Higher Aim with Dr. Curt Dodd

Have you ever trained for something before? Maybe you trained to run a race, or to play a sport, or compete in an event. Whatever the case may be, the training most likely wasn’t easy. It was strenuous and difficult, possibly even painful. You had to push yourself further than you thought you could go for the sake of preparing your body and your mind for the upcoming challenge. As believers, we have training to do as well. We have to be prepared spiritually, mentally, and emotionally for all that we will face as we follow Christ. The Christian life is no cake walk. We will face difficulties and obstacles along the way, which is why we can’t skip out on training, learning, and becoming disciples if we want to walk out our faith well. There are several truths that apply to us as followers of Jesus when it comes to the tough times we will face in our lives, and I want us to look at a few of those today.

Some of my most vivid memories from my childhood come from when I played football. I remember being so excited when I finally got the chance to suit up in junior high to play tackle football. But before the season began, I had to make sure I had all of the right equipment. I had to get cleats, shoulder pads, a helmet, a mouth guard. Each piece of equipment was important for success and protection as I played football. In a lot of ways, suiting up to play football is similar to suiting up as believers. The Bible talks about how as followers of Jesus, we are always in the midst of a spiritual battle. We are fighting against unseen forces every day to further the Kingdom of God and push back against the enemy. If we are going to be successful in this battle, it is important that we suit up. And to suit up correctly and effectively, we have to understand where we fit on God’s team. Let’s take a look at three things that are true of us as members of God’s army.

Merry Christmas and welcome to another episode of Higher Aim. This is such a great season to celebrate and a great season to get into God's Word. Today, Dr. Dodd asks and answers the question, "How can we celebrate Christmas year round, not just one day, but year round"?

What does love actually look like? When you tell someone you love them, what does that mean? Is it just a collection of words? Is it a feeling? If we take a look at Scripture, we will learn that there is so much more to love than we probably think. We will see what true love looks like by the example Jesus Christ set for us. And we will begin to understand how powerful love really is.

We all wrestle with a lot of things and we ask ourselves a lot of questions. But there's one question God doesn't want us to wrestle with. And that is, "Is Jesus the Messiah?" The word "Messiah" means anointed one. It is the description of that individual who the Jews were expecting to come and bring God's kingdom to bear. Now, the Jews originally were looking for a military political ruler to put Israel back in the category of a great kingdom, but God's plan was for a great kingdom to come from the inside out, not the outside in. Today, we are going to look at what Scripture has to say about Jesus, and how we can be confident that He is, in fact, the Messiah.

The Holy Spirit is like Christmas. He brings gifts and He brings fruit. You and I, as children of God, need to understand how powerful that is for us. We need to live with the kind of hope and that kind of expectation, knowing that God will produce His power in and through our lives for His Kingdom. He will use the gifting of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Holy Spirit to mature us in our relationship with Him, and ultimately impact others with that relationship. In this week’s message, we are going to take a look at the different ways the Holy Spirit works in us, through us, and with us so that we can fully experience the power and the gifts that are available to us through the Spirit of God.

Many of us don't realize how important the promises of God really are until we go through a difficult time in our lives. In the midst of the difficulty and uncertainty our world is facing right now, Dr. Dodd is going to point us to the promises of God and show us how we can cling to them and the certainty they provide no matter what we are facing.

There is a big difference between faith and positive thinking. Positive thinking is something that comes from you. It is based upon the drive of your heart to believe something so badly that you want it to be. But that’s not faith. Faith is based upon what God says, and faith is the ability to believe what God says. It comes from God Himself. We need to understand that, although hope and confidence are part of our ability, God wants us to exercise our belief and confidence in what He says. The ability to actually take God at His word comes from God Himself. In other words, the ability to trust God comes from God Himself. So with that in mind, we are going to take a look at what that kind of trust looks like in this message.

Have you ever played, “Let's Make a Deal” with God? “God, I will do this, if you will do that?” And guess what? God does that, but you don't do this. I’d venture to say you’ve probably done that before. Every single one of us has tried at one point or another to make a deal with God, and we have fallen flat on our face. We’ve failed. Failure seems to be part of life. But I want to discuss how to handle failure in a positive way. When we are looking at how to handle failure in a positive way, Simon Peter (of all the disciples) can teach us about failure. Just like us, he was pretty good at failure. He actually disowned Jesus in the worst moments of Jesus’ life. So as we look at this account of Simon Peter’s life, we can learn a lot about failure and how to grow from it.

We often say that love is a feeling. But I would have to disagree and tell you that love is an action. Love is something we show, not just something we say. And the greatest commandment we’ve ever been given by Jesus Christ Himself revolves around love. We are to love the Lord our God and we are to love others. That is the goal of our time here on earth. In this message, I want us to take a look at five key values surrounding love so that we might love God and others better as we grow in our walk with the Lord.