EveryManComplete Podcast

Jesus came to give life and to give it more abundantly. But this abundant life is not the American Dream or our personal success story. 

Jesus said that He was the way the truth and the LIFE! Life and its abundance come from an abundant relationship with Jesus Christ! 

We are unable to hold onto the world and its promises and along with our pursuit of the abundant life with Jesus Christ. 

Let's open up the gospel and discover what this abundant life is all about and how we live out our lives from the middle of it.

What are you thinking? And, how does what you think determine how you live? 
We have several thoughts every single day, many of which have little to no major determining factors for our lives. What color socks you wear or which earrings you put on will not change the world order in your life. 
Scripture tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ! How we live out our faith in the world we live in does depend on how we think on the issues that matter. How the world defines value and how God does are becoming further and further apart. 
If our minds are set on the flesh it will lead to death or separation. The mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. We can either be conformed to the world in how we think or we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind and become more like Christ!
What do you think about these 20 topics: 
Life
Love
Hope
Faith
Gospel
God
Jesus
Holy Spirit
Success
Sin
Identity
Freedom
Work 
Family
Marriage
Sex
Homosexuality
Fornication
Eternity 
Hell
What you think about them and how you define them will determine how you live your life out and what will define your worldview. Write what you think about each one of them and then search the Scriptures to see how God has defined them, for His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.

Perseverance! Endurance! Life was never meant to be a sprint. But a matter of getting up every day and moving forward toward the goal. 

When it comes to being a follower of Jesus Christ, endurance is a must! Endurance implies there is an opposite force pushing back against us to quit. 

When we have things in our lives that are valuable to us, we are willing to push past the conflict, obstacles, or people in our way. 

This core value of perseverance is critical to our finishing our calling. Let's discover in the gospel our ability to live an enduring faith in a conflicting world.

We are saved by the power and glory of Jesus Christ through His death on the cross, the shedding of His blood for our redemption, and His resurrection giving us victory over sin and death! 
But through the sanctifying work of His word by the power of His Holy Spirit, we are to destroy the strongholds of our flesh that we might take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ!
When we allow half-truths, speculations, and lofty things to be raised up against the knowledge of God, we are allowing those strongholds to be built higher and not torn down. 
From the time we took our first breaths in this world, the family we were born into, the culture we were raised in, and even some of the religious groups we were a part of have given us half-truths and sometimes outright lies, that have become strongholds preventing us from walking in faith and knowing God's freedom!
Let's open up the gospel together and let the word of God through the Holy Spirit reveal to us those strongholds robbing us of the intimacy God has called us to!

Freedom! What does that mean to you? What does that freedom look like? What is freedom from? In a world of great diversity, there is a diversity of answers to those questions. 
God has given us a free will in order that we may have a relationship with Him based upon the choice of mutual love.  People, in general, have taken that free will and have convinced themselves that they can attain their own freedom by exercising that free will. What a fine web of corruption we have weaved! 
With everyone exercising their freedom of choice, speech, and distorted view of who they are and how they want to live is it any wonder we find ourselves heading over the cliff of distorted freedom. 
Jesus said that if we abide in Him we can know the truth and that truth will make us free! It was for freedom that Christ died and we are warned not to turn our freedom into an opportunity for our flesh. Our flesh will corrupt anything it touches. We are called to die to ourselves that we may live in the freedom that Christ died for. 
Let's open up the gospel and discover the freedom that Christ died for!

This past year and a half have been a wilderness journey for many, if not all of us. The wilderness we are speaking of is not one of plush forest and green meadows but barren desert lands with limited or no water available for us. And in the midst of our journey, we have come across things that we have not asked for nor understand why they are even there.
This is exactly the same situation that the people of Israel found themselves in when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and took them through the wilderness en route to the Promised Land. 
Our wilderness journey like those in our illustration in Deuteronomy chapter 8 was being prepared for what God had already promised them and prepared for them. God was attempting to prepare their hearts to receive and live out fully what He had designed for them.
Whatever wilderness you are going through right now are discovering God's glory and presence within your circumstances? Don't look for the quickest exit for you will miss all that God desires for you to know and experience with Him.

No matter how talented or gifted we are, because of our human frailties, we all struggle with our inadequacies. We may not share them out loud but we experience the anxieties that come from those moments of personal conflict. We begin to push ourselves and attempt to regain those times when we felt adequate and in control. Feelings can be deceiving! 
Being adequate in ourselves is a deception that creates most of our anxiety and fear in life. 
We will discover today what the gospel has to say to us concerning where our adequacy comes from and the victory that we can know through Jesus Christ!

The foundation to most of our struggles in life is found in our efforts to maintain our identities. Who are we, and what factors determine our identity? How much influence does that world around us have on how we view ourselves. 
I believe the greater question is not who are we, but who's are we. As followers of Jesus Christ, the world we live in should no longer be the determining factor concerning who we are. 
God's word tells us that since the fall in the garden He has subjected us to futility in hopes that we would come to our senses and repent, coming to Him that we might discover the freedom and the glory that comes from being His children. 
Throughout Scripture, we see the same temptation from the enemy attempting to deceive men to step outside of who they are and who's they are as followers of Jesus Christ! 
Where do you stand in your identity? Who's are you?  It will be seen by the corruption and futility or the life and peace you live out every day!

We have so much information available to us today, politically, socially, and religiously that it can be difficult to determine what is true and what isn't. There are so many conflicting teachings. How do we determine what teaching we should hold onto and which we need to run away from? 
What does the gospel have to say concerning how we teach His word? What are the evidences of faithful teaching? We are to examine ourselves and our teaching for they can lead to a false understanding of Scripture and to an empty salvation. 
Let the word of God and the Holy Spirit speak to us today!

We don't get it! We may think that we do, but I really don't believe or even think we understand the love that God has for us. It is so easy to fall back on our limited understanding of what love is and how it is normally expressed in our world today, that we have dishonored God in the process. 
Because God is love, our expressions of love toward one another are evidence that we just don't get it. Jesus said that we are to love one another just as He has loved us. He has told us that because He died we all have died and that we no longer live for ourselves. Therefore the love of Christ should control us and we should no longer look at man according to the flesh.
We are told that those who truly love are born of God. Those that do not love are not born of God nor do they know God at all. We can only love one another out of the overflow of our love relationship with Jesus Christ. Because God so loved the world we are to so love the people in this world as He did. 
God demonstrated His love toward us while we were yet sinners. It was the love of God that brought us to repentance. 
How is your love demonstrating the glory of God to the world you live in?