The 5 Minute Discipleship Podcast

I was thinking this morning about the faithfulness of God. God does so many amazing things and often we fail to recognize them.  Every day he is the same. Without fail God puts on a display of his power every morning as the sun rises from the east.  The sun is 865,000 miles thick, 1.3 million times heavier than earth, and blazes at one million degrees.  God has placed it at just the right location...

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were blessed to take our first trip to Israel with a group from our church. It was a life changing trip to see the Bible come to life. One day we drove to the Dead Sea and as our bus traveled the road through the dry, arid Judean Wilderness, I thought of a verse in Psalm 63 where David said, “O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts fo...

Fred Rogers, of the television program, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, took courses on how to preach while he was in college. During the semester he was attending a class on homiletic. On weekend he and his wife took a trip out of town with a couple of friends. On Sunday morning the visited a little church together. During the sermon he kept counting every mistake he thought the preacher was making....

When I was in Bible college, I was taking a class on personal evangelism. One of our assignments was to write out our personal story of how we placed our faith in Jesus and how Christ has changed our lives. I remember the professor challenging us to be prepared to share Christ. He said, if we would prepare ourselves, God will give us opportunities to share with others. Why would God use people who...

When I was a teenager, I read the biography of missionary Mark Buntain. Mark was a missionary to Calcutta, India. In addition to sharing the message of Christ, Mark planted church, established bible colleges, built a first class hospital, and fed thousands of hungry people every day. Once when Mark was in America preaching at churches and raising support for the work in India, he stayed overnight...

Most of us have at one time or another, dreamed about what it would be like if a distant relative left us a fortune.  We have sat around and asked one another, “What would you do if you won the lottery?”  What would you do with all that money?  Oh, how we love to dream! In verses 16-21, Jesus tells the story: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘Wh...

Once again this week, I read the Christmas story from Luke chapter two. I’ve read this story hundreds of times, but it never gets old.  I’m struck with the journey Joseph and Mary had to make to Nazareth. Luke tells us the story. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was go...

I read the tragic story of a young woman who had committed suicide.  She was found dead in her apartment after self-inflicted wounds.  On the outside, no one would really know that she was struggling.  She was not on drugs, she was not an alcoholic.  She was not on welfare.  She had never been to jail.  She was not a social outcast.  She was respectable.  She had a career.  She jogged.  Prior to C...

I’ll never forget a quote by Billy Graham. He  once said, “Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.” This quote has stayed with me for quite some time. James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” Sometimes our problem is that we haven’t asked God at all, but another problem is that we have stopped asking him. We started out well, but along the w...

I remember buying my first car. I had worked hard all summer and saved my money. I noticed a guy near our church had a car out front with a for sale sign on it. My Dad and I went to check it out. He wanted a $1,000 for the car, but with my great negotiation skills, I was able to get him down to $950. It was a 1979 Datsun Station Wagon. The color was yellow. And the car was mine. I noticed though a...

The message of Christmas is that God came down to be born as a human. By being fully God and fully man, Jesus was able to become our sacrificial savior. The doctrine of the virgin birth is as essential today as it ever was. The Virgin Birth falls on one of the great fault lines of the Christian faith. It rests on the “great divide” that separates those who believe the Bible is God’s Word, and thos...

It’s amazing how if we don’t want to do something, we can find an excuse. And that’s even true when it comes to following Jesus. There is a cost of following Jesus, and its not a price that everyone wants to pay. We don’t purchase our salvation through our efforts. Jesus has already done that for us with his sacrificial death on the cross, but following Him will cost us time, effort, resources, co...

Have you ever heard of a guy named Ronald Wayne?  Probably not. On April 1, 1976 he  helped start a little company with a guy named Steve Jobs. You know that name. The company was called Apple. His job was to oversee mechanical engineering and documentation, all in exchange for a 10 percent stake in the business. 12 days later, he became nervous about the debt the new company had taken on and sold...

King Solomon said in Proverbs 27:17 - “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Anyone who has ever owned a knife understands this proverb. When iron becomes blunt, another piece of iron is used to sharpen it. That process necessarily in­volves heat, friction, and very close contact. There’s an old say, “You can’t sharpen an ax from a distance.” The New Testament talks a lot about our...

Understanding scripture and being biblically literate is a problem in today’s church. Ed Stetzer wrote a blog post on this topic. He said… Both inside and outside the church, there is a problem. Non-Christians don’t have even the general idea of the Bible they once did. Christians are not seeing the life change that real Bible engagement brings. The result is a nation in spiritual free fall… There...

In the year 1173 an Italian architect began work on an eight story bell tower. The tower would be his most famous project.  A few years into construction it became apparent, there was a big problem. During construction of the second floor it was noticeable. The tower was leaning. The tower had an inadequate foundation due to soil that was too soft on one side. It took 176 years for the eight story...

In 2013 a new word was added to the Oxford English dictionary. It was the word selfie. Most of us have posted them all over social media. This word is so familiar and entrenched in our day to day life that we have trouble remembering what life was like before social media. Think about what a selfie really is: a picture, perfectly crafted to present the very best image of ourselves. We control the...

When it comes to Scripture, we have something far more reliable than the guarantee of a government—we have the promises of Almighty God that His Word is perfect and pure. God promised to preserve His Word for us. That means that, according to the promise of God, we can have complete faith that every word in the Bible is there on purpose.  Proverbs 30:5 say, “Every word of God is pure; He is a shie...

Does God still perform miracles today? Here are some of the objections I hear: God only did miracles in the Bible days to prove His existence. The days of miracles are over. Miracles are just natural phenomena that are misunderstood by uneducated people. If science cannot explain it, I don't believe it Unexplained wonders are simply coincidences What do you believe about miracles?  Where do I...

It’s amazing how much work ethic we have if we know the boss is watching. But whether or not our employer is watching, we know our God is always watching. As Christians, we do what we do, not just for a paycheck and benefits, but even the way we work should bring glory and honor to God. If we live out this truth, it will completely transform how we work. I believe out of all the people on the plan...

My wife and I had been praying for a family member. Our specific prayer was, “God, would you show her that you love her?” She was moving to a new city and we met her there to help her move into her new home. That night we all stayed at a hotel. There was another woman staying at the hotel. We didn’t know her, but that morning she had prayed and God spoke to her heart to get out a $20 bill and writ...

In the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl wrote about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.  “Everything was taken away from Jewish prisoners. They were stripped of their clothing, their pictures, and their personal belongings. The Nazi captors even took away their names and gave them numbers. Frankl was number 119,104. But Frankle said there was one thing th...

I’ve always though the scariest verses in the Bible were found in Matthew 7:22-23 where Jesus says, “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Listen again to these words of Jesus….“I never knew you.” These...

 A farmer sitting on his porch noticed a highway-department truck pull over on the shoulder of the road. A man got out, dug a sizable hole in the ditch, and then got back in the vehicle. A few minutes later, the other occupant of the truck got out, filled up the hole, and got back in the truck. Then they drove forward on the shoulder about 50 feet and repeated the same process…digging, waiting…ref...

Download a free copy of "25 Recommended Resources for Spiritual Growth. I think of Jesus on the night before his crucifixion. He could have been overwhelmed with worry, anxiety, grief, and sorrow, but he wasn’t. He knew what He was facing, yet He still took time to comfort His disciples with the message of peace: Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give...