Why Turning from Idols Is A Super Exceptional Move of God

Podcast: Light on Life Season Ten Episode Twenty

Why Turning from Idols Is A Super Exceptional Move of God

God is always moving. From the very first pages of Genesis, where the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, we can know that a move of God is always imminent. It’s just the way it is. God never stands still, and He never goes backward. His direction is always forward. I like what I read about the Australian Coat of Arms. It pictures two creatures—the emu, a flightless bird, and the kangaroo. The animals were chosen because they share a characteristic that appealed to Australian citizens. Both the emu and kangaroo can move only forward, not back. The emu’s three-toed foot causes it to fall if it tries to go backward, and the kangaroo is prevented from moving in reverse by its large tail. Those who truly choose to follow Jesus become like the emu and kangaroo, moving only forward, never back (Luke 9:62)1 I don’t know about you, but that motivates me. I like moving forward. There is nothing spiritual about stagnation. In today’s podcast, we take a look at how God moved among the Thessalonians. Why Turning from Idols Is A Super Exceptional Move in God, that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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#S4-034: Why You Can Absolutely Expect Powerful Healing Moves of God [Podcast]

[Tweet  “To see miracles, you have to preach miracles. To see a move of God, you have to preach the move of God. “]

What Does It Mean to Be Filled with the Spirit of God?

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Fifty-Two

What Does It Mean to Be Filled with the Spirit of God?

Being filled with the Holy Spirit via psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs is the focus of our podcast and this post today. The Spirit of God has given utterance to many songs and hymns throughout the centuries. On the subject of hymns, Charles Spurgeon shared the following story from his life. “During one of many holidays at Salmbourne, [I looked this place up on the internet and after I did I had no more idea where it was than when ai stated – it’s somewhere in England], I had a varied experience which I am not likely to forget. My dear grandfather was very fond of Dr. Watt’s hymns, and my grandmother, wishing to get me to learn them, promised me a penny for each one that I should say to her perfectly. I found it an easy and pleasant method of earning money and learned them so fast that grandmother said she must reduce the price to a half-penny each, afterward even more, if she did not mean to be quite ruined by her extravagance [meaning she was going broke paying Charles to recite these hymns]. There is no telling how low the amount per hymn might have sunk, but grandfather [offered him a different deal]. He said that he was getting overrun with rats, and offered me a shilling [which is five pennies] a dozen for all I could kill. I found, at the time, that the occupation of rat-catching paid me better than learning hymns [5 times as much], but I know which employment has been more permanently profitable to me. No matter on what topic I am preaching, I can, even now, in the middle of my sermon, quote some verse of a hymn in harmony with the subject; the hymns have remained with me, while those old rats for years have passed away, and the shillings I earned by killing them have been spent long ago.1 Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are utterances given by the Spirit of God and they are evidence of being filled with the Spirit. What Does It Mean to Be Filled with the Spirit of God? — that’s the core of this week’s Light on Life.

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The Big Scoop on Magnifying God

[Tweet “Don’t be filled with a substance — be filled with a being — a spirit — THE Spirit in fact — the Holy Spirit of God.”]

Why Jesus Enormous Freedom Idea Is Super Superior

Podcast: Light on Life Season 9 Episode 22

Why God's Enormous Freedom Idea Is Super Superior

We will talk today about freedom, what it is, and why freedom in Jesus is super superior. Freedom is a big issue for all inhabitants of planet earth, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. For many years, at the University of Oklahoma, a project was underway to teach a fifteen-year-old female chimpanzee named Washoe to talk by combining sign language with simple recognition. This story intrigued me because two of my children attended the University of Oklahoma.

Since 1966, this chimpanzee has learned 140 signs. Finally, the project directors decided that Washoe was prepared to “conceptualize.” This meant that instead of merely imitating some human words, the chimp would express her thoughts. Now, understand that Washoe was a pampered animal in the university’s laboratory—well-fed, physically comfortable, safe from harm. She had security. And yet, when she was able to put words together on her own into a phrase, these were the first three—and she has repeated them repeatedly—”Let me out.” 1 Freedom is our focus today; why God’s idea of it is better than yours. All this, and more,  on this week’s Light on Life.

