Common Sense Conversations

Joshua challenges the people of Israel to stay focused on being surrendered to the Lord. He did this knowing the enemy was going to try to make them comfortable after God allowed them to enter the Promised Land.

Due to a lack of praying to God, Joshua leads the people into a treaty after being deceived. This shows the importance of taking all our decisions to the Lord in prayer.

Too many times we think that certain temptations Satan offers in front of us are blessings from God when they are temptations to lead us to fall into sin. We see this with the story of Achan in Joshua 6-7.

Too often we try to fight the battles and we get overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to fight the battle. God has given us the victory and wants to fight the battle. All our job is to worship Him and watch Him do what only He can do.

What we find before Joshua goes to battle is that He and Jesus will spend a very important time together. What we learn from this is Jesus wants us to spend time time with Him, not distracted, not busy, but with Him to hear His heart for us.

In Joshua chapters 3-4, we see Joshua learning from the mistakes that he saw with Israel and the Red Sea. Joshua is going to lead the Israelites to lay down spiritual markers to teach the following generations of who God is and His promises being fulfilled

Finishing up Joshua chapter 3 we see how Joshua surrenders to God’s leadership and Lordship. By doing this God shows the blessing of living a life surrendered to Him.

Joshua is going to learn from the mistakes of Moses and is going to show the people of Israel that God is their leader. We can apply this to our lives by showing how meditating on God’s Word is that for us today.

Rahab, a Gentile, declares that God is the only God. She also teaches us the importance of patiently waiting for God to move and trusting in God when you can’t see Him working.

Rahab is the most unlikely person we see in Scripture to follow God. But Rahab got in awe of God and what He was doing and that’s what changed her. Are you in awe of God today?

Because Joshua was meditating on the Word, he had confidence in the promises of God. God wants us to be in His Word so we can trust Him more.

There are so many things we can learn from Joshua and how God prepared Him, equipped him, and used him. This session looks at how God wants us available and to let Him do the work in and through us.

In 1st Samuel 15 we see how King Saul viewed obedience to God’s command. He took upon himself to change God’s command and do his own thing. The problem is he actually thought that he was being obedient.

Our Christian culture today is struggling because our hearts are unplowed and the Word doesn’t penetrate and affect us as it should. So what do we do about it?

With multiple mass shootings and the sex abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention, what are the answers? What are we to do as Christians?

We have a problem with showing compassion to others as Jesus did. Part of that is we listen to respond rather than listening to relate. That causes us to be unkind to others.

If we are to look within the American Church today, how we define success is not how Jesus shows us what Kingdom advancement is. We have compromised on the Bible in order to lift our own status.

So many of us have weeds, sin, in our hearts that is causing us to miss out on experiencing the fullness of Jesus. When was the last time you allowed God to search your heart and pull the sins out?

Jesus shows in this miracle of healing the lame man how the religious leaders missed the point of what He was doing.

Jesus heals a demon possessed woman on the Sabbath. However the religious leaders show that they don’t see people the way Jesus does.

I’m this miracle Jesus walks on the water during a storm He sent His disciples into. He teaches the lesson that our faith must remain focused on Him.

Jesus feeds the multitude, but I think the passage will show us this miracle is more about the disciples than the crowd being fed.

Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. But also Jesus shows the true heart of the Pharisees.

I believe that we see in this miracle two men who were blind, that sought Jesus out for salvation first then received their physical sight. Rather than letting their physical blindness lead them to Jesus, I believe their desire for salvation led and the physical blindness was a second point.

In this passage from Mark we see Jesus being presented with two different scenarios of healing, but faith is the key that runs through both.