in Rome not as a missionary on his way west to Spain (Ro 15:24,25), but in chains. He would be released af...

God designs people differently and places them in a wide variety of ministries (1 Co 12:5), but regardless of what kind of ministry a person does, some become spiritually fruitful while others stall and make little progress. And the difference between the two doesn't seem to depend on talent or natural gifting. Those who become very fruitful are not necessarily the ones you or I would have picked....

Far from living by the principle of "an eye for an eye," Joseph generously offered total forgiveness to his brothers. When he was younger, they had threatened to kill him and then decided to sell him into slavery instead (37:18-28). Yet when they moved to Egypt during a famine, he welcomed their families and provided for them as the nation's governor. But after their father died, the fear again ro...

In the last hours of his life, Jacob prophesied over each of his 12 sons, but his words were actually being addressed to the future tribes which would arise from each of them. Through Jacob spiritual decisions were being announced, affecting millions of people who hadn't even been born yet. To some he explained why they would be passed over as leaders of the emerging nation. Others were surprised...

Anyone who lives long enough will experience the strange phenomenon called "grief." Sooner or later we all lose someone close to us, and when that happens, we're likely to discover powerful forces have taken control of us whether we welcome them or not. Our emotions go on a rollercoaster ride, our thinking becomes cloudy, and even our bodies respond in ways that can be frightening. There's no way...

It's only natural to evaluate a person's potential based on the obvious resources he/she possesses. The more money, talent, good looks, education, intelligence or social standing he/she has the more we expect him/her to succeed in life. And often this proves to be true. In the world these are the things that tend to make us successful. But when we turn to spiritual matters, these benefits can quic...

When Jacob arrived in Egypt, he was not a happy man. For at least the past 22 years he had been walking through a dark valley of despair. So when he was introduced to Pharaoh and asked how old he was, he responded by expressing discouragement. He said his life had been unpleasant, and he expected to die early. Yet he didn't die right away. In fact, God kept him alive for another 17 years, and by t...

When father and son were at last together again after 22 years, the first thing Jacob must have asked Joseph was, "I thought you had been killed by a wild animal. What happened to you? How did you end up in Egypt?" Joseph's answer would determine the future of that family. Knowing Joseph as we do it's certain he neither lied nor hid information from his father. When asked, he surely revealed the h...

Whenever God sows a seed, He has a harvest in mind. No farmer, least of all God, plants a seed without expecting it to reproduce itself many times. So if we allow ourselves to become a seed in God's hand, we too can expect our lives to produce a harvest for God. In fact, the Bible tells us that when He is in control of this process, we will see results that are "exceeding abundantly beyond all tha...

Jacob was headed to Egypt, but he was worried. His father had been told not to go to Egypt but to dig a well. Now, like his father, he was headed for Egypt to escape a famine. When he heard from God, God's instructions were exactly the opposite of what his father had been told. This illustrates an important point: While in many areas God's will is the same for all of us (moral standards, requireme...

What appeared to be a tragic series of events caused by sinful humans yielding to their basest impulses turned out instead to be steps leading Joseph and his family into the middle of God's will. That's what Joseph was trying to explain to his brothers. At that point in time, all they could see was the devastation they had caused, and they grieved over it and were angry at each other. But, in the...

Some people are easy to love. They have qualities we admire, and they make us feel good when we are around them. In these relationships love is a "two-way street." We love them, and they love us back. But sometimes we find ourselves in the confusing position of trying to love someone who does not love us or loves us less than we love them. No matter how hard we try, we are unable to win their hear...

Joseph's discernment not only turned Pharaoh's confusing dream into a plan for Egypt's future but was also instrumental in his own personal healing. His brothers' betrayal wounded him deeply, as did 13 years of slavery and prison. Yet as we read through these chapters describing his life, we see him emerge whole and successful in spite of his past. What was it that allowed him to break free from t...