Discover the Word Podcast

One of the more abstract concepts in the life of faith is that through salvation our identity is now in Christ. Yet when we talk of our identity in Christ, we’re referring to an actual reality—just not a tangible one. We’re talking about a spiritual reality, which may be why it’s so difficult to get our minds around this subject. 

This week on Discover the Word, we want to consider together what it means to have our identity in Christ.

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God created the wild beasts as an important part of His very good creation. But when humans took things into their own hands and the world was broken by their fall, the wild beasts became something they were not intended to become—a symbol of the brokenness of creation. 

But God never stopped caring about them. In fact, Jesus even emphasized that if God cares about the animals, how much more does He care about you and me!

Some of the best Bible studies happen when we notice something we haven’t seen before, and we spend some time following the thread. Daniel Ryan Day says that recently, that happened to him when he was reading an all-to-familiar section in Mark. There he paused at what seemed like a random reference to "wild beasts." But what he discovered as he followed the surprisingly common reference to "wild beasts" throughout Scripture, was how those "wild beasts" point us to Jesus.

Dr. Jeannine K. Brown, a popular writer, teacher, and expert on the Gospels, joins the Discover the Word group to show us how reading the Gospels piecemeal, one story at a time, may miss the point the gospel writer was trying to convey. Be part of the conversations as she takes us to Matthew's gospel and shows us how to interpret the Gospels as whole stories about Jesus of Nazareth. Join the discussion on The Gospels as Stories with Dr. Jeannine K. Brown and the Discover the Word group this week.

Think about the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which calls God’s people to worship and communion with the God who is both accessible and mysterious. The first verse ends with these words: “God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.”

Talk about mystery! The one God who manifests Himself in three distinct persons is beyond our description and beyond our comprehension, yet this is the God who has invited us into relationship with Him. This week, we want to explore some Scriptures that display this three-in-one concept and see what they tell us about our great God.

Do our choices really make a difference? Yes! When we carefully—and creatively—invest our love for God, He can do great things through us. Our choices, stacked one upon another like dominoes in a row, influence the events in our lives, in the lives of others, and in our world. In 32 verses in Exodus, we’re introduced to six people, one man and five women, who made a difference simply by investing themselves in the situation before them. One made evil choices with disastrous results and yet even there, God brought about ultimate good. Five others made good choices, one stacked upon another, creating a powerful legacy of influence.

Few promises of the Bible offer more reassurance than when God says “I will never leave or forsake you.” Who among us doesn’t want to believe that God is still with us—now? Yes, we see evidence of God in the sky and stars. But here on the ground, we worry. Maybe that’s one reason God asked the huge family that he had rescued from Egypt to camp around His tent in the Wilderness of Sinai. From the outside, this Tent of God’s presence looked more like a portable Bedouin tent than “a house of God.” But on the inside, the detail, color, art, and symbolism spoke of mysteries and secrets, and . . . far more goodness than God was ready to reveal. And still today, even though so much has since been revealed, there’s so much for us to explore together. Please join us in discovering together what that tent in the wilderness says about "God With Us" . . . now.

Few promises of the Bible offer more reassurance than when God says “I will never leave or forsake you.” Who among us doesn’t want to believe that God is still with us—now? Yes, we see evidence of God in the sky and stars. But here on the ground, we worry. Maybe that’s one reason God asked the huge family that he had rescued from Egypt to camp around His tent in the Wilderness of Sinai. From the outside, this Tent of God’s presence looked more like a portable Bedouin tent than “a house of God”. But on the inside, the detail, color, art, and symbolism spoke of mysteries and secrets, and… far more goodness than God was ready to reveal. And still today, even though so much has since been revealed, there’s so much for us to explore together. Please join us in discovering together what that tent in the wilderness says about "God With Us"… now.

Justice. What comes to mind when you see or hear that word? We've heard a lot about justice recently, and have so many thoughts, ideas, images, assumptions, and expectations of what justice is and how it works. Understandably, that influences what we think when we read the word justice in the Scriptures. So, this week, the Discover the Word group would like to pause and act as if we've never seen the word before and see how we would define “justice” if we only had the Bible to shape our definition. Join the group as they explore together “What Does the Bible Say About Justice?”

Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope, he discovered, has long been the practice of Bible reading and interpretation that comes out of traditional Black churches. Join the Discover the Word group as they talk with award-winning author Dr. Esau McCaulley about “Reading Hope with the Black Church.”

In the Bible, there seems to be a love-hate relationship with mountains. It was in the mountains that Israel established “high places” where false gods were worshipped. Yet, it is nonetheless surprising how often mountains are the sites where significant biblical events happened. Here in part 2 of this series of the Discover the Word Podcast, we consider five more of those important and dramatic moments that took place on mountains, and what we can perhaps learn from them.