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How to Deal with Thieves and Robbers Jesus Style

[Tweet “Jesus’ idea of freedom is super superior to man’s. Real freedom is found in service to others.”]

More of The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels in Heavenly Host University

Podcast: Light on Life Season Nine Episode Eleven

More of The Real Scoop on Teaching Angels in Heavenly Host University

In this week’s podcast, we will talk about Heavenly Host University and what angels know. If you remember, we recently completed an episode on what angels are learning as they observe the Church. Angels are a fascination to all, especially when you hear stories like the following. Elizabeth Elliot told about her father’s experiences with angelic helpers: “My father, when he was a small boy, was climbing on an upper story of a house that was being built. He walked to the end of a board that was not nailed at the other end, and it slowly began to tip. He knew that he was doomed, but inexplicably the board began to tip the other way as though a hand had pushed it down again. He always wondered if it was an angel’s hand. Then there was a story about a train carrying Queen Victoria. It was a British express train. And as it raced through the night, its powerful headlamp speared the black darkness ahead. Suddenly the engineer saw a startling sight. Revealed in the engine’s headlights beam was a mysterious figure in a black cloak standing in the middle of the tracks and waving its arms. The engineer grabbed the brakes and brought the train to a grinding halt. He and his fellow train crew members climbed out to see what had stopped them. But they could find no trace of the strange figure. On a hunch, he walked a few yards further up the tracks. Suddenly he stopped and stared into the fog in horror. The bridge had been washed out in the middle and had toppled into a swollen stream. The train would have plunged into the stream if he had not heeded the ghostly figure. While the bridge and the tracks were being repaired, the crew searched more for the strange flagman. But not until they got to London did they solve the mystery. At the engine’s headlamp base, the engineer discovered a huge dead moth. He looked at it a moment, then on impulse wet its wings and pasted it to the glass of the lamp. Climbing back into his cab, he switched on the lamp and saw the “flagman” in the beam. He knew the answer now: the moth had flown into the beam, seconds before the train was due to reach the washed-out bridge. It appeared to be a phantom figure waving its arms in the fog. When Queen Victoria was told of the strange happening, she said, “I’m sure it was no accident. It was God’s way of protecting us.” 1 Once again, angels are our focus. The Real Scoop on What Angels Know about You that’s our focus on this week’s Light on Life.

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Three Things God’s Peace Provides

[Tweet “Take no stuff from the devil – rebuke Him – use the second party authority God granted to you.”]

What It Means to Have Your Life Filled with Jesus Christ

Podcast: Light on Life Season 8 Episode 44

What It Means to Have Your Life Filled with Jesus Christ

The Word of God tells us that we can be filled with God. That’s nice, but what does that mean? Are these just nice flowery words, or can we really be filled with Him? How can a God who is so big fill a vessel that is so small? How can so much fill so little? The following illustration may shed some light. Standing on the deck of a ship in mid-ocean, you see the sun reflected from its depths. From a little boat on a mountain lake, you see the sun reflected from its shallow waters. Looking into the mountain spring not more than six inches in diameter, you see the same great sun. Look into the dewdrop of the morning, and there it is again. The sun has a way of adapting itself to its reflections. The ocean is not too large to hold it, nor the dewdrop too small. So, God can fill any man, whether his capacity is like the ocean, like the mountain lake, like the spring, or like the dewdrop. Whatever, therefore, be the capacity, there is opened the possibility of being “filled with the fullness of God.”1 What It Means to Have Your Life Filled Up with Jesus Christ, that’s our focus on this week’s Light On Life.

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The Big Scoop on Magnifying God

[Tweet “God provided something better for us under the New Covenant. He provided the Kingdom.”]

