Grace at LAST

181-Have you ever allowed one disappointment or disagreement to change the way you see someone? In this personal episode, I share how I began recognizing my own habit of forming judgments, holding on to offenses, and allowing one or two things to overshadow everything else I knew about a person. We look at what the Scriptures teach about love, forgiveness, and grace, and how becoming aware of our thoughts can help us let go of unnecessary judgments and experience greater love and freedom in our relationships.

180-Could your understanding of God's love be influencing the way you see and treat others? For years, I understood God's grace and the finished work of Christ, yet I still carried expectations about how Christians should live. In this episode, we look at how our understanding of God's character shapes our relationships and how freedom from religious performance can help us stop measuring people and begin appreciating them for who they are.

179-For years, I thought part of being faithful meant helping other people see where they were wrong. I didn't think I was being judgmental. I thought I was helping, standing for truth, and sometimes even loving people.

But I've started asking a different question: By whose standards?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, we're talking about the difference between loving people and controlling them, when love may require us to speak, and when we may simply need to mind our own business.

What if every disagreement doesn't need to be corrected?

What if people don't need us to constantly evaluate their choices, beliefs, or lives?

Maybe our responsibility was never to keep everybody else in line. Maybe we can give people room to live, learn, grow, and even disagree with us while we simply love the person in front of us.

Episode 178-For much of my Christian life, I didn't just believe certain things about God. I was sure about them. And questioning what I believed could feel almost like questioning God Himself.

But my understanding of God and God Himself are not the same thing. My interpretation of the Scriptures and the Scriptures themselves are not always the same thing either.

In this episode of Grace at LAST, I'm talking about our need to be right, our fear of being deceived, and why changing our minds doesn't have to mean we've failed.

What if honest questions aren't something to fear?

What if we can have confidence in what we believe while still being willing to listen, learn, and look again?

Episode 177-For years, I saw people through categories: saved or unsaved, spiritual or carnal, obedient or disobedient, walking with God or falling away. And without realizing it, I was constantly evaluating where people stood.

But what did all that evaluating produce in me?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, I’m looking honestly at how easily our beliefs can turn into scorecards and how much room is left for love when we’re busy deciding where everyone belongs.

What if my job was never to label everybody?

What if my job was simply to love the person in front of me?

176-If the Bible wasn’t written directly to us, is it still for us?

If the Old Testament was written to Israel, what do we do with it? If Paul wrote Romans to believers in Rome, why should we read Romans? And if JesUs was speaking to His disciples, should we assume He was speaking directly to us?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, we talk about the difference between who the Scriptures were written to and what we can learn from them today.

Understanding the original audience doesn’t take the Bible away from us. It helps us understand it.

We’ll look at familiar verses, promises, the law, Paul’s letters, and why context and covenant matter.

Maybe context isn’t taking the Bible away from us.

Maybe context is helping us hear it clearly.

175-If Christ has already completely forgiven us, why do we keep asking God for forgiveness? What about confession, mercy, the Lord’s Prayer, and 1 John 1:9?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, we go back to the finished work of Christ and ask a bigger question: Are we forgiven, or are we repeatedly becoming forgiven?

Complete forgiveness doesn’t mean our choices don’t matter. We can acknowledge when we’re wrong, apologize when we hurt someone, make things right, and change.

But we do all of that from a place of forgiveness, not to become forgiven.

One sacrifice. For all time. That’s good news.

174-If all of our sins have already been forgiven, what happens when we do something wrong? Does the Holy Spirit convict us of our sins? And if He doesn’t, does that mean sin no longer matters?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, we look at what JesUs actually said about the Holy Spirit and conviction in John 16. We’ll talk about the difference between conviction and condemnation, what happens when the Spirit brings something in our lives to our attention, and why grace doesn’t cause us to care less about how we live.

Grace doesn’t ignore our choices or their consequences. It changes the reason we live differently.

Maybe condemnation was never what God intended to change us. Maybe grace is far more powerful than we realized.

173-Can we trust the Bible?

In this episode of Grace at LAST, I share some of my own journey of asking that question. After more than twenty years of studying and teaching the Bible, I began to realize there was another question I needed to ask: Am I reading the Scriptures the way the writers intended?

We’ll talk about translations, interpretations, context, audience, covenant, and the lens we bring with us when we open our Bibles.

I have learned that asking questions does not have to weaken our faith. For me, it has done the opposite.

My confidence is not built on having every answer. My confidence is built on knowing the God the Scriptures reveal.

Let’s keep learning together.

172- If we're completely forgiven and secure in Christ, what motivates us to follow Him? In this episode, we look at why grace doesn't make us care less. It changes what we care about. Fear may change our behavior for a while, but love changes our hearts. When we stop trying to earn God's approval and begin living from the security we already have because of Christ, our motivation begins to change. We no longer live to become accepted. We live because we already are. Grace doesn't lower the value of living a godly life. It gives us a completely new reason for living it, one rooted in love, trust, and our identity in Christ.