The Water from Rock Podcast

Did you know that God not only loves you, that God not only likes you, but the God takes pleasure in you? That God delights in you? That having you as his child makes God smile? Download a transcript for the January 7, 2023 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.

These early days of January, I always think of as a good time for looking back and good for looking ahead. As we are in the month that the Romans named Januarius, they named it after the Roman god Janus. That was the god of doors, of gates, of endings, and beginnings. And the god Janus was always represented as having two faces. That is one face for looking backward and one for looking forward. An...

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, wonderful celebration of Jesus as Immanuel, God is with us. And now as we're off into a new year, I'm wondering how the new year is going for you. Is 2023 feeling, well, a little bit like 2022? Maybe you're feeling a little burdened today, a little stressed by the weight of a new year. Let the words of Jesus flow over you as in Matthew chapter 11 verses 28 thr...

Do you ever get the feeling that Jesus might need to get a new press agent? And that he might need a new PR person to help him spin his message in this time of Self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-esteem? What are we to make of Jesus talking so much about denying self and taking up crosses to follow him? How do you spin that? Download a transcript for the December 31, 2022 Selah episode **Th...

Do you ever wonder if your life is just going around in circles? Then maybe, now you hate to think it, but maybe you're just going nowhere? I mean, this thing happens to you and then there's that thing that happens to you. Things come at you from out of the blue and you wonder, you wonder if there is any sense to it, any rhyme or reason. Download a transcript for the December 29, 2022 Selah episod...

Hey. How about some good news? Would you like some? Well, I've got good news for you. You did nothing to make God love you, and you can't do anything to make him stop. That's the clear message of a Psalm I'm looking at today and that I wanna pass on to you. This is a psalm that in Jesus day was a favorite, one that they often sang. Download a transcript for the December 27, 2022 Selah episode **Th...

I just love Christmas Eve. From the time I was a little boy, the trajectory of my whole year was headed towards Christmas Eve. I look forward to this day. And there's so many wonderful verses of scripture that I wish I had time to share with you and so many wonderful Christmas Eve stories that I really hardly know where to begin. But I do want to tell you a Christmas Eve story... Download a transc...

Immanuel, God is with us. That has been the daily theme of our Advent devotional this year. As the Gospel of Matthew opens with that wonderful Christmas time prophecy of Isaiah that says, Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanuel, which means God is with us.  Download a transcript for the December 22, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by ar...

I have a question for you. Where have you seen Jesus coming to you recently? I ask you about seeing Jesus coming to you recently because we are, after all, in the season of Advent, and the word Advent means coming. This is a time that we celebrate Jesus first coming to us as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem. We celebrate Jesus second coming to us in power and great glory, but we also celebrate Je...

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in the Christmas spirit. I mean, after such a strange and difficult year, I am more than ready to celebrate Christmas, and so the other night, I sat down to listen to Christmas carols, I stopped everything else I was doing just to take in the joy and beauty of Christmas music. And you know, there was one song that just reached out and grabbed me, one song that...

I just love Advent and Christmas. I mean, I feel like a little boy this time to hear, it's such a wonderful season as we look back and as we look ahead, we look back to Christ's first advent as a tiny, vulnerable, helpless newborn lying in a feeding trough for cattle. And we also are looking ahead, eagerly looking ahead to Christ's second Advent, when he will put right this weary broken world. Dow...

Christmas is the time for giving. I mean, that's what we're told this time of year. I mean, I saw it in a store today. I saw it the other night on TV that Christmas is a time for giving. But you know, I'm not sure that if the people who were there at that first Christmas, I'm not sure that they would have thought of Christmas as a time for giving... Download a transcript for the December 13, 2022...

Some people say that the most important question in life is, Does God exist, but there is an even more important question that I wanna take up today... Download a transcript for the December 10, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.

You know I think I began to see through Santa Claus when I was a boy, and one day just before Christmas, I was with my mom in a department store, and there I see Santa Claus, and then I go with my mom to another store... Well, where I see Santa Claus again in that store. But you know, Santa Claus did not look anything like what he looked like in the other store...  Download a transcript for the De...

Proverbs chapter 4 verse 18 says that the path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn which shines brighter and brighter until full day. And for the next few moments I want to talk with you about a man whose life shines brighter and brighter over the centuries... Download a transcript for the December 6, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may...

Do the holidays ever seem to you like the hollow days? Well, they did for me many, many years ago when my young wife had died from cancer. Let me tell you, the holidays were tough. And when I was a chaplain for hospice we would often speak of the holidays as the hollow days... Download a transcript for the December 3, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence an...

It was during the Great Depression that John Niles was searching the back countries and hills of Appalachia. He was looking for original folk music, and one day he comes to this little white spot on the road known as Murphy, North Carolina, and happens on a band of rather ragged itinerant evangelists... Download a transcript for the December 1, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by...

Well, Christmas is just around the corner. And just the other day, I was thinking about a large pre-COVID Christmas, you know, when we could all get together as a large family to celebrate, and a cousin who lives in a different state, she told me that she was sorry that she had never gotten to know my father. And you know, when she told me that she had never gotten to know my father, I was sad. I...

What do you sense that God might be saying to you? I ask that because He is, after all, a God who speaks, a God who reveals Himself. We call Jesus the Word as it is God's very nature to want to speak, to want to reveal Himself to us. So I ask, what do you sense that God might be saying to you?  Download a transcript for the November 24, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artific...

Happy Thanksgiving! A blessed Thanksgiving to you. One of the things that I'm especially thankful for today is you. Thank you for listening to the Selah podcast. I always look forward to getting to share these few moments with you.  Download a transcript for the November 24, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and may not be 100% accurate.

I'm really excited that this is Thanksgiving week and we're going to be with our kids and grandkids and we're going to be eating and we're going to be celebrating and then it's going to be Advent and Christmas and it can't come too soon for me as this has been kind of a crazy year with one train wreck after another and so it's really going to be good to have some days to celebrate. And in all of t...

It has been said that a Puritan lives with the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be having a good time. Well, while I don't think that's exactly fair to the Puritans, it probably is fair to say that Christians can give the impression that we are against having a good time, but you know, Jesus seems to have left no one thinking that he was against a good time... Download a transcript for t...

Are you experiencing a Christian life as rest? I know, for some people, rest is the last thing they think of when they think of being a Christian is for them, being a Christian is a lot of hard work, a lot of pressure, or a lot of trying hard, a lot of guilt. But you know, Jesus did promise anyone who would follow Him that He would give rest, and so I often like to ask myself if I am experiencing...

You must be a person hungry for God. I mean, I don't think he would be listening to the Selah podcast, but that you have a real hunger and thirst for God, you love God and are probably growing in your understanding of God's love for you. And yet as you were growing in your understanding of how wonderful God is, you are growing in your understanding of... Download a transcript for the November 15,...

How are you picturing God today? I mean in your mind's eye, are you seeing God as smiling at you? Is God, is he frowning? That is does God look disappointed in you? Does God look like he's ticked off? Well, the reason why I'm asking is because how you and I picture God is just about the most important thing about us. Download a transcript for the November 12, 2022 Selah episode **This transcript w...