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This Christmas, you can shine the light of Christ into places of darkness and pain with a purchase from the Joni and Friends Christmas catalog. You are sending hope and practical care to people with disabilities, all in the name of Jesus!

Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

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In Matthew 1:23, God called himself Immanuel, which means God with us. Not just God made us. Not just God thinks about us. Not just God above us. But God with us. God where we are. He breathed our air and walked this earth. God…with…us!

Bethlehem was just the beginning. Jesus has promised a repeat performance. Bethlehem, Act 2. No silent night this time, however. The skies will open, and trumpets will blast, and a new kingdom will begin. He will empty the tombs and melt the winter of death. Death, you die! Life, you reign! The manger dares us to believe the best is yet to be. I love Christmas because it reminds us how “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

Read more Because of Bethlehem

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

As a young man, journalist Sebastian Junger traveled the US and wrote about it. One day in the 1980s, he entered a restroom in the Florida Keys and found hateful graffiti scrawled on the walls. Most of it targeted Cuban immigrants. But one message, apparently from a Cuban, stood out. It read, “Thank God the rest of the people in this country are warm and caring and welcomed me in ’62.” Junger observed, “The very worst things about America were on that men’s-room wall, and the very best.”

How are we to respond to the poisonous messages we so often encounter? The book of Proverbs offers sound counsel. Solomon, who compiled most of the book, brackets chapter 15 with similar imagery: “the mouth of the fool gushes folly” (v. 2), and “the mouth of the wicked gushes evil” (v. 28). The chapter begins, however, with the antidote to such venom: “A gentle answer turns away wrath” (v. 1). Solomon also noted, “The soothing tongue is a tree of life” (v. 4). Always, a patient response is key: “The heart of the righteous weighs its answers” (v. 28).

How might God use our words when we ask Him to help us weigh them before our mouths, our pens, or our keyboards spew venom and vitriol at our fellow humans? As the proverb says, “How good is a timely word!” (v. 23).

Today, we’ll hear about:

 A daughter confronting her father’s refusal to plan for succession for a $150 million business

What happens when business growth collides with the reality of debt

Arthur Brooks’ thoughts on the science behind happiness—and how serving others creates true fulfillment in life and leadership

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Running a marketing consulting business is never simple. In uncertain times, it's even harder. Clients are cautious, timelines stretch, and budgets shrink. You know your services create real results, but closing new business feels tougher than ever. If you're not clear and confident in your message, potential clients will hesitate or move on. And the longer you stay vague or unfocused, the more you're stuck in survival mode instead of scaling. So how do you position yourself as the obvious choice, especially when the market feels shaky?

In this episode, host Kyle Reed is joined by veteran StoryBrand Certified Guide Kris Jones and StoryBrand's Director of Certification Luke Pastina to explore how to thrive as a messaging expert in a season of economic unpredictability. Kris shares how she's adapted her business, adjusted her rates, and built systems that support both clarity and connection. You'll learn how to uncover your client's real problem, what story actually moves the needle, and why collaboration is key to building a thriving consulting business. If you're trying to grow your marketing practice in uncertain times, listen in to get the blueprint.

Hire Kris to get you effective messaging at Red Door Stories and access the free PDF mentioned in this episode.

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Click HERE to get in-person help creating your marketing at the next available StoryBrand Your Business LIVE event!

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Unlock the power of a framework that works—the StoryBrand Framework at StoryBrand.ai. It's like having the world's best copywriter create high-converting marketing whenever you need it. Start your free 7-day trial at StoryBrand.ai.

Learn how to make your marketing and messaging work using a proven framework in the updated book, Building a StoryBrand 2.0. Order it now on Amazon  or wherever you buy books!

Send Us Your Prayer Requests

--------

This Christmas, you can shine the light of Christ into places of darkness and pain with a purchase from the Joni and Friends Christmas catalog. You are sending hope and practical care to people with disabilities, all in the name of Jesus!

Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.

Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

My dad, a man of few words, told my brother and me, “Boys, Christmas is about Jesus.” In one of those bedtime, book-time moments, somewhere between the fairy tales and the monkey with the lunch pail, I thought about what Dad had said. I began asking the Christmas questions, and I’ve been asking them ever since.

God knows what it’s like to be a human. When we talk to him about deadlines or tough times, he understands. He’s been there. He’s been here. Because of Bethlehem, we have a friend in Jesus. Christmas begins what Easter celebrates. The child in the cradle became the King on the cross. And he doesn’t tell us, “Clean up before you come in.” He offers, “Come in and I’ll clean you up.” It’s not our grip on him that matters, but his grip on us. And his grip is sure.

Read more Because of Bethlehem

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

As I opened the bookshelf assembly instructions with piles of boards and tools strewn on the floor before me, I viewed a set of instructional diagrams of what to do and what not to do. One diagram—with a large X on top—depicted a person staring at a pile of boards and tools with a bemused frown not unlike mine just a few minutes prior. On the right side was drawn the “correct” way to assemble. The only difference? A second person was there. Both figures now had smiles on their faces as they worked together.

So I got my husband. “The instructions say I need your help,” I said, showing him the drawing. He laughed, and we assembled it together. I could have stubbornly tried to find a way to put it together on my own. But the manual was right; the process wasn’t meant to be done alone.

In Romans 12, Paul urged new believers to not try to do life in Jesus alone. Instead of seeing themselves as self-sufficient and thinking of themselves “more highly than [they] ought” (v. 3), they needed to see themselves as part of an interdependent body, where every member needs each other’s help (vv. 4-8).

As Jesus helps us learn how to “be devoted to one another in love” (v. 10), we can experience life “in harmony” with each other, where one another’s needs, griefs, and joys (vv. 13, 15) are never carried alone.

Pedro became a follower of Jesus at fifty. He’d been an angry, vindictive man who hurt those around him. As he received counseling from his church, he felt remorse over his past. “I now have less years ahead of me than behind me,” he said. “I want to live them well. But how?”

Pedro found his answer in an unlikely source─a genealogy. As he read Moses’ account of Adam’s family line, he noted that one sentence was repeated to describe Adam’s descendants: “ ‘Altogether, [name] lived a total of [number] years, and then he died” (see Genesis 5:8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31). But one man was described differently.”

Enoch was described as one who “walked faithfully with God” (vv. 22, 24). He drew near to God, and that’s how he spent his earthly life. Because of his faith, “he was commended as one who pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch had a steadfast, abiding trust in who God was and what He’d do for those who sought Him (v. 6). He expressed his trust in the Almighty by acting on it and obeying Him, and his faith was such that God spared him from physical death (v. 5).         

“How can I live my years well?” Pedro asked. “By walking faithfully with God.”

Our earthly life doesn’t have to be summed up in just a number. It can be summed up in our faith, which allows God to work in more ways than we can count.

Born Mary Flannery O’Connor, she’s best known as Flannery O’Connor, one of the American South’s most celebrated writers. Her stories brim with suffering and grace. When her beloved father died of lupus when she was fifteen, a devastated O’Connor threw herself into writing her first novel. Soon she herself was diagnosed with lupus, an incurable disease that took her life at thirty-nine. O’Connor’s writing reflects her physical and mental anguish. Novelist Alice McDermott said, “It was the illness I think that made her the writer that she is.”

We don’t know what the apostle Paul’s “thorn” was (2 Corinthians 12:7), though many have offered conjecture. We do know that Paul said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me” (v. 8). We also know God didn’t do so (v. 9). This humbled Paul. He notes how it kept him “from becoming conceited” (v. 7). Paul’s thorn formed him and made him the apostle that he was. But the thorn wasn’t all, for with the thorn came God’s sufficient grace and perfecting power, so the tormented apostle could declare, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (v. 10).

The thorns in our lives, whatever they may be, form us. They make us who we are. But the thorns aren’t all there is. As Paul and Flannery O’Connor and countless others have witnessed over the long arc of human history: God’s grace is sufficient for us.