Meet Me in the Word: Bible Study with Pastor Tim

Send Tim a note One of the fascinating things to me about the Old Testament is how often the people of Israel recount their history.  Telling your own story back to yourself helps you to remember what is so easily forgotten.  In Israel’s case, as well as in ours, there are so many times when the LORD shows up to lead us, protect us, and steer us away from spiritual disaster. We’re in Joshua 24:1-1...

Send Tim a note How’s your journey with Jesus? I usually try to come up with some kind of clever hook here at the beginning but today I really just wanted to ask you how your relationship with Jesus is going. The hope in doing this podcast is to help make your quiet time less of a task to accomplish and more of a time where we converse with the Scriptures and with God. We’re in Romans 11:25-32, th...

Send Tim a note Doing regular chores around the house is good but if you want to be free of dirt, grime, and clutter, you need to dig down and clean deeply. I’m not actually here to give you cleaning advice, but the principle applies to our spiritual lives as well. It’s not all that hard for us to pick up spiritual grime along the way and if we truly want to live rightly before God, we need to tak...

Send Tim a note Is faith supposed to be a private matter of the heart or something more public? Maybe that’s not a fair question.  A better one might be, “How do we practice our faith in private and in public?” Jesus taught his disciples to pray in a private place so that it could be just them and God.  He also taught them to let their light shine before people so that the Father would be worshipp...

Send Tim a note Sometimes the struggle we’re facing not only feels unfair, it actually is.  People are more than capable of choosing evil over good; of choosing to harm others instead of showing kindness. In those situations we rightly come to God and ask Him to be our strength and to fight for us. AND We can praise the LORD in the middle of our distress even though it may not be our first inclina...

Send Tim a note How much value do you put on loyalty?  When it comes to our friends, family, and certainly our spouses, we don’t want to worry about divided hearts.  When those bonds are broken, the consequences are certain.  What about loyalty to God?  How much value does He place in that? We’re in Joshua 23, the part of the story where Joshua has become an old man and he’s imparting his final wo...

Send Tim a note Did you know that pride is incompatible with following Christ?  Jesus certainly took the religious elite to task over that issue and Paul did much the same thing to Jews who wanted everyone to add complexities to grace.  In our text today, though, he challenges the rest of us to check our superiority complexes at the door.  Israel is not forgotten or abandoned by God and we should...

Send Tim a note For those of you who grew up in a church environment, do you remember hearing the story of Dinah in Sunday school? Me neither, and there’s probably a good reason for that.  It’s one of the harder stories for us to digest.  It’s a good reminder that Scripture doesn’t withhold the difficult parts of life from us.  It also reminds me that God can and does meet us in the midst of all k...

Send Tim a note Did you know that not everyone wants to hear what you have to say?  And here you thought you might get some encouragement.  We all know that but it seems to be especially true when we speak of the gospel.  When you encounter Jesus, He really does change your life and so it can feel baffling when others reject him or take offense at what this is all about. This is not new.  Jesus pr...

Send Tim a note Have you ever done something in the moment that was so out of character that later on you wondered if that was even really you?  Where did that come from?  Maybe it was heroic, maybe it was foolish but most of us have done something like that. We’re in Psalm 34, something David wrote right after pretending to be insane in order to try and save  himself. Even people after God’s own...

Send Tim a note Alright, who spilled the tea? What did you hear through the grapevine?  Did you get all tangled up in the rumor weed? If there’s anything that causes more damage to friendships and unity in general than gossip, I’m not sure what it is.  It’s incredible what can happen when we assume something to be true of someone without taking time to talk to them about it. We’re in Joshua 22:9-3...

Send Tim a note If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one, I’ve got a movie for you to watch and some Scripture for you to read. Tigger works through intense loneliness and searches for his family in The Tigger Movie.  Don’t worry, I won’t tell the young ones you’re watching it for you. Seriously, it’s good. And the Scripture is right here in our passage for today, Romans 11:1-10, the part of t...

