Living Water Radio: For Today's Christian Life

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  The word “radical” comes from the Latin word radicalis, and in an earlier Latin word, radix, both meaning “root”, as in the root of a tree. The problem with being a political or social radical is, first, that pushing for the extreme makes one more and more exclusive of others and the movement fractures and, second that, by themselves, political and social movements are n...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Truth is a person.      Referenced Bible texts: 2 Timothy 4:1-5; John18:37-38a; John 14:6    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dberkedal/    YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw         **Please click or tap on Subscribe to receive not...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  We dry out when we expend more spiritual power than we can produce by trying to do what is only possible for God. The cure for spiritual dryness is streams of living water, a Biblical metaphor for the Holy Spirit. We are renewed when we open our hearts and repent, turning from our efforts to God’s.      Referenced Bible texts: Matthew 11:25-30; Matthew 5:3; Joel 2:13b  ...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  The world will be hungry for human contact and community when post-pandemic churches fully reopen. Some will only want spiritual junk food, but others will want what God has first given us: Jesus, the Bread of Life.      Referenced Bible texts: John 6:25-35    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dberkedal/    YouT...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  There is a lot of weirdness in the pandemic right now, but that’s a natural state for Christians. We gain our weirdness and our character from the wisdom and strength of God.    Referenced Bible texts: 1 Corinthians 4:9-13;  1 Corinthians 1:24-25    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dberkedal/    YouTube Channel...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  There is a connection between sin and illness, but only God knows how in individual cases. All evil comes from human rebellion against God but God draws good from the evil we experience. We can learn about ourselves and our place as part of larger communities from suffering, and we can learn the lesson we need to know whatever our condition is in this life. God’s love is...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  We find strength to continue caring for others during the pandemic, even when discouraged, by looking to God, who never gives up on us. God’s steadfast love endures forever.    Referenced Bible texts: Matthew 22:36-40; Matthew 7:12; Galatians 6:9-10; Psalm 136:1-9    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dberkedal/...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Should Christians emphasize systemic change or personal transformation? Both. But, they must be done at the same time.    Referenced Bible texts: 1 Corinthians 10:13; Amos 5:21-24    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    YouTube Channel (please share): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw      **And, please click or tap on Subscribe to...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Should Christians emphasize systemic change or personal transformation? Both. But, they must be done at the same time.    Referenced Bible texts: 1 Corinthians 10:13; Amos 5:21-24    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com    YouTube Channel (please share): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw      **And, please click or tap on Subscribe to...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  The “new normal” that has become a way to describe the conditions under which we live to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus has, for some, become a “new reality”. Normality, however, is determined by the dominant culture in which we live. Even the way we see and experience reality can be conditioned by conditions around us. “Real” reality has been created by God,...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  The “coronavirus” disease is named after the appearance of its virion (a single virus) under an electron microscope. The round ball has arms extending from it with a “crown” (or “corona”) at the end of each one. The coronavirus will not last. The only crown that matters  is the crown of thrones that was placed on Jesus’ head in mockery before he was tortured and killed t...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  What is our identity in the pandemic? The world defines our identity by our ability to consume, to earn, to be popular, to be strong, healthy, powerful and influential. These values cannot sustain us because they cannot be sustained. They are fake ID’s. God says we are loved just by being human beings, created by God in the image of God. Let us live in our true identity....

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  God has prepared a place for those who love God that is greater than anything on anyone’s bucket list (things to do before we kick the bucket). Our “bucket list” is living in response to what God has already done for us at the cross, in loving God and in loving others as ourselves.       Referenced Bible texts: Genesis 6-9; Matthew 24:36-39; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Philippi...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Our businesses do not have enough coins to make change, yet change is all around us. Change is fundamental to the Christian life. Our biggest change shortage is the shortage of changed lives. In Christ, we are a new creation.     Referenced Bible texts: 2 Corinthians 5:16-17    Our Email Address:  TheRevsDavidandSally@gmail.com

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Social media provides a means by which everyone can find a group that agrees, supports, and defends one another, while making demands that all conform. Lately, however, it seems that every post is its own group, providing a sense of belonging, identity and security in one’s beliefs at a time when people are feeling insecure about their lives. Christians offer community i...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Some people seem to want everything to return to normal without taking any of the precautions necessary to flatten the curve and help make our medical treatment facilities manageable and our treatment providers safe and sane. We can’t give up on them any more than God has given up on all of us.    Referenced Bible texts: Matthew 13:9-16; John 3:17-21; Psalm 51:10-12    R...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Despair has often been said to be the worst sin, or at least the most dangerous, because it says “Nothing can be done”. It gives up on God. The cure for despair is not a wooden optimism, but to receive the thing for which human beings were created, a living relationship with the living God. The Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing presence for good in the world, is the living wate...

Send us Fan Mail    Summary:  Blowing off illegal fireworks is an expression of liscense, not freedom. Not wearing masks in the face of the evidence that they save lives and jobs only makes the coronavirus pandemic worse and contributes to civil breakdown. Not recognizing the general character of God, the Creator, accessible to all people in God’s Creation, produces selfish behavior. We live in re...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  We are free to live our lives as we want, as long as the exercise of our freedom does not diminish the same right held by other people. We are to act responsibly for the common good, not merely our own good. Christians celebrate our dependence on God for all good things, including our salvation. We are set free from the consequences of sin, death, and the power of all th...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  Science and religion are two different ways of gaining different kinds of knowledge. We must sift through differing claims in each, but especially in religion, to get closer to the truth. We entertain ideas, including the unpopular ones, and ask questions such as, “Who do I trust?”, “Who among those seeking to influence me benefits from the outcome of my decision?”, “Is...

Send us Fan Mail Summary: The world is the way it is because human beings opposed, and continue to oppose, God. Our actions bring evil into the world. God responds with steadfast love and sacrifice, and we act in response to the acts of God in order to make the world more like the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God, a better country, in accord with God’s will, that is, God’s justice.    Referenced...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:   The Mizpah was a statement of accountability (Genesis 31:49b), but it has come to take its meaning from a broader Biblical context. That is, that we both pray for God’s presence in our lives while we are absent from one another, and we know it to be true.   This is our 25th episode, not counting #0, the Welcome and Introduction. It was what I once  thought would be our...

Send us Fan Mail Summary: The Bible is like an armillary. It must be taken from its decorative position and into the light,  put in the right position in a person’s life, and read with a mind and heart open to its correction and instruction, pointing to Something much greater than itself.     The Bible is inspired, that is God-breathed, which means that it gives life. It brings us into the presenc...

Send us Fan Mail Summary: Not much has changed in the past 3 and 1/2 months for some of us. But for most of us, everything has changed.     We have adjusted to voluntary isolation. With businesses and institutions re-opening while the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise, how do we decide when to readjust to the world’s old/new normal? One time tested guide is the Golden Rule, “Do to others...

Send us Fan Mail Summary:  How does the Church rise to reach people with the good news of reconciliation with God at the cross?     One way is to consider how the faithful followers of Jesus Christ, the Church, grew from a few dispised and frightened individuals, to a growing counter-cultural movement, and the official religion of the Roman Empire in just a few centuries.     How do Churches that...