Identifying the Powerful Hand of the Lord: What It Is and Why You Need It [Podcast]

Podcast: Light on Life Season 8 Episode 41

Identifying the Powerful Hand of the Lord: What It Is and Why You Need It

William J. Wolfe has called Abraham Lincoln “one of the greatest theologians of America.” He added that Lincoln’s theology was profound, “not in the technical meaning of producing a system of doctrine, certainly not as the defender of someone denomination, but in the sense of seeing the hand of God intimately in the affairs of nations.” 1 The hand of God is seen among the nations and appears in the well-known verse in Proverbs 21:1. In today’s Light on Life, we will look at the phrase ‘The hand of the Lord’ and how it applies to the rulers of the nations.

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Why Mixing Sacred and Unsacred Is Not a Good God Thing

[Tweet “God’s little pinky finger is enough to knock the devil completely out of commission.”]

Four Things that Will Unnerve Your Spirit Man

Podcast: Light on Life Season Eight Episode Twenty-Two

Four Things that Will Unnerve Your Spirit Man

The great attorney, orator, and statesman Daniel Webster was such an imposing figure in court that he once stared a witness out of the courtroom. Apparently, Webster knew the man was there to deliver false testimony, so he fixed his “dark, beetle-browed” eyes on the man and searched him. According to the story, later in the trial, “Webster looked around again to see if [the witness] was ready for the inquisition. The witness felt for his hat and edged toward the door. A third time Webster looked on him, and the witness could sit no longer. He seized his chance and fled from the court and was nowhere to be found.” 1 That man ran out of the courthouse because his conscience felt guilty about the lie he was getting ready to tell. His spirit was trying to speak to the man. His conscience, the voice of his spirit man, was trying to get him not to do it. Your conscience will do the same. It will try to lead you out of wrongdoing. Learning to listen to it is a part of growing up in God. Four Things that Will Prick Your Conscience, that’s this week’s Light on Life.

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Conscience and the Inward Witness: A Look at the Spirit Led Life

[Tweet “Ultimate Love will warn you if you are going down a path will lead you off a cliff.”]

Flowing in the Overflow: Why It’s a Powerful God Thing

Podcast: Light on Life Season Eight Episode Thirteen

Flowing in the Overflow: Why It's A Powerful God Thing

In a previous podcast, ‘Walking Blamelessly Before Almighty God: Why It’s Good,’ we began talking about the nature of overflow. The fact that effective ministry comes from flowing in the overflow. The following illustrative story references three powerhouse preachers of yesteryear, F.B. Meyer, Charles Spurgeon, and G. Campbell Morgan. When F. B. Meyer was pastoring Christ Church in London, Charles Spurgeon was preaching at Metropolitan Tabernacle, and G. Campbell Morgan was at Westminster Chapel. Meyer said, “I find in my own ministry that supposing I pray for my own little flock, ‘God bless me, God fill my pews, God send my a revival,” I miss the blessing; but as I pray for my big brother, Mr. Spurgeon, on the right-hand side of my church, ‘God bless him’; or my other big brother, Campbell Morgan, on the other side of my church, ‘God bless him’; I am sure to get a blessing without praying for it, for the overflow of their cups fills my little bucket.”1 Do you hear the humility in this statement about overflow? Flowing in the Overflow: Why It’s a Powerful God Thing, that’s our focus on this week’s Light On Life.

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Why You Should Be Jubilantly Expecting Increase

[Tweet “God’s plan is that you partake of His blessings, drinking them in until you’re full of His fullness.”]

Why God’s Enormous Freedom Idea Is Super Superior

Podcast: Light on Life Season 7 Episode 8

Why God's Enormous Freedom Idea Is Super Superior

We are going to talk today about freedom, what it is, and why God’s idea of it is super superior. Freedom is a big issue for all of the inhabitants of planet earth, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. At the University of Oklahoma, for many years, a project was underway to teach a fifteen-year-old female chimpanzee named Washoe to talk by combining sign language with simple recognition. This story intrigued me because two of my children attended the University of Oklahoma.

