The 5 Minute Discipleship Podcast

We live in a very loud culture. The sound of our day is filled with the voices of media, news, politics, music, movies, sports, social media, friends, teachers, spouses, and much more. We hear it all, but have we heard the voice of God? God doesn’t have a speaking problem. We have a listening problem. He is speaking, and it’s critical to hear what He is saying. Main Points: 1. I believe God is a s...

God has ordained that His Word would last forever. No man can destroy the Word of God. It remains throughout every season and every generation.  Main Points: 1. Scripture has never been more available than it is today. As of September 2020, the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages, and the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages. Now, through the means of...

Your spiritual gifts determine how God wants to use your life.  Are you willing to allow God to use your life, for His glory, to build the kingdom of God?  Are you willing to say “yes” to God? Main Points: 1. The Bible has a lot to say about spiritual gifts.  There are at least 20 of them listed in the Bible.  We don’t have time to define them all today, but you can read about them in these passag...

Every believer needs a secret place. Where is your quiet place? Where can you regularly get alone with God in prayer? I believe the impact of our public testimony and ministry is a direct result of the time spent with God in secret. Main Points: 1. If all we see is the public ministry of Jesus, we miss something very important. It’s not talked about much, but Jesus had a private, personal relation...

Out of all the prayers we pray, there is one prayer that is more difficult than all the others. It is the prayer of surrender. The prayer of submission to God is harder than all other prayers. It requires great trust in God. It demands a letting go of our control. It’s releasing the situation in God’s hands and trusting Him to meet the need as He sees best. Main Points: 1. The reason this prayer i...

Here’s the good news. Jesus is our righteousness. By placing our faith in Jesus, and believing he is the perfect, sinless son of God who died and rose again as payment for our sins, we receive His righteousness. Main Points: 1. No matter how many good things we do, no matter how consistent our moral behavior, we all come up short of God’s righteous standard. It’s important to see that our good wor...

Where is our confidence? It is not in ourselves, and it is not in our prayers. Our confidence is in God. This is where we place our faith. Our faith is not in ourselves, in our prayers, or even in our faith. Our faith and confidence is in God.  Main Points: 1. I want to encourage you today to pray with boldness. Not a brash boldness that orders God around. After all, we must remember that prayer i...

After his departure, Jesus would send his followers a Helper. This helper is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives within us and though we cannot see Him, we can feel him and we sense he is working in our lives to make us more like Jesus. Main Points: 1. Although we cannot see the Holy Spirit, we should be able to sense His work in our lives changing us to be more like Jesus. 2. Truth has never b...

Today, you and I can work on our foundation. In fact, we never stop working. We are to keep growing in God’s grace. We continue to pursue a closer relationship with God. We go deeper in His Word. We grow in our faith. We use our gifts to serve God. We obey His Word. All of this contributes to a strong foundation for our lives. Main Points: 1. We are all building a spiritual house. What foundation...

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus says we are to seek God, but he goes on to say that we are to seek him “first.” This is a matter of priority. We all seek something. We might seek opportunity, position, resources, and open doors. We could seek pleasure, enjoyment, comfort, success, and fulfillment. We might seek friendship, family, and connection. We all seek something, but Jesus said that for those who wou...

Your story is one of your greatest ministry tools. I meet people who feel they have nothing to offer the Lord. In their minds, they feel incapable of serving in some ministry. Yet, every one of us has a story. It’s a God story. It’s a story of how we met Jesus, the circumstances of your salvation, and how Jesus has changed your life. Main Points: 1. When I think of the explosive growth of the New...

The author of the Book of Hebrews makes the case that we simply can’t stay with the basic, elementary teachings about faith and spiritual growth. We must move forward to a deeper and more mature understanding of our life in Christ. This makes sense, doesn’t it? Main Points: 1. Here’s an important truth: God wants you to grow spiritually. He wants you to mature and develop a strong faith. He wants...

