It’s been a week of so much bad news.
In this PODCAST, you are about to hear the best news!!!
Thank you for listening, and for sharing this message!!!
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Thank you for joining me once again in the cozy confines of my garage. Before we get into this week’s PODCAST, I wanted you to hear my heart. A heart that is overflowing with deep feelings of compassion and understanding.
It’s been a difficult week, to say the least. As I talk to you now, Atlanta is burning. The latest hotspot to erupt in the wake of the volcanic racial tensions that are seething in our country.
Covid-19 infections are spiking in several states this week, including my great state of Oregon.
People are suffering. People are scared. People feel uncertain. Insecure. Confused. Conflicted. Including many followers of Jesus.
Just this morning I received another one, a private message from someone confessing to me that they are struggling in their faith. Barely holding on.
I am hearing more and more of this the longer this societal craziness continues.
So if you’ll permit me, for this week’s podcast I want to share with you a message that I gave at a High School Camp last summer. One in which I tell my story of losing my faith, only to get it back—this through what was undeniably Divine Intervention.
Though my specific circumstances may differ from those of others who are similarly struggling in their faith—or perhaps have sadly, like me, lost their faith completely—the overarching message is equally applicable.
As I thought about it, this message serves as the perfect counterbalance to last week’s podcast. There I shared about how God directly intervened to save my life physically from a condition that could have, a perhaps should have, killed my body. For this week, how God directly intervened to save my life spiritually from a condition that killed my soul.
Mine is a story of hope that emerges from a time of despair. I offer it to you, humbly, in the hope that if you or someone you love is struggling in his or her faith, you and they might find the spiritual strength to take another step and to live another day.
What does it mean to “be holy”?
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the answer is remarkably simple and practical. So simple and practical that you don’t need a seminary degree to understand this.
And yet, were I a betting man, I would be willing to wager that “be holy” means something vastly different than many of us have been led to believe it means.
You, my friend, are in for a treat!
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Of all of the things that Peter could have told his unsettled refugee readers, why in the world would he challenge them to “Be holy”?
Oh my friends, as you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the answer may just blow your mind.
Seriously.
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
It is one of the great ironies of Christian life.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, the Holy Spirit came to this earth in Jesus’ absence in part to bring a supernatural unity to committed Christ-followers throughout the world.
For example, we read in Ephesians 4:3, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
That phrase “the unity of the Spirit” notwithstanding, Christians throughout the world have arguably divided more over the gifts of Holy Spirit than any other single issue. Divisions that, quite frankly, have turned spiritually toxic.
There are those who will tell you and me with some measure of intensity that if you do not speak in tongues, you are at the least not filled with the Spirit; and at the worst, not a Christian at all.
There are those who will tell you and me with some measure of intensity that if you do speak in tongues, you are believing a false Gospel and consequently going to Hell.
So as we enter this discussion, I will give to you my promise, and make to you my plea.
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
While I am away speaking at a Middle School Camp on the East Coast, I have left you in wonderfully capable hands. Those of our old and dear friend, John the Baptizer.
John the Baptizer is, by his own admission, a walking contradiction. As you will hear in this PODCAST, he had a remarkable beginning, and yet a dismal crash and burn.
In a word, his faith in Jesus COLLAPSED, completely.
His is quite the story to tell. But as you will hear me say, it is John’s story to tell, not mine.
So, if you can employ a little sanctified imagination, I will do my best to be true to John’s story, and respectful of John’s memory, as I sort of try to “become” (if I can put it that way) John the Baptizer.
Please remember that depending upon your connection speed and web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play.
God bless you as you listen.
Welcome to one of the strangest stories — many would call this a troubling tale — in Jesus’ entire life and ministry.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, what happens here in Mark 7, and its parallel passage in Matthew 15, seems highly uncharacteristic of Jesus; uncharitable to a tragically needy-yet-remarkable mommy; and unnecessarily cold and calloused as far as a Jesus is concerned.
A Jesus, I will humbly remind you, who defined Himself as “gentle” in Matthew 11, and who described His mission as one “to seek and to save the lost in Luke 19.
As you read this story, at first blush anyway, Jesus was Anything.But.Gentle in the way He spoke to this panic-stricken mother who was understandably distraught over the condition of her daughter.
Tell you what: If His mission was to seek and to save the lost, you couldn’t find anyone more lost than this woman.
As we read this story together (it’s only 8 verses in Matthew’s account), you tell me if you find this encounter between Jesus and this mom at all unsettling or unnerving. Put yourself in the mom’s sandals for a second and imagine that Jesus is talking to you about your little girl.
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
A happy ending to be sure.
But what an insensitive, ungracious, uncaring way to get to that happy ending..
You talk about showing a little kindness (as we did last week), there was no kindness shown to this woman; no kindness of any kind was shown to her at all. Until the very end.
Jesus (apparently) ignored her (“Jesus did not answer a word.”), then (apparently) refused and rebuffed her (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”), then (apparently) belittled her (“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”).
Curiously enough, that’s it as far as Jesus’ road trip up North into what is today Lebanon, what was then Phoenicia, was concerned.
This one strange story.
And as always, my friend, we have much to talk about.
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.
God bless you richly as you listen.
Dewey Bertolini’s Podcast
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Dewey Bertolini 