Transforming Lives Together Podcast

Blessed All Souls Day! Today we remember All the Faithful Departed, not just those known, but also those unknown who are members of this great living body that transcends time and space which we affectionately call the Church. The short bio on the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed was taken from the 2001 edition of the Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The scripture reading is John 5:24-27 (NASB). The...

It is difficult to have joy in our relationships when we ourselves or the other person boast of our position and status.  As we will discover in our study for this week, Paul admonished the Church not to boast in themselves, but to focus on knowing Christ Jesus the Lord.

We remember St. Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, who sought to repair the damage that the Viking invasions had inflicted on culture and learning, especially among the parish clergy. The short bio on St. Alfred was taken from the 2001 edition of the Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The scripture reading is Luke 6:43-49 (NASB). The Collect comes from the Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

In our first episode, we remember St. Luke the Evangelist whose researched accounts of Christ's life and the Acts of the Apostles have provided for the Church a faithful witness and have inspired many to put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The short bio on St. Luke was taken from the 2001 edition of the Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The scripture reading is Luke 1:1-4 (NASB). The Collect com...

We’d all like to bear fruit in our lives and live with joy.  But doing so requires us to be in relationship with other people.  As we will discover in our study for this week, Paul’s attitude toward the Philippians was such that he longed to be able to encourage them, and because of his encouragement to them, he would be encouraged as well and would experience an increase in joy.

We all want to be successful in life.  As the saying goes, “People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” As we will discover in our study for this week, ultimately, success does not mean a lack of failure, but rather a life full of determination and perseverance in Christ.

We are getting this out a little late, but it is still Easter! Hooray! We hope that this will draw you deeper into what’s going on in the readings and together draw from the Living Well all that we need to be more like our Blessed Lord each day. The Gospel passages we will be focusing on for this episode are Mark 16:1-8, John 20:19-31.

Who we are around affects who we become as people.  If we are around positivity, we are more likely to be positive people, and view things from the hopeful and joyful perspective.  As we will discover in our study for this week we can misinterpret circumstances in our lives if we have had bad experiences in the past.  And that can hinder our joy.

Oftentimes we feel that we have no control over where our life is headed, as though somehow we are like a train that can only move along a given track.  However, the way we react to different circumstances has a profound impact on the trajectory of our life.  As we will discover in our study for this week starting and living with good habits is important if we are to live with a can-do and joyous...

Normally the “Conversations” wing of the podcast is dedicated to interviews with people ministering throughout the WNY area, and while we are looking forward to getting back to that, we also wanted to do something different. Every other week, Dn. Jacob and I will be reflecting on the Gospel passages for the previous two Sundays (this past Sunday and the Sunday before) and how it relates to the cur...

Normally the “Conversations” wing of the podcast is dedicated to interviews with people ministering throughout the WNY area, and while we are looking forward to getting back to that, we also wanted to do something different. Every other week, Dn. Jacob and I will be reflecting on the Gospel passages for the previous two Sundays (this past Sunday and the Sunday before) and how it relates to the cur...

Discipline is not a pleasant word for most people.  Oftentimes the word brings to mind instances of scolding or punishment.  Yet when we are disciplined in our daily lives we discover the blessings that God wants us to have.  As we will discover in our study for this week, discipline and discernment are essential if we are to grow into mature individuals who can endure hardship, remain relational,...

“If it feels good do it” might be a familiar saying to you. Maybe you’ve heard someone use it to justify a particular action or actions. This type of maxim may sound appealing, even wise because our senses do help us discern between what is pleasant and what is harmful. For example, sometimes we learn not to sit too close to the fire by feeling the intense heat, or we learn the milk has gone sour...

The way we see the world shapes the way we interact with it and with others. Having the wrong narrative will not only complicate our relationships, it will prevent us from experiencing true joy. If God created us to be in loving relationships, the greatest being our relationship with Him, and to experience joy through those relationships, then we need to adopt His narrative and see things, includi...

As we look out at the Church across the world we can notice many differences like ethnicity, style of worship, denomination, and language. But despite our differences, the Bible teaches us that we are all One Body because we all belong to One Lord, Jesus Christ. While we may identify with other groups and the loving relationships we have in those groups may bring us some joy, it’s our identity in...

How we respond in difficult situations can say a lot about who we are. Being cool under pressure is a trait that’s admired and with good reason for it’s impossible to diffuse a situation when you need to be diffused yourself. In the book of Proverbs we read, “ Like a city that is broken into and without walls So is a person who has no self-control over his spirit” (Proverbs 25:28). To be self-cont...

The goal of our faith is ultimately to be like Christ. The Early Church Fathers summed it up best when they said that the Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become sons of God. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians that the goal of the ministerial offices is to equip and build up the church, “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of...

We were created to be emotional beings, but sometimes our emotions can get the best of us. This happens in especially tense and difficult situations. How we respond in those moments can say a lot about us which is why the ability to “keep our peace” when the “heat is on” is an important watermark for the believer. Self-control is not something we can achieve on our own, rather it is one of the fru...

Stress and anxiety have become common terms in our word economy, so common, in fact, that it seems they’re all we hear about. There is plenty in our world to cause us stress and so much of our time can be consumed by it, even to the point where we become physically ill. If this was all we were made for then life would be one big sorrow filled with many burdens, but as we will learn from Fr. Ward,...

It’s good to be back with you for another episode, and we apologize for the mini sabbatical we took. With everything going on surrounding this global pandemic, we, unfortunately, weren’t able to keep up with our weekly schedule. Thank you to our listeners who have stuck with us through our absence and we hope you enjoy this new series we’re starting up titled “Finding the Joy of the Lord in a Stre...

In the first chapter of his book You Are What You Love James K. A. Smith writes, “It is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned. And because love is a habit, our hearts are calibrated through imitating exemplars and being immersed in practices that, over time, index our hearts to a certain end. We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquir...

Whether we think about it or not, our lives are ordered around the days, weeks, and months that make up our calendar. It’s one of the ways in which we understand and interact with time. Unfortunately for many of us, worship of the Triune God is just one item among many that fill our calendars. This could be why Thomas Cramner saw the importance of developing a church calendar as part of the prayer...

In the preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer writes, “...if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy,...

Before entering the promised land, Israel was not only reminded of the law, but they were also given a liturgy; a set of rituals and habits that they were to participate in daily so that their lives would be formed around God’s law and their identity as God’s people. As Fr. Thebeau points out in our lesson for this week, we worship what we love, but because of the Fall, our loves became disordered...

As we learned in our last episode that the structure and arrangement of churches served a particular purpose in forming our hearts and minds around the right worship of God, so too do the activities we participate in and the vestments worn during Sunday services. Because you’re only getting the audio of this lesson, we have included an image with some of the vestments and their names to help give...