Send Tim a note Have you ever anticipated a difficult conversation with someone so much that you played it out in your mind a hundred times beforehand?  I’ve done that before, and it’s funny to me how often the real conversation turns out much differently than I had anticipated, usually for the better. I’m reminded that a lot of the tension in life thrives when I leave it in my head but when I add...

Send Tim a note If you’re anything like me, you desire a life that improves over time, one that maybe isn’t easy per se but if you could avoid the big heartbreaks, that would be nice. I tend to think that we express that in our prayers as well.  We ask for things like protection, healing, deliverance, and provision.  All of those are good things but sometimes the more helpful requests might be for...

Send Tim a note This aired on a Monday so I’m hoping this will be fresh in your minds.  How was worship on Sunday?  It’s kind of a funny concept when you think about it; us, the worshippers, evaluating the quality or depth or whatever-ness of the collective worship experience. Isn’t that God’s job? People have strong feelings about musical style, song selection, and how professional or planned the...

Send Tim a note Have you ever noticed that the faithful, steady people in our lives are often overlooked? We come to depend on them because they are consistent, showing up day after day to the point that their exceptional service becomes “regular” in our minds somehow.  These are the people that we need to intentionally seek out and honor. We’re in Joshua 22:1-8, the part of the story when the Isr...

Send Tim a note "Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” You may have heard that quote before.  It’s commonly (and falsely) attributed to Francis of Assissi.  It does remind us, however, that our lives, including our behaviors and actions are an important part of our witness.  After all, if you preach the transformative message of the gospel but you’re a moral train wrec...

Send Tim a note Let’s talk about choosing faith over fear.  Those words hardly leave my mouth and I can picture some of you pumping your fist either mentally or physically in anticipation of this profound idea. In fact, you may even have clothing with those words on it.  What does that mean for us as we live out our lives?  I’m inviting you to join me in thinking deeply about that idea during our...

Send Tim a note What does it look like when Jesus sends us out to share his message?  The logistics of that can be widely varied based on the details of our situation but in all of them, there are a few things that remain true.  We’ll discuss four aspects based on this first part of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples as they prepare for their various trips to their own countrymen.  Support the show...

Send Tim a note Have you ever had a secret that you knew would damage someone you loved if they found out?  That’s usually a sign that something needs to be confessed. Our instinct is to hide the truth and to be afraid… but what if I told you that freedom and relief are on the other side of confession?  The trouble with avoiding the truth is that it has some pretty big consequences, most of which...

Send Tim a note I’d like to start today off with a short personal note.  I’ve had the privilege of serving the LORD in fulltime ministry throughout my adult life. There’s something very special about being able to do that and receive income for my time.  For those of you thinking about becoming a pastor, this isn’t the career where you make a lot of money and yet I’ve found that Jesus, along with...

Send Tim a note What does it mean to “believe in Jesus”?  It’s the centerpiece of the Christian faith and yet we could mean a variety of things when we say that. We can believe in His existence, the claims he made about Himself, His divinity, His humanity, in the things he did and taught. There’s a whole list of qualities about him when we think about belief and yet we also think about personal be...

Send Tim a note You can have a fantastic relationship with your neighbor but that doesn’t mean they’d make a good roommate. Sometimes the best way to keep things from boiling over into serious conflict is to have a firm, healthy boundary.  Good fences make good neighbors, or something like that.  We’re in Genesis 31, the part of the story when Jacob finally separates from his father-in-law, Laban,...

Send Tim a note One of the riskiest things you can do is to trust someone else with a project or work that you’re deeply invested in.  When we pour ourselves into something we want to make sure it goes well so asking someone else to join in that process can feel precarious.  And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus did with his own disciples. We’re in Matthew 9:35 - 10:8, the part of the story where Jes...

Send Tim a note Do you have someone in your life that makes you feel so safe that you can fall apart around them and it’s okay?  Those people are truly treasures and worthy of our loyalty, ongoing kindness, and love. Occasionally, it’s a good idea to let them know the place they hold in your life. We’re in Psalm 31 where David writes more like an aging king rather than a young shepherd. Still, we...