Right Start Radio with Pastor Jim Custer

"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks," and out of the cupboards of our lives, we give. We've been watching the Holy Spirit's work in the book of Acts, and today we'll focus on an incident involving Peter. He's going to respond to the need of an unbeliever, and he'll have to give the man not what he asks for, but what he, Peter, has in stock. And the question will come back to us: W...

The greatest promise, and the greatest miracle: We'll talk about both today! It would be hard to find a more magnificent pledge than the one given through the prophet Joel: "Then everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." The simplicity, the scope, the lack of fine print on that promise are stunning. It's the subject of Peter's first sermon. Luke has given us highlights in Acts,...

More impressive than the foreign tongues was the fisherman's theology! Time ran out on yesterday's program just as we had read about the sound of the violent wind in Acts 2. Today Jim will talk about the flames, and the foreign languages that the Holy Spirit brought at Pentecost. But if you're looking for the mightiest miracle, keep listening to that unschooled fisherman, Peter. Listen to Right St...

Meet the Holy Spirit! If the third Person of the Trinity seems veiled in mystery, that's understandable. After all, there's plenty about God the Father and God the Son in the Bible, and not very much directly about God the Holy Spirit. That's all the more reason to read deeply and carefully the verses that we do have about Him. And the book of Acts is a focal point of those. Some have noticed that...

We can only "work out" what the Spirit has dropped in! "Power from on high!" That's one of the phrases Jesus used to predict the arrival of the Holy Spirit to His followers. And sometimes when we read Acts, chapter 2, we can be wowed by the demonstration of that power. But God's purpose isn't just to amaze us. It's to use that energy to transform us from the inside out. From Acts, Pastor Jim has t...

Some profess Christ without the Spirit of Christ. The "missing ingredient" for many folks today is the same thing the Apostles didn't have... for a while. Jesus had told them not to try to fulfill the Great Commission on their own, but to "wait for the Promise of the Father." That promise was power, in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Today we begin a new series in the book of Acts. As distant as fi...

Reader discernment is advised. In the concluding portion of our concluding message on the Gospel of Mark, we have some challenges: What to do with the content, and what to do with the text itself. If modern scholarship casts doubt on the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20, how can we tell what to trust? Apart from that question, what about those "signs" mentioned in verse 17? And how do we proceed if th...

The problem with signs. "And these signs will accompany those who believe...," Jesus said. Or did He? We're pretty sure Mark didn't write the last section of the Gospel of Mark. "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign" - we know the Lord said that. "The Jews ask for signs," Paul informs us, but they don't understand or accept the proofs God has provided. What are we to think about mi...

We know the evidence for Jesus; what's the evidence for you? We're confident that the Lord was raised to new life because of the Empty Tomb, because of the eyewitnesses who died rather than change their story, because of the changed lives and the changed world. But do you and I have any evidence that we've come back from the dead, to "walk in newness of life?" What is our resurrection story? How a...

Maybe we can't know what the Resurrection is, but we can see what it does. It's a weird thing about life: People argue about when human life begins, or how all life began, but we have to admit that we can't define it. We can only see its effects. Maybe it's the same way with the special kind of life we call "resurrection." That would explain why our friend Mark ends his Gospel not with a discussio...

Jesus did not die for Himself, and He did not rise for Himself! Jim has given this message the provocative title, He's Alive - So What? "What does that mean to me?" as we're always asking. Well, a lot. Because the Lord's resurrection wasn't the only one of its kind, just the first of its kind. We might call it a prototype. The Apostles used phrases like, "firstborn among many brethren," and "first...