Pursuing God with Gene Appel

Legacy isn't something you plan at the end of your life. You're building it right now, through the values you hold, the patterns you model, and the example you set for the people coming behind you. The way you handle money, faith, and relationships is already shaping the next generation, whether you're aware of it or not. Before you can change what you're passing down, you have...

At some point, more stops satisfying. The most content wealthy people aren't chasing the next car, the next home, or the next milestone. They've reached a different conclusion: that affluence is something to steward, not accumulate, and that generosity does more for your peace than any purchase ever could. Today, we close out the week on financial worry with Paul's challenge to all...

It turns out some of the most content people aren't the most comfortable ones. Those living with humble means often develop something the affluent struggle to find: a genuine dependence on God, a willingness to lean on community, and a heart that stays soft toward others in need. In Philippians 4, Paul says he learned contentment in every situation, and today we explore what that actually loo...

Contentment isn't a personality trait, it's something you learn. In Philippians 4, Paul writes from prison with a peace that has nothing to do with his circumstances, because he discovered that financial security isn't underwritten by your bank account. It's underwritten by God's. When Jesus moves to the center of your life, the grip of money worry begins to loosen. What w...

Whether you're barely getting by or financially comfortable, money worries have a way of finding you. The poor fear not having enough. The wealthy fear losing what they have. And those in the middle are often just one paycheck away from the edge. Today, we look at why financial anxiety isn't really about a dollar amount and what Jesus said in Matthew 6 that cuts through the pressure at e...

Financial stress doesn't just drain your bank account, it drains your relationships, your sleep, and your peace of mind. Whether you're carrying debt, facing job uncertainty, or just struggling to keep up, worry has a way of consuming what it promises to protect. Today we look at what Jesus actually said about financial anxiety, and why the answer isn't a better budget, it's a...

Solomon identified five financial traps that quietly keep people stuck. Impulsiveness, buying something you don't need because the deal seemed too good to pass up. Stubbornness, refusing to follow a plan because pride gets in the way. Laziness, skipping responsibility and hoping things work out anyway. Self-indulgence, spending everything on yourself until there's nothing left. And craft...

Income goes up and spending rises to meet it. Nicer restaurants, newer cars, better vacations, upgraded everything. None of it is wrong in isolation. But when the love of comfort quietly becomes the organizing principle of your finances, you end up with a life that looks successful from the outside and feels precarious from the inside. Solomon warned about this in Proverbs: whoever loves pleasure...

Most people want to be generous. They see a need, feel the pull, and wish they could do something. But the money isn't there when the moment arrives. Not because their hearts are closed but because their margins are too thin. Savings changes that. When a friend hits a crisis, when someone in your church loses a job and needs help with rent, the person with reserves can respond. They can say y...

Flocks don't disappear all at once. One sheep wanders. Another gets sick. The pasture gets overgrazed. And if the shepherd isn't paying attention, he looks up one day, and the herd is half what it used to be, with no single moment he can point to when it went wrong. That is exactly how financial erosion works. It's rarely one catastrophic decision. It's the slow bleed of unexam...

In 1923, some of the wealthiest men in the world gathered in a Chicago hotel, collectively controlling more than the entire US Treasury. Twenty-seven years later, two had died penniless, two had been imprisoned, and three had taken their own lives. They knew how to make money. None of them ever had enough to make them happy. That tells us the question "why don't I have enough?" goes...

Romans 8:28 says God works all things together for good for those who have been called according to His purpose. We reach for the comfort of that first part and skip past the foundation of it. The calling isn't incidental to the promise. It's what makes the promise possible. You were foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Five links, no gaps. And your calling sits righ...

Moses had his doubts. Isaiah felt completely unworthy standing in the presence of God. Gideon couldn't believe the call was for him. And yet God used every one of them. Because the call was never a question of whether the project could be done. It was a question of whether their faith would let God do it through them. Doubts and hesitation are normal. But too often they become a smoke screen....

Gideon couldn't believe the call was for him. His tribe was the weakest. He was the least in his family. And God didn't argue with any of that. He didn't say you're wrong, you're actually quite capable. He simply said I will be with you. The issue was never Gideon's résumé. It was God's presence. That is the consistent logic of calling throughout Scripture. He do...

Elijah had just called down fire from heaven. And then he collapsed under a broom tree and told God he had nothing left. God's response wasn't a rebuke. He let him sleep, sent an angel to feed him, and said the journey is too much for you. And when God finally spoke, it wasn't in the earthquake or the fire. It was in the still small voice. The wilderness stripped away the noise. The...

Ephesians 2:10 says we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He prepared in advance for us to do. That word handiwork in the original Greek is poiema, the root of our word poem. A masterpiece. You are not an accident. You are not a rough draft. Built into the very design of who you are is a purpose God prepared before you ever took your first breath. So if you&ap...

On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and quoted the prophet Joel: in the last days God will pour out His Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Of all the texts he could have chosen, he chose that one. And when the Holy Spirit came, women were in that room and filled with the Spirit alongside the men. The early church gave roles based on gifts, not gender. Priscilla taught...

Some men carry an arrogance about women that is simply wrong. Others leave all the spiritual work to the women in their lives and call it fine. And many women have spent years carrying false messages that labeled them small, insignificant, and second-class. None of it lines up with Jesus. He was the most powerful man who ever lived, and he used that power to lift women up, not hold them down. That...

Rabbis in Jesus' day taught that it was better to burn the Torah than teach it to a woman. Jewish men prayed, thanking God they hadn't been made a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. A devout rabbi wouldn't even speak to a woman in public. And into that world steps Jesus. He speaks with a Samaritan woman at a well. He travels with women. He counts them among his closest friends. And then...

Before sin entered the world and corrupted everything, God made something clear. He created human beings in His own image, male and female, blessed them both, and told them both to fill the earth and rule over creation together. Not the man over the woman. Both of them over creation. Co-regents. And that word helper used to describe the woman? It's used throughout the Old Testament to refer t...

In some churches today, women still can't serve communion. In the church Gene grew up in, men made the financial and leadership decisions while women washed the baptism robes and decorated for Christmas. Many women, not just from the culture around them but from the church itself, have received the message over and over that they are small, insignificant, and second-class. That message is not...

When John Fawcett loaded his possessions onto a moving cart to leave the small congregation he had served for seven years, he began his goodbyes. And then it was too much. He unloaded the cart and stayed. He never left. He died there fifty-four years later and wrote a hymn that captured what he felt: Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. Joined in heart, and the hope to meet ag...

Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive. Most of us would nod along quickly, but very few of us have actually built our lives around it. The word blessed here doesn't just mean happy. It means deeply satisfied, living in the fullness of what you were created for. The giver is the one living the richest life. Paul never stopped being concerned for the Ephesian elders, even while...

Four donkeys shared a pasture but kept to their own corners, eyeing each other with suspicion. Then the weather turned foul. Cold, wind-driven rain with nowhere to shelter except with each other. By morning, all four were huddled together. In a crisis, mutual jealousy and strangeness were forgotten. We need that kind of breakthrough in the church, but we shouldn't need a crisis to get there....

Paul said to the Ephesian elders: "You know how I lived when I was with you." That statement only works if you've actually spent real time together. Over three years, they had come to know him as a servant, a teacher, an evangelist, and a sacrificer. And he knew them just as deeply. That kind of mutual knowledge is what made their farewell so emotionally raw. It's also what mak...