FCC Etown Podcast

What do you do when God asks you to do something that doesn’t make sense?” You obey God when it doesn’t make sense. You ignore detractors and keep moving forward. Finally, you maximize opportunities while the doors are open. For 120 years, people had a chance to answer God’s call, but Genesis 7:16 tells us there came a time when God closed the door, and that was it. Learn from those folks and don’t miss your opportunity.

When you feel weak, remember that God sees a warrior in you. If your strength seems small to you right now and the odds seem stacked against you, we have a God of horns, jars, and torches. He is the God who makes walls fall. He makes armies run. He makes the Red Sea part and the sun stand still. He turns water into wine. He walks on the sea. He makes the blind see and the dead walk. That same God is for you.

What if the walls that protect your peace were crumbling, leaving you vulnerable to despair? Nehemiah, who, upon hearing about the devastated state of Jerusalem, is moved to action despite the daunting challenges ahead. He reveals the immense power of prayer, and how we can boldly trust in God, anchored by faith even when faced with adversity.

We long for you to experience God’s grace in your life and be free from something you’ve struggled with for a long, long time. We don’t want anyone living with guilt and shame. But that means acknowledging what David acknowledged. That we’re all people who have sinned. And while we’d rather hide it, minimize it, or rationalize it away, owning it is the beginning of real freedom in real life.

Our worries, concerns, and sleepless nights about parenting are greatly reduced when we are serious about fun, trust them with responsibility, discipline them with love, help them see the future, and point them to Jesus. That's what we do during the day, so it doesn't keep us up at night.

Jesus never promised an easy life, but He guaranteed that He would be with us no matter what. So, when the fear comes and we, like Peter, feel like we are drowning, all we need to do is look up and find His hand waiting to pull us up and onto firm footing.

There are numerous evangelism styles: In your face style, life story style, serving style, intellectual style, relational style, invitational style. Which style are you? Remember you don’t have to be who you are not. But he has made you who you are so that armed with the power of the Holy Spirit the you that you are will be a powerful witness for him in your Jerusalem.

“Go and do likewise.” Jesus didn’t say to sit and think about what I’ve explained. He said Go and do. From the story of the Good Samaritan, we can take away this reality: Unleashing compassion is almost always inconvenient; it’s almost always messy. See the need and serve. Go and do likewise.

The Person/sinner/Tax Collector Matthew was loved and connected to Jesus. Matthew was not an outsider by his own doing. His career path and actions had disconnected him from his own people. His nationality had disconnected him from a government that paid him. But Jesus made all the connections work in the life of the disconnected.

Timothy is part of the world changers. Paul’s fingerprints are all over the first century, the first years of the church, and the New Testament. Timothy and his generation of leaders are why we’re still talking about it all. Timothy imitated Paul, who imitated Jesus. But some people imitated Timothy, and people imitated them and imitated them. We get to continue this great tradition of the faith.

Maybe you’ve been following Jesus for a long time and you’re exhausted from your fight or you’re struggling with friends leaving you or what people have said about you or you’re dealing with something that is beyond what you can bare, remember that Jesus died so He may be with you in your suffering, and remember that He rose again and will redeem your suffering.