Jesus paid our debt on the cross. He bore our sins upon his body. He suffered and died in our place, as our substitute. Jesus took the shame, condemnation, and pain we were to bear. He carried our cross and paid the ultimate price. It was a very high price to pay for our forgiveness. Main Points: 1. Forgiveness comes at a cost. If you forgive someone, you bear the cost rather than insisting that t...

There is a struggle that all of us face , and it is the struggle of submitting to God’s will. Why is this so difficult for us? Because we really want to do our will. We have our own desires, dreams, goals, and ambitions, and often these desires conflict with God’s will for our lives. Main Points: 1. But I have discovered that the more we know Jesus and the closer we are to Him in relationship, the...

Joy in the Biblical context is not an emotion.  Joy is an attitude of the heart.  It is not necessarily based on something positive happening.  Joy is something that lasts; happiness is temporary.  When happiness fades away, joy remains.  Joy is something God deposits into us through the Holy Spirit.   Main Points: 1. In these verses, Jesus actually gives us the key to living our lives with joy. W...

There is one key that is absolutely necessary for a relationship to be restored. It requires forgiveness. I’ve never seen a broken relationship restored without forgiveness.  Main Points: 1. A relationship can break down from neglect.  A relationship can break down from conflict.  A relationship can break down from misunderstanding.  The world is literally filled with broken relationships.  We see...

Loving our neighbor is not simply a good idea or an admirable ethic; Jesus called it the second greatest commandment. We first love God, and second, we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Main Points: 1. The idea of loving our neighbor is beautiful to think about, so long as it remains an idea. But the concrete reality of loving our neighbor, the difficulties and the challenges, strips the be...

What a tragedy it is when there is a loss of spiritual identity.  I believe you can lose your true identity, give it away, forget it, waste it, or change it for better or worse.  It’s also possible that some individuals go through life searching for their true identity and never find it. Main Points: 1. If you don’t know who you are, then you are vulnerable to other people telling you who you are....

Can I ask you an important question? What do you do when you become discouraged? You need an answer to this question. You need a plan, and you need it now. Discouragement comes to us all. Everyone will face it. Everyone will battle it. Main Points: 1. Discouragement will make you want to quit. Maybe even right now, as you listen to this podcast episode, you have been fighting the feelings of wanti...

From scripture, we come to see that love is more than words, feelings, and emotions. Love is action. True love calls for us to do something, and also to refrain from some things.  Main Points: 1. Love, when truly demonstrated, is not just an emotion expressed to family and close friends. Love is seen the clearest when it is given to those we think don’t deserve it and those who don’t expect it.  2...

The Bible has a lot to say about time. The most important thing it says is something we know already—that our time is limited. Time can be used or wasted, it can be invested or squandered, but either way, once used, it can never be regained. Time matters because we have such a limited supply.  Main Points: 1. We always have plenty of time to do everything we need to do. This means that all of my t...

I’m convinced that most of us listening today would say we have been blessed by God. In fact, many would say that we have been greatly blessed and blessed beyond what they deserve. God has been so good to us. So what do we do with our blessings? Main Points: 1. Jesus teaches us that the blessing is found in the giving. The blessing is found in the serving. The blessing is found in ministering to t...

There is no truth more fundamental in all of God’s Word than this truth. God is for us. God is not against us. God is not neutral towards us. Because of Jesus Christ, once and for all, the question is settled. God is for us. Main Points: 1. Paul’s question is, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” In other words, who can really fight against us, who can defeat us, if God is on our side? 2. Na...

We should desire to be like Jesus in our values, beliefs, character, and behavior. The only way we can be imitators of God is that we would follow him. We must come to know Him. We must learn from Him, and it’s only then that we will know what to imitate. Main Points: 1. In some ways, we cannot be like God. You and I will never be all-knowing or all-powerful. We will never be omnipresent. We canno...

When we come to Jesus and make Him our Savior and Lord, he begins to work in our lives and strips away old ways of living that conflict with scripture and dishonor the Lord. Through the Word of God, He teaches us a new way of living. As we break with the old sinful patterns and habits, we form new ones that please God, but also give joy. Main Points: 1. It’s through the power of the Holy Spirit th...