EveryManComplete Podcast

The Church is still trying to rediscover itself after the Covid-19 pandemic. I'm not really sure if we've learned all that God intended for us to learn through those difficult days. 

Many churches have made some adjustments when it comes to social media and adding online digital services to reach out to those who have found church online to be more necessary or convenient.

But, where is the real fruit of the gospel being planted in the lives of those listening? Are we still counting the numbers that are showing up in person and online for our indication of fruitfulness?

God builds His church! He adds to the church day by day as we faithfully make disciples who make disciples, who go into all the world with the gospel!

What is the overall soil situation in our churches? Is the seed of the gospel falling on good soil? Are we equipping the saints for the work of service or are we managing volunteers who have shallow rocky soil? 

We will see the fruit when we start cultivating the soil with the whole gospel!

The words that we speak and the promises that we make may be well-intended and spoken with the utmost sincerity, but in reality, they can fall short of expectations as well as our own.

But when God speaks there is no wavering from His intended purpose. Because His ways and our ways are not the same, we can sometimes misinterpret the final outcome, because it didn't happen as we expected or in the time frame we thought to be appropriate. 

When E. F. Hutton speaks, the commercial says that people listen. They do until their investments take a nose dive. 

When God speaks, not everyone listens. But the rest of His creation does. Think of the story of Jonah. God spoke and the waves, big fish, and a worm carried out His bidding. 

Let's open up the gospel and discover the importance of us listening to God's voice, and trusting that what He has spoken will accomplish everything that He intended for it to accomplish!

We have questions thrown at us every day. Some of those questions are insignificant, but there are a few that become life-changing in our lives. They set the course of direction and purpose. These life-changing questions usually have a high price tag attached to them. 

The Scriptures tell us that God's Word is living and active. But we should not think that we can casually read His word and maybe memorize a few key verses and think we have all the understanding we need.

We need to look intently into the Word of God and as we do we must be honest with what we see and ask the difficult questions of what God is desiring to do in our lives. Then by faith, we must be obedient to the answer to our questions. We are going to look at a few sections of Scripture where we might discover the questions and answers that will transform our lives into the image of Jesus Himself. Join us!

Faith! Is that which is hoped for the conviction of things not seen! We can make it so simple sometimes, but is it? Salvation is a free gift of God, but faith is not just simple trust, but a total surrender to the One who is the object of our faith. There is no such thing as "faith in faith."

Saving faith comes to us from God! It's an extension of His amazing grace. Each one of us has been given a measure of faith. But is the faith you claim to have "enduring" faith! It's the endurance of our faith that will eventually indicate whether we had genuine faith, to begin with.

Allow the Word of God to speak to you on this issue of enduring faith!

We can easily find ourselves becoming so confident in what we do that we forget that Jesus said we can do nothing without Him. We live most of the majority of our days without the least acknowledgment of God's presence or purpose.

Even when we are faced with circumstances that are beyond our ability to perform, we forge ahead and do the best of our ability to accomplish the task anyway. 

Though we are part of the Body of Christ we live and breathe our lives in prideful isolation. 

God's word has plenty to say to us concerning our thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. 

The Body of Christ is suffering and our personal lives are unstable due to our attempts to live life outside of God's sovereignty. 

How much of your life is lived outside of God's sovereignty?

Many times we come across someone that looks very familiar and we ask, "do I know you?" They may look familiar, but sometimes people may have familiar features and mannerisms, and not be the person we know! 
We may know intellectually someone that we have read about in a biography or history book, but that does not mean we know them. 
We claim to have 500 friends on social media, but again that doesn't mean that we know them. 
So, the question arises, do you know God and does He know you?
Let's open up the gospel and examine whether or not we know Him and whether He knows us.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT? We do a lot of good things in the Name of Christ, but are they really God's good things or just good things that we have done in our flesh for our flesh? 

Seems like an easy question to answer doesn't it? Our flesh can easily justify "good" things and place them under the heading of God's things. 

I believe if we look at the Gospel we will discover that there are certain qualifiers that define what things are good and come from God and are for God!

Only the brave should enter here! Let's get serious about being faithful to what God has created and called us to do!

The wisdom of the world is unstable and unreliable, but the majority of people today, including many within the church put their trust in it.  A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways and the man who attempts to follow after Jesus Christ and trust in the wisdom of the world will live an unstable life. 
The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ Himself! This wisdom is a mystery to the world we live in.  This wisdom comes to us through the Holy Spirit as we walk in reverence with our Savior and Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
The wisdom of God is pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy! The wisdom of the world is earthly, natural, and demonic. 
Are you living according to the wisdom from above?!

What does it really mean to live? And in what sense does it mean, to die is gain? 

Before God in His grace pursued us in His love, and saved us we were dead in our sins. We may have been breathing and our heart was beating, but we were dead spiritually. We may have by all practical purposes looked successful to the watching world, but without Christ, we were still dead in our sins. 

Many professing Christians believe in what Jesus did for them on the cross, but the reality of the life that was brought forth because of the cross and the resurrection is a mystery to them.

If you have put your complete trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ; He has become your life! Life is no more defined by who you think you are, the status or title you have, or what the world has labeled you to be. 

To live is Christ, and to die is gain. We must as Paul put it, to die daily that we may gain Christ who is our life!

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Whoever came up with this quote couldn't be more wrong. Words hurt! Words have brought more divisions and wars than anything else we could talk about. 
Scripture tells us that words bring forth death or life. A child's life is formed by the words they hear growing up. Marriage is strengthened or destroyed by the words each spouse speaks into it. Businesses grow or collapse by the words spoken over a period of time. Churches thrive or close their doors because of the words spoken by their members.
Entering another election year the words that we are hearing through media outlets and social media platforms are so divisive and filled with hate. And much of the words we are hearing that are so hateful are coming from those proclaiming to be followers of Jesus Christ.
If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, all that I ask is that you take a few minutes to listen and right down these Scriptures, and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how we should use our words, making the most of every opportunity for the gospel.