Lessons for Living (Audio)

When you’re a kid, it’s pretty easy to make poor decisions. That’s what your parents are for – right? They’re supposed to guide you and demonstrate how to make correct choices. But what if you’re one of those people who weren’t raised with good guidance? It’s harder to be sure that what you’re doing is right. And that, as Pastor Mark will teach today, is where the Holy Spirit comes in. You’ll find out how to get your internal guidance pointed in the right direction, and how to strengthen that moral compass.

People are so sure they know how best to make their lives work. You don’t need to look far to see people who seem to have it all together but when you look under the surface, they’re a mess. Even some in the clergy have pitfalls and weirdness associated with their lives. As Pastor Mark will be explaining in his teaching today, a lot of these dysfunctions happen because people don’t want to admit that they don’t know the best way to run their lives. They need Jesus running them, and today you’ll find out how to do that.

Many religions today have as their focus of worship “the universe”, or some “ascended” man, whatever that means. As a result, you’re praying to some “nothingness”, or to a man or woman who somehow “made it” to god-ness, whatever that means. Pastor Mark will be teaching today that the great thing about Christianity is that it’s not general or generic. You’re following a man who existed in history. You get to choose to believe what He said about Himself. And you get to pray to His Father, Who will answer you!

The word “prayer” generally means the same thing to all people throughout the world. Sometimes, though, the word’s used for something other than making a request to a god. In the second “Matrix” movie, the word “prayer” is used to describe speaking to the gathering of people – not to god. The major difference between Christian prayer and non-Christian prayer, as Pastor Mark will be teaching about today, is that Christians pray to a personal God – not to an undefined, man-made being.

Humans like things – their lives, activities, and people – to be reliable and stable. They tend to not like change, except in the most minimal of ways. Large, radical changes tend to be not only disliked but opposed. This is even more true when it comes to religious activities and rules. In Pastor Mark’s teaching today, he’ll talk about how thinking that “the way we’ve always done things” can cause you to miss God’s best. He’ll show how pursuing God through hard times is better than going back to what seems like peace.

If you ever do a comparison of other religions to Christianity, one of the things you’ll notice is that you can’t ever quite get close to god. There’s always just a little bit of distance between their god and you. Or, if they promise that you’ll become “god”, it’s usually about being absorbed into some kind of impersonal “godship”. But as Pastor Mark’s teaching today, becoming a Christ-follower allows you personal access to God Himself, face to face! That’s something that no other belief system offers!

To the Jews of the Old Testament and these Jews that the book of Hebrews is addressed to, Abraham was “The Man”. He was their genetic originator, a friend of God, the human that God made a covenant with. They’d grown up with the ritual of sacrificial offerings to the priest to atone for their sins. This, as far as they knew, was the way to a right relationship with God. But Pastor Mark will be teaching today that their problem was that they didn’t understand who Jesus was. Today, you’ll find out what they found out.

In advertising, you’ll often see phrases like, “New and Improved”, “Better”, or “Improved Formula”. Sometimes you can actually tell the difference between the old and the new; sometimes, you can’t. The Jewish believers in the book of Hebrews were being persecuted from two sides: from the Jews because they’d left Judaism, and from the Romans because they were Christians. Pastor Mark will be teaching today how the writer of Hebrews is showing his listeners the ways that Christianity is better than the religion they’d left behind.

Life can be a grind. Some people – like the Christians in the Middle East and China – have it quite a bit harder than most. Times like that make you wonder where God is and is He paying attention to your troubles. As Pastor Mark will be teaching today, the Christ-followers addressed in the book of Hebrews were having it really rough. When they weren’t being thrown to the lions, they were being used as human torches. You’ll find out today where God is in horrible situations like those and what He has to say about them.

Everybody has challenges in their lives, but Abraham’s might take the cake. He waited twenty-five years for the son that God promised. Then when Isaac was an adult, God asked Abraham to sacrifice him! The writer of Hebrews retold this story to his listeners. He reminded them – as Pastor Mark will be reminding you in today’s teaching – that God came through for Abraham, just like He said He would. You’ll learn that through your tests and difficulties, God's going to be there to come through for you, too.