The Surge Podcast

What do I do when I do the right thing and things get worse?

How do I respond when my world blows up?

How do we navigate a world where people are constantly harming us?   Text is James 2:8-13. We zero in on the importance of playing the mercy we’ve been shown in Christ forward to others who don’t deserve it any more than we did. Ouch!  The warning is that, if we don’t, God won’t be merciful to us.  In other words, our salvation comes with God’s expectation that we know we should show mercy to—i.e....

Isn’t it normal and right to have favorite food, favorite teams, favorite clothes, and favorite people?   Text is James 12:1-9. It’s all about the horrors of favoritism. God doesn’t play favorites: he sees us all equal in our sin, all equal in our salvation, all equal in our worth. So don’t let your preferences become prejudices, don’t compare and keep score. Remember that in addition to loving Go...

What impresses God and what doesn’t?         James 1:26-27 is the text. God hates external piety with a poisonous tongue, angry bickering over lesser theology, rituals devoid of spiritual reality, man-made rules, and fear and isolation from the world. He’s impressed with us helping the helpless and living a life that’s set apart to Him,

Can being a Christian improve your luck?   When we say someone is “lucky” what we usually mean is that they are fortunate. The biblical term for that is “blessed.” James 1:21-25 gives us some great insight on improving our odds at being lucky, fortunate, or blessed: get rid of the crud we know about; get more insight from God’s word because there’s probably more stuff you need to change you didn’t...

If the bible is ok with expressing righteous anger, why am I getting called out for my temper?     It’s about tempering our temper. We’re to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Too often, we overlook the first two and jump right to anger. And we’ve all got that in us, but we can rein it in if we listen and be slow to speak and to get angry. We are to be new creations in Christ, so...

Why do I do things sometimes that, in hindsight, are clearly counter to my own best interests?   It’s all about temptation.  Bottom line:  when we screw up, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves. It’s not someone else’s fault. We have desires, some good, but some bad. We play around with those desires, and pretty soon we start thinking about fulfilling them. We flirt around the edges for a while...

Is my net worth really just the value of the stuff I own?   James, writing to a dispersed community of Christians who have lost most everything, encourages them to find their vet worth is what God says about them, not what their possessions or earthly status or other people say about them. Our value comes from whose we are, not what we have. And if you have stuff, make sure you know it’s from God...

In a relationship, is there one thing I can do that will make all the difference?  

If we’re putting the other person first, do we just give up on our own hope, dreams, and desires? 

What is one thing that will make a marriage great?  

If a relationship ain’t broke, why do we have to talk about it? 

Dealing with our Emotions from a Relationship with God

Dealing with Joy

Dealing with Letting our Emotions be Tempered by Who God Is

Dealing With A Feeling of Emptiness

Dealing With Despair

Habakkuk 3 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places.

Why Doesn’t God Do Something? Habakkuk 1:1-17 We see injustice, or evil, or sickness, or a society gone wrong, a holocaust or an orphan and we ask the question - where is God? Why does He allow this to happen? Our prophet asks the question, but instead of this being a rhetorical exercise to not believe, he gets an answer from heaven itself.

Is unfollowing Jesus a good idea? Transitions, temptation, and trouble always create questions and doubts. But Peter responded to an uncertain future following Jesus with, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life and we’ve come to believe you are the Holy One of God.” Yeah, we’d better consider the alternative. Salvation costs nothing, but following Jesus will cost you something. But...

If Jesus is asking us to follow Him, what kind of leader is he? In response to competition between the 12, Jesus tells them that to be great, you must be the servant of all. And he demonstrated it by living for others. Leverage authority to benefit those under you . Be for others, be humble. Ask how you can help others. Maybe you can’t do for everybody, but you can do for one person.

What if Jesus’ plans conflict with my plans? Here’s the rub. God is God, and we can’t thwart His will. And because He’s God, He’s invited us into something bigger than us. We can do what we want and think it’s right, like Judas did, and rue the day. Or we can decide, as Jesus followers, to trust God knows what He’s doing. It’s all about whose will wins out in the battle for our hearts.

Is there a price to pay for following Jesus? Jesus eventually lays out the fine print for following him, and it’s to be willing to deny yourself and take up a cross. That means simply saying, “No” to me. We’re not unfamiliar with this—we all turn down dessert at restaurants from time to time, right? But Jesus telling us we are to say “No” to us scares us to death. But maybe it shouldn’t. You save...

What should followers of Jesus wear? People tell us what they follow by what they wear: Cheeseheads at Packer games; green and yellow faces at Brazil soccer games; women in birkas; Buddhist monks. What we should be known for as Jesus followers is loving people like Jesus loved people—people that don’t deserve it. Paul describes loving like Jesus loved us as as clothing ourselves with compassion, k...