Well, it isn’t pretty. But this PODCAST is enormously encouraging.
Recorded in the privacy of my home (as I hunker down under a mandatory “shelter in place” order), as you will hear, we are BACK IN THE BOOK OF ACTS!!! (Three cheers for that!)
Cumbersome as it may be to record this without the benefit of a “live” audience, I’ll do my best to deliver you brand new, delightfully fresh, intensively insightful content each week as we work our way ever so slowly but surely through Paul in High Definition.
Enjoy!!!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
You are about to meet two individuals, remarkable each. YET, as you are about to hear on this PODCAST, they were both utterly invisible, completely anonymous, hidden in the shadows.
Invisible, anonymous, hidden to everyone but God.
Do you ever feel invisible? As if, when all is said and done, your life might count for very little? Or nothing at all?
Encouragement for your soul is one click away!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
As you will hear on this PODCAST, Jesus’s words, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” freed me from YEARS of enormous guilt.
Think of this as Peter Puts on a Personal Evangelism Clinic, all in just two simple-yet-profound sentences.
Oh, and for good measure, at no extra charge, we will reduce all of Jesus’ teaching regarding our character as Christ-followers to one salient soundbite of but a lean-and-mean four, one-syllable words.
Trust me. You’re gonna LOVE this!
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
Welcome to our third and final installment of Bible Bootcamp.
As you will hear in the PODCAST, with due deference to Peter’s challenge to you and me—1 Peter 2:2 (KJV), “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.”—we thought if beneficial to take a bird’s-eye view of the entire Bible. An overview. A survey. The box top to the biblical puzzle.
This so that we can understand how each individual piece fits into the whole.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
It had to be a rather rude awakening to be sure—Paul’s initial introduction to the unenviable life of an apostle.
As we will learn in this PODCAST, there is much—much more than we could possibly imagine—behind Paul’s otherwise enigmatic statement in 1 Corinthians 4:9, a rare moment of personal reflection (and dare-I-say exasperation and frustration) in the writings of this most-prolific apostle:
“I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people and angels alike.”
Well, here in Acts 9, the Apostle to us Gentiles endured quite the humiliating spectacle indeed.
It was hardly the homecoming our new friend, the Apostle Paul, had anticipated as he entered archway in the main gate leading to Straight Street in Damascus.
Was his heart all a-flutter? Mine would have been.
After a three-year absence from its legendary landscape, his formal training as an apostle now complete. I have to believe that Saul-now-Paul had much upon which he would have liked to reflect.
Perhaps a quiet, private, personal rendezvous with the spot on the road where he first met Jesus?
Maybe a knock on the door of Judas’ house, where he was graciously housed for three days as a man-struck-blind?
How about cup of Turkish coffee with Ananias, the man tasked with, and understandably fearful of, being first follower of Jesus to approach just-converted Saul?
Possibly some visits to the synagogues where he first preached, “Jesus is indeed the Son of God”?
Paul’s heart had to be pitter-pattering with excited anticipation as he once-again approached the storied city.
But alas. A happy homecoming wasn’t in cards that fate dealt this soon-to-be-suffering servant of Jesus.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
Well, truth be told, there are a lot of things that I love about the Bible. Far too many to tell in this PODCAST.
But certainly residing at or near the top of my rather lengthy list is this: The window the biblical writers open to the growth and maturity of its principle players.
Case in point: The Apostle Paul.
Paul did not emerge from his road to Damascus encounter with Jesus a wholly-mature believer. Nor did Paul burst on the scene armed with a fully-formed theology that would become the capstone of his prolific writings. Paul had to grow in his faith as a committed Christ-follower just like the rest of us.
I love that!
Paul moved from a measurably primitive understanding of Jesus to a remarkably profound comprehension of who Jesus was and is and all that Jesus did and accomplished. This growth, this development, this maturity takes place right before our wondering eyes ever to behold in all of its spiritual splendor.
In short, Paul was a person in process, just like us! A process well-documented in the New Testament that as we are about to learn slowly-but-surely took place over many, many years.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
Throughout His life and ministry, Jesus made some absolutely amazing statements, as only He could do!
As you will hear in this PODCAST, Jesus was able to pack into just a few words the most deeply profound theological truths, the implications of which have taken the most incisive theological minds centuries to unpack.
Case in point: This otherwise obscure little gem buried deep within the Miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, AKA “The Feeding of the 5000.”
Jesus said in John 6:44,
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me.”
An absolutely remarkable statement that underscores our gloriously precious theological proposition known as Divine Election, along with its sister doctrine of Sovereign Predestination—sadly, with all of its attendant questions and endless theological wranglings, divisions, and separations that these blessed concepts unnecessarily generate.
Trust me, courtesy of Philip and an unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch, this is a cause NOT of confusion, but of cerebration!
For as you are about to hear, this eunuch’s story is your story.
Please remember that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this podcast to begin to play.
Well, it isn’t pretty. But this PODCAST is enormously encouraging.
