The Daily Grace Podcast

Polio and its lingering effects. Loss of a child due to a doctor’s mistake. Infidelity and a broken marriage. Post-Polio Syndrome. These are all hard things for any one person to bear. It’s no wonder Vaneetha Risner titled her memoir “Walking Through Fire” and identifies as a sufferer. Yet, it’s in and through her suffering where she testifies to the goodness and nearness of God. In this conversat...

Liturgy. You may have heard this word before. Maybe you’ve been to a liturgical service where the congregation followed a particular order of events. Or maybe your church incorporates liturgical prayers where everyone says a written prayer out loud together. Or maybe you’ve seen some written prayers on Instagram. Kayla Craig is a beautiful voice on many different platforms, and she offers wonderfu...

It’s the holidays! Twinkle lights are everywhere. You’re thinking about gifts and holiday outings. You log onto social media and see a ton of gift guides. You see perfectly curated photos of families at pumpkin patches and Christmas tree farms. Suddenly, you feel something: you feel discontentment. Discontentment can be a struggle any time of the year, but it definitely can be magnified during the...

Your theology matters. Jesus has called you to be a doer of His Word, not just a hearer. This requires us to have a “head knowledge” in order to know what Jesus has called us to do, but it doesn’t stop there. We need this knowledge to sink into our hearts in order to change us and impact how we live. This is how our theology fuels our doxology, or our worship of God in our everyday lives! If we’re...

Be grateful. Do not grumble. We know this. Yet, many of us struggle. Many of us would say that gratitude doesn’t come naturally to us. Not all the time, anyway. Too often, we find ourselves wrestling with ingratitude. We find ourselves grumbling. But when we grumble, what’s really going on? More often than not, there’s a lot going on inside of our hearts. Maybe it’s discontentment; comparison; env...

Shame is hard. Shame around sex and sexuality is really hard. Some of us feel shame from our own sexual sin. Others of us feel shame from others who have sinned against us sexually. Some of us grew up in Christian households that didn’t handle the topic of sex and sexuality well so we’ve experienced shame about sex even within the context of marriage. This is all hard. How do we develop a biblical...

Stories are powerful. We crave stories. They move us and impact us. Isn’t it interesting how God communicates His plan of redemption through the STORY of Scripture? He is the master Storyteller! And as His image bearers, we are also storytellers. We each have a story. Yet, many of us don’t know how to communicate our stories to others. We don’t realize how our stories can impact how we share the g...

Can people really change? From little quirks to deep-seated issues, we’re asking the question that many of us may have asked in secret: is it possible for someone to truly change? Maybe we’ve asked it of ourselves. We keep doing the same thing (that we don’t want to do), over and over again. We may think to ourselves, “I’m not sure if I can ever grow out of that and change for the better.” It’s ea...

You are forming habits all the time, whether passively or actively. So in a way, your life is a compilation of your habits. The question is: what kind of habits are we forming? And can we actually form habits that fortify our faith and help us grow in Christlikeness? Many of us hear the word “habit”, and we apply the concept to things like working out or washing our faces before bed. Or maybe we p...

Raise your hand if you skip genealogies in your Bible reading! We get it. These hard-to-pronounce names are just hard. We are tempted to skim past them. We know they’re important because God, in His infinite wisdom, included them, but we’re not sure why. To put it simply, genealogies trace God’s faithfulness and promises throughout history. Each name tells us something about God! And if we look cl...

We’ve all heard the phrase “forgive and forget”. It’s a nice principle, right? When we wrong someone and seek forgiveness, we would also really like it if that person completely forgot about the offense. But when we turn the situation around, we’re not so sure. Especially if it’s a deep wound and we feel all the things, extending forgiveness is hard. Forgetting the offense entirely seems to be nea...

There is a collective weariness that we’re facing right now. Do you feel it? The world, at large, has been facing some particularly devastating blows. Our personal lives are undoubtedly littered with things that are worth grieving. We are so tired; we deeply long for rest. The question is, where are we turning? In today’s episode, we are joined by Emily Lex. Emily is an artist and the author of Fr...