Since 1966, this chimpanzee learned 140 signs. Finally, the project directors decided that Washoe was prepared to “conceptualize.” This meant that instead of merely imitating some humans words, the chimp would express thoughts of her own. Now, understand, Washoe was a pampered animal in the university’s laboratory—well-fed, physically comfortable, safe from harm. She had security. And yet, when she was able to put words together on her own into a phrase, these were the first three—and she has repeated them repeatedly—”Let me out.” 1 Freedom is our focus today, why God’s idea of it is better than yours. All this on this week’s Light on Life.

Listen to the Audio

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How to Deal with Thieves and Robbers Jesus Style

[Tweet “God’s idea of freedom is super superior to man’s. Real freedom is found in service to others.”]

What is the Blessing Side of the Hand of God?

Podcast: Light on Life Season 6 Episode 46

What is the Blessing Side of the Hand of God?

Proverbs 21:1 says the king’s heart is in the hand of God. That means all the kings, not just the good ones, not just the righteous ones. So, in last week’s podcast, we honed in on the phrase ‘the Hand of the Lord’. What does that mean, ‘the heart of the king is in the hand of God?’ The Bible speaks of the ‘hand of the Lord,’ the ‘finger of God,’ and the arm of the Lord. But here, in Proverbs twenty-one verse one, we have the hand of God, not arm or finger. We saw that the phrase ‘the hand of the Lord’ or the phrase ‘the hand of God’ occurs fifty-five times in the Bible. What is the Hand of God? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Is it something you want to experience or something you don’t want to experience? And so, we looked at the negative side, the judgment side of the hand of the Lord. We saw it manifest in the case of Israel’s sin. We saw it visible in the New Testament of Ananias and Saphira, and we pretty much determined that we don’t want any of that ‘hand of the Lord’ in judgment business because our God is a consuming fire. There is a positive side to the hand of the Lord. There is a blessing side. As believers, we want all there is of the blessing which comes from the hand of God in our daily life. The heart of the king is in the hand of God. That’s what we are talking about in this week’s Light on Life.

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Why We Have Limited Manifestations of the Spirit

[Tweet “Physical strength is rooted in the spirit of man, not the muscles of man. It has spiritual roots.”]

Five Things that Will Prick Your Conscience

Podcast: Light on Life Season Four Episode Forty-Eight

There Are Many Areas the Bible Points Out WHere the Spirit of God will Prick Your Conscience

The great attorney, orator, and statesman Daniel Webster was such an imposing figure in court that he once stared a witness out of the courtroom. Apparently, Webster knew the man was there to deliver false testimony, so he fixed his “dark, beetle-browed” eyes on the man and searched him. According to the story, later in the trial “Webster looked around again to see if [the witness] was ready for the inquisition. The witness felt for his hat and edged toward the door. A third time Webster looked on him, and the witness could sit no longer. He seized his chance and fled from the court and was nowhere to be found.” 1 That man ran out of the courthouse because his conscience was feeling guilty about the lie he was getting ready to tell. His spirit was trying to speak to the man. His conscience was trying to get him not to do it. Your conscience will do the same. It will try to lead you out of wrongdoing. Learning to listen to it is a part of growing up in God. Four Things that Will Prick Your Conscience, that’s this week’s Light on Life.

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[Tweet “Ultimate Love will warn you if you are going down a path will lead you off a cliff.”]

The Warning Aspect Of The Inward Witness

The Warning Aspect of the Inward Witness

In previous podcasts, we’ve looked at the conscience or the inward witness. We have seen that the conscience is the voice of your spirit. And, that the use of your conscience by the Spirit of God is the number one way that God will lead you in the everyday affairs of life. The conscience stays supple and sensitive by not overriding it. In today’s post, we take a look at the warning aspect of the inward witness.

[Tweet “There’s a negative side to the conscience, a warning side, a lack of peace side.”]