While you are enjoying this PODCAST, I have the privilege of speaking to the greatest group of High School students you’d ever want to meet—the heaven-sent and happy campers at Hartland Christian Camp.
Be encouraged. There is hope. Hope for anyone and everyone who has ever appeared to be beyond redemption.
You are about to see a snapshot of Jesus that you will hopefully never, ever forget.
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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!
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As you will hear in the PODCAST, I do have a dream.
A modest dream. Yet modest though it may be, an increasingly illusive-if-not-impossible dream.
Won’t you please help my dream to come true?
Ironically, your response to this message will either nudge my dream to its fulfillment, or cast my dream upon the ash heap of impossible dreams. (No pressure!)
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Easter is almost upon us. Consequently, for the next four weeks, I would like to take you on a virtual tour of four places that factored most prominently in Jesus’ final hours.
In this PODCAST, we will visit the Garden of Gethsemane together.
From there, we will move in the coming weeks to the house of the High Priest, the Antonia Fortress, and finally–on Easter weekend–we will walk together on the stones of the Via Dolorosa.
I will be privileged to serve as your humble, awestruck tour guide. My prayer is that with every step we take, we will again and again be reminded that the Bible is God’s written record of…
Real people who lived in real places, who had real experiences, all of which point to a real God.
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!
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If you have ever wondered how I present the Gospel to a camp filled with some pretty precious High School students, you can hear it for yourself in this bonus PODCAST.
This message was delivered just one month ago at Hartland Christian Camp. Please join them and me at the foot of the cross, listening to Jesus’ final seven sayings from that cross.
THIS is what a gentle Jesus sounds like, even while He’s dying—for you and for me.
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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.
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Ironies abound, in the four verses I just read to you. A full compliment of ten ironies by my count. Ten!
The most soul-stirring and hope-producing irony being this—the takeaway of this PODCAST:
“Your most influential, inspirational, impactful life-message—greatest chapter of your story—will come not out of your successes, but out of your failures.”
To invoke Jesus’ masterful metaphor — “You ARE the light of the world.”
That being true, your brightest beacon of light will shine forth from the depths of your darkest hour.
And no, I am not referring to the failure of the thousands who gathered at the Temple on this day in Acts 3 to hear Peter indict them for their greatest failure, as stunning as that failure certainly was.
There is buried within the syllables of this story an even greater failure.
An absolutely epic fail, one that hinges on exactly one word—one word about which I will tell you as you get into this podcast. A failure that underscores the blessed reality that…
“Your most influential, inspirational, impactful life-message—greatest chapter of your story—will come not out of your successes, but out of your failures.”
Call it the backdoor blessing of this amazing story. A God-blessed reality that stands in stark contrast to the what was without a doubt the weirdest experience I have ever had when speaking in a seminary chapel…
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While I am away speaking at a Junior High/Middle School Camp at a place near and dear to my heart–Hartland Christian Camp–may I welcome to the Upper Room, and Jesus’ farewell address to His beloved disciples.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, as we break the seal on this, Jesus’ final night before the crucifixion, I do so with something of a lump in my throat and the pinkish hue of embarrassment upon my otherwise rosy cheeks. This because this particular portion of the grand story of Jesus’ life and ministry hits me most personally. And if, as they say, “Confession is good for the soul,” then I make my confession to you, my beloved little Safe Haven family, tonight.
There is embedded within this most amazing scene, Jesus washing His disciples’ feet, a timeless lesson that, if only I could turn back the hands of the clock and the passage of time, I would have taken to heart way back when I was just starting out in my ministry.
This pointed and practical warning is as timely today as it was that night in that Upper Room when Jesus gave it to His disciples.
A timeless truth that has come to define my life and, more to the point, my ministry today. A living lesson of which you are the beneficiaries.
As we detailed last week, this so-called “Last Supper” was a modified Passover seder. I say modified because as we learned last week, the word seder means “order.” As in a carefully choreographed, specifically scripted order to the meal.
Yet, at certain significant points along the way, Jesus purposefully departed from that thousands-year-old order and added to that script.
Just as Jesus did here, in John 13, at the very beginning of their meal together.
It was certainly customary — very much a part of the script — for the host (Jesus) to wash His hands ceremonially as meal began. But why did He then wash His disciples’ feet?
Especially given that every other departure that Jesus made from the seder script expanded or enhanced the significance of their celebration of Passover, especially in light of His coming death as ultimate Passover Lamb.
Every departure, except for this one: Jesus washing His disciples’ feet.
A beautiful gesture, to be sure. The quintessential picture of loving humility and servanthood. So much so that foot washing in some Christian traditions even today, has been elevated to a sacrament or ordinance equal to that of Communion and Baptism.
You talk about, Paint the picture, Rabbi? How about Jesus kneeling as a slave to wash His disciples’ feet (including Judas’ feet) as a three-dimensional, high definition picture of this? (The this to be explained in the remainder of this Podcast.)
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Caiaphas, the high priest that year, must have been fit to be tied.
Well, somewhat so.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, it was Passover. The Holy City, Jerusalem, was teaming with pilgrims. The all-important 3 PM Passover sacrifice at the Temple was fast-approaching.
It was arguably single most financially-flourishing day of the year (second only, perhaps, to the Day of Atonement) as far as the corrupt Temple Industrial Complex over which Caiaphas presided was concerned. There was money to be made this day. Lots and lots of money.
But the heavens seemed to conspire against Caiaphas.
Of all the luck (bad luck indeed), a most-rare, hauntingly-eerie atmospheric anomaly threatened to diminish severely Caiaphas’ shady haul of ill-gotten shekels.
At 12 PM, high noon, a mere three hours before the afternoon sacrifice, the sky turned ominously dark. If it stayed that way, there would be no 3 PM Passover Lamb sacrificed that day.
Well, according to Matthew 27 — Read ’em and weep, Caiaphas.
“At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until 3 o’clock.”
A darkness that drove everyone away from the cross as they scrambled for shelter from the encroaching gloom of that midday backness.
Coincidence? No way!
Now there would be no Passover Lamb sacrificed at 3 PM on this day.
Or would there?
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.
While you are enjoying this PODCAST, I have the privilege of speaking to the greatest group of High School students you’d ever want to meet—the heaven-sent and happy campers at Hartland Christian Camp.