It’s that time of year: we answer YOUR questions! Hard questions like: Do people live in hell? How can we tell people in our church that they’re getting away from Christ without offending them? Dealing with a lot of trauma; what does God say about that? To lighthearted questions: What’s Joanna’s hair routine? What’s Stefanie’s favorite duty station? If we could relive any time in our lives, what w...

Kindness is one of the fruits of the Spirit, but it’s not talked about as much as some of the others. Is it because it’s just so simple? Are Christians just supposed to be nice to others, and that’s the extent of this fruit? Or is there more to biblical kindness? Today, we explore what it means for believers to show kindness to others. We talk about what biblical kindness can look like, and how we...

Infertility is so hard. It’s a tender topic marked by deep pain and sorrow. It can be confusing because what is being withheld is good; children are a gift from God! Statistics tell us that so many people suffer from infertility, and we may ask ourselves, “Why?” How can we understand why some people suffer from infertility from a theological perspective? How can the Lord comfort us in this deep pa...

All throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, we read that God’s people should “fear the Lord”. We also are told in many verses to “fear not” or “do not fear”. Fear is a hard emotion for us to understand as it is; the differences in these verses can make it extra confusing! But because the fear of the Lord is a topic woven throughout all of Scripture, we know it’s important. So we have to as...

It’s one thing to see the value of the local church, and it’s another thing to faithfully attend and invest in a covenant community week after week after week. That takes commitment; it takes time and effort. And there are many life seasons and circumstances where we might ask ourselves, “Is church really worth it? Do we have to go every week in person?” Especially in our digital age where we can...

Can true believers have doubt? Or does doubt cancel out faith? Doubt can be scary. It can cause us to self-isolate because we’re afraid of what others may think of us. Maybe we’re afraid of putting words to our doubts because we’re not sure what they mean about our faith. Struggling with doubt can also bring about shame. So how do we work through our doubts well? How do we help others in their str...

We get jealous. In our homes; in our work; in our social circles, both online and offline. Our jealousy is often akin to envy. We desire something we don’t have. But what about the jealousy of God? Throughout Scripture, we see it say our God is jealous. His name is “Jealous”. What do we make of this? More often than not, our jealousy is a sinful jealousy. But God, being holy, is jealous in a right...

Deconstruction is a hot term, but what does it even mean? Does deconstruction always lead to deconversion? Or can people “deconstruct” their faith and actually reconstruct their faith to be stronger and more biblical? Is deconstruction a good or bad thing? What if we’re wrestling with our beliefs and wanting to deconstruct? How should we go about it? What if we know someone who is questioning or r...

We all complain, right? So what do we do with verses like “do all things without grumbling” (Phil 2:14)? Does this mean we’re supposed to gloss over our frustrations and just smile all the time? Or is there a way to complain without sinning? Today, we talk about the difference between godly lament and sinful complaining. The pattern of lament actually includes complaint; in our lament, God uses ou...

We’re all busy, and yet, we’re all called to discipleship. Yes, what we see in Scripture is that disciples make disciples. Discipleship is not just for those in vocational ministry; it’s not just something “super” Christians do. It is something we are all called to pursue! Maybe we know there are many benefits of these types of relationships, but we don’t know how to pursue them in our busy lives....

What comes to mind when you hear “spiritual warfare”? Are you apathetic? Are you consumed by it? Are you confused? As believers, we need to have a biblical approach to this very real spiritual war that we’re all facing. We need to go to God’s Word to see what it tells us about Satan and his demons and how they work in our world. Scripture calls us to be prepared to engage in battle, and we need to...

The gospel embodies the heart of Christ, but these are the actual words Jesus offered to describe His own heart: “I am gentle and lowly in heart”. Jesus is telling His people, then and now, that He is tender, welcoming, and accessible. And good news: His heart extends to us today, in the face of our own sin and suffering. Understanding the heart of Christ impacts how we live. It confronts our sham...

Does a peacemaker create peace by avoiding contentious issues? Do they keep silent and remain passive in order to maintain the peace? In Scripture, we see that believers are called to be peacemakers; however, we see that this is actually not a call to silence, avoidance, and passivity. In the Bible, peace is not just the absence of conflict; it’s the presence of Jesus. So we don’t pretend everythi...