End of Week Encouragement Podcasts – Magnify Him Together

“So, in this podcast, we are going to consider the role of community and bible study. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about that before. When I first started thinking about it, it was one of those almost revolutionary kinds of ideas for me. I had always seen bible study as the kind of thing that I just do on my own. You know, we talk about personal bible study and I mean that’s really what it is in a lot of cases and yet I think sometimes we forget how integral the community is in our bible study…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 67 by Jason Hensley is taken from 2 Tim 2:24-25.

“Let’s talk a little bit about the law of Moses. If someone were to just walk up to you & ask you, What do you think about when you think of the law of Moses? What would you say to them? Maybe you think about the tabernacle or the temple. Maybe you think about some of the offerings or sacrifices. Do you maybe think about ritual and how God is not particularly interested in the ritual, but what is beneath: the intentions, the thoughts…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 66 by Jason Hensley is taken from Deut. 1:5; 4:37; & 7:6-8.

“In this podcast, we want to think about the Lord’s Prayer. This is a powerful, beautiful prayer that the Lord Jesus taught his disciples to pray. And yet oddly enough, how often do we pray it? I mean, sometimes, perhaps a brother will get up and pray the Lord’s prayer during memorial service, but how often do you pray it for yourself?”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 65 by Jason Hensley is taken from Luke 22.

“Today we are going to think, in this podcast, about the idea of saints. And when I say that, I don’t mean saints as in the way that other churches understand them. I mean: biblical saints. And I think that this is unfortunately something that we don’t think about all that often probably because the term is used by other churches in a way that is completely not biblical. And so, because of that, we have just kind of taken the word out of our vocabulary. I mean, when was the last time you talked about saints? And yet, what’s fascinating is, in scripture, the saints are actually US…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 64 by Jason Hensley is taken from Romans 1.

“What we want to think about today is scriptural intention. Now, that might seem a little misleading because, usually when we talk about intention – I think what we mean by that, our intent, when we talk about intention is – what is our intention when we act and we talk about how intentions matter and how our motivation for our actions is important. And that is good and that is right, but that is not what we are talking about today. What we’re talking about today is scriptural intention. What I mean by that is the intention of God behind what scripture says…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 63 by Jason Hensley is taken from Jeremiah 29.

“Today, we are going to discuss that your body is a temple for the holy spirit. Do you ever remember hearing someone quote those words to you? Maybe in relation to eating healthy, treating yourself well, you need to take care of your body because your body is the temple of the holy spirit…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 62 by Jason Hensley is taken from 1 Corinthians 3 & 6.

“Today we’re going to be talking about how God is working. God is working; and he’s working all the time. God has a plan and God knows the end from the beginning. And I think that that is crucial for us to remember because sometime when things are really difficult and things happen to us we always ask “why? Why is this happening?”. And I think that is a legitimate question to ask. You know, we want to understand what is God doing? And yet, one of the most interesting things about this is that God doesn’t always answer the question. You know, we ask, “why? Why are you doing this to me? Why do I have endure this?” And sometimes we don’t find out the answer. I think because maybe sometimes the answer is so much bigger than perhaps we’ll understand.”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 61 by Jason Hensley is taken from 2 & 3 John.

“Today we are going to talk about how we are always learning. Now, if you’re like me, maybe you wish that wasn’t true, at least in some respects. You know you wish you didn’t make mistakes, you wish you always had the right answer, that you just knew “ah-ha! This is the answer” But that’s just not how it is and that’s not what scripture tells us either. What we see from scripture is that we are always learning.”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 60 by Jason Hensley is taken from Mark 7; Acts 10.

“Today let’s talk about sin. You’ve probably heard before that “a sin is a sin” and that all sins are equal. And I think in a sense, that is true. It’s true that all sins bring death. And conversely that all sins can be forgiven by God. So, often this idea that sin is sin and all sins are equal is advanced when someones talking to someone else and trying to explain that there isn’t a sin that you can do that will prevent God from forgiving you. That there is no sin that is so bad that God will say “Oh, well I’m not going to forgive that” so it is said as a reassurance that God still wants to know you and have a relationship with you and I think that’s good and that’s right. And so in that sense, sin is sin…”

End of Week Encouragement Episode 59 by Jason Hensley is taken from Exodus 32, John 19.

Now, I teach third and fourth grade English.  As a third and fourth grade English teacher, I get to read a lot of children’s books. One of the things we notice when we’re reading children’s books is that the story always gets simplified. You know, there’s almost always a good guy in the story – a protagonist. There’s almost always a bad guy in the story – an antagonist. As you start to read the story, you know, it’s pretty easy to see: this person is good – I want them to do well. And this person is bad – hopefully bad things happen to them. You know, sometimes stories have surprise endings, things switch around and yet when they do switch around you never really have a character that is well, kind of good and kind of bad. Have you noticed that?

End of Week Encouragement Episode 58 by Jason Hensley is taken from Philemon.