Real Life Church Podcast

There’s more to giving than a number on your budget or balance sheet. While money is a tough subject for many people it’s precisely why Jesus and His disciples addressed money so often. Money,… well, it’s one of the biggest hinderances to fully following Jesus. It’s a hurdle people often trip over. Giving has always been a heart issues, not a money issue.

Being a part of a church family is a lot like being a part of a physical family, it works best when everyone’s working together. And even though there are a lot of different ways we could serve we’ve each been gifted by God for the way in which we do serve. But don’t be caught off guard, if you’re a part of the Kingdom you’ve got a part to play in the Kingdom.

When it comes to faith Jesus made the first move, He loved you first. As a follower of King Jesus the rest of our lives are spent trying to look a little more like Him every day - and that starts in our very own family. While we're not responsible for the faith of our family, we are responsible for living out our faith first, in our family and then the rest of the world.

David's prayer of repentance ends with his recognition that God isn't concerned with how many sacrifices David has made but whether or not his heart is surrendered. No amount of sacrifice can overcome an unsurrendered heart.

Following David’s affair with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah he’s confronted with his sin by the prophet Nathan. Instead of rejecting Nathan or refusing to face his sin, David repents before God; he turns from wrong and starts doing right. But there’s a problem, he can’t be good enough on his own, he needs God’s help.

Terry Deaver, our pastor of people and prayer, brings part 2 of our Prayer series looking at Psalm 51:3-6. David comes to God in prayer following not just a sexually immoral act, but his murder of Uriah. Our assumption is that David should be afraid of God after his sin, instead he cries out to the God of steadfast love and mercy. When we pray we need to understand who we are and what we’ve done a...

When King David penned his prayer, recorded in Psalm 51, he was at one of the lowest spiritual points of his life. After a moral failure with Bathsheba that led to a mortal failure, i.e. Uriah, David was in the thick of it. It’s here that he writes Psalm 51, from the depths of remorse and failure, seeking forgiveness he did not deserve. His first few sentences though will set the stage for the res...

For 20 years Esau has thought Jacob was dead and Jacob has learned what it’s like to be cheated out of things you believed were yours. Now Jacob comes back home to the land of promise to take his position as the leader of the family of promise but with a new way to look at life and a newfound trust in the God of promise.

Jacob has always gotten a bad rap. Treated like a cheater and underhanded because of something he did at birth. But what if the examples we use to frame him as a cheater were actually times he was trying to prove he wasn't? What if he saw things differently from others and we missed it? Jacob's story proves that God doesn't see you for you've been, but for who He created you to become.

Most of what we know about Isaac comes from Genesis 26 and the very first thing we’re told is that as Isaac takes up the mantel of God’s promise from his father, Abraham, there is a famine in Canaan but the author tells us it’s not the same famine that happened when Abraham first arrived in Canaan 40 years ago. Now, none of us would have thought is was the same famine, so obviously the author is t...

Isaac’s near death experience was tough on everyone and left their family in shambles. But Abraham continued to trust the story God was writing and his responsibility to his son, Isaac. So he sends his servant Eliezer on a journey to find a wife for Isaac. Abraham shows great trust in God, Eliezer tries to trick God by concocting a ridiculous test and in the end Rebekah shows great trust herself....

God never intended for Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, but God intend to reveal more about who He was and who Abraham was through that test. Of course, it’s a pretty incredible picture of Jesus and the Father and Son who chose to go through with the sacrifice that Abraham and Isaac didn’t have to complete. But the story is MUCH more about who Abraham and Isaac were than what God was...

Abraham had a promise from God but what he didn’t have was any progress toward that promise, for like, years. So after a while Abraham and his wife Sarah decide to push their way into what God had promised.

Abraham has just begun to follow God and his faith and trust in God seems incredible but Abraham has received exactly zero of God’s promises. So Abraham demands some collateral from God but only manages to dig a hole he can’t get out of.

We know Abraham wasn’t perfect, but why does God seem to bless his bumbles? Does God really bless cheaters or is something else going on here?

Humanity tossed God’s plan aside in the garden and no matter how hard God tried humanity kept running from Him instead of toward Him. So God chose a family, the family of Abraham to be his partners on the planet. But what was it about Abraham that set him a part from everyone else? What made Abraham a good choice for God’s partner on the planet?

As David looked over his life he saw how God protected and provided for him. It's why David expected God would continue to be with him even in his present valley of darkness and it's why David trusted the promises of God for his future.

The shepherd never leaves the sheep when the sheep are in the valley the shepherd is right in the middle of them calling to them and leading them out of the darkness and into the light from the danger, not from the destination.

David had messed up royally and often. So when he prays to the God who leads him to right paths he does so knowing that he’s been on plenty of wrong paths. David remembered that God had led Israel through the desert for 40 years providing and protecting His people. David trusted that if God had done it back then He’d could do it again.

For ancient Israel, and for us, life is a desert - a few moments of plenty and promise separated by long spans of hunger, thirst and exposure. God promises to lead us to good things, life-giving things so if we're not experiencing those good things whose to blame? Us or Him?

As the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the early Church progresses The Gospel is put into practice in real life (IRL). We see it play out just as we learned it as Peter preaches the first Gospel message and guess what?! He starts with the Gospel Declarations and as the people begin to believe he moves on to the Gospel responses. And as the Gospel was presented people began to respond.

The book of Acts begins by going back to the 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension. We’re given more information about what Jesus told His disciples about what God was doing, what they were to do and what they could expect. The Gospel Jesus proclaimed (and the disciples would preach) was beginning to be realized!