Lessons for Living (Audio)

In survey after survey, Americans state that they believe that there’s a God. Well over ninety percent of the people surveyed affirm this belief. Many, many people state that they’re Christians. Of course, the natural question to ask is, if all these people say they believe in God, why is society the way it is? Pastor Mark will be teaching today about the difference between knowing about God and knowing and believing God. You’ll hear about the importance of learning to trust God to do what He says He will do.

There are lots of Christ-followers who struggle with having God’s promises working in their lives. They believe that God tells the truth and that He made these promises to them, but for whatever reason, they don’t see God doing things in their lives. If this describes you, today’s teaching by Pastor Mark will be helpful. He’ll be talking about a small church of discouraged believers, and how they’d forgotten what they needed to do to see God’s power working through their lives. They’ll find out what to do to let God help them again.

You might not realize it, but the world system is hostile to biblical Christianity. It wants nothing to do with the people of Jesus, except to get them to compromise what they believe. Because of this systemic hostility, it’s easy as a Christ-follower to get worn down and be tempted to turn away from Jesus. This is what was happening to the people that Pastor Mark will be teaching about today. You’ll hear about the difficulties they were having, and the solution the writer of Hebrews was offering them.

There are lots of voices to listen to in this world. Many of them tell you that you’re doing okay and that you should trust your own wisdom and decision-making. The Bible, however, takes a different view of how best to chart your path. As Pastor Mark will be teaching today, scripture makes it clear that you can’t direct your own way successfully. You’ll hear about what a Christ-follower is supposed to be doing when it comes to making their way through this life. You’ll hear God’s opinion on how best to run this race called life.

If you’ve lived any length of time on this planet, you know that life is confusing. From childhood onward, the nagging, burning questions come to mind: who am I? What will I do when I grow up? Many of these questions remain unanswered even as adults. Pastor Mark, in his teaching today, will talk about where the true answers to these questions are found. He’ll be telling you about a group of people who’d thought they’d found the answers but then had doubts. The writer of Hebrews will assure them that they had found the answers they needed.

At times, Christianity can be difficult. You have the Bible and the Holy Spirit, so it should be pretty easy, you think. But when the rubber meets the road of life, there tend to be more grey areas than you thought were possible. Well, Pastor Mark will be teaching today about how to live out your Christian life. You’ll hear about the struggle the believers in the book of Hebrews had and that they’re not much different than yours. You’ll learn the solution the Bible offers, and that pleasing God isn’t as hard as you might think.

Humans have a tendency to lift up and exalt people. They want to put them on pedestals, even to give them superhuman traits and character. Pastor Mark, in his teaching today, will be talking about how the ancient Jews had done this to Moses. While God had used Moses to do amazing things in the history of the Jews, he was still a fallen man. You’ll learn how the writer of Hebrews reminded his readers of this fact. You’ll find out why there is, in fact, only one Person who is above all other people – the God-man Jesus.

The early Christ-followers, being Jews, had a lot of things to unlearn. They had to put aside their dependence on doing things to define their standing before God. They were to discover new freedoms that would come about as they decoupled from the Jewish religion. But as Pastor Mark will be teaching today, one of the biggest hurdles they had to overcome was their near-deification of the prophet Moses. You’ll discover, as did they, that while Moses was a great man, Jesus was better.

The world today is in a hurry. Hurry to the next fad, to the next job, to the next spouse. It doesn’t seem to want to take the time to let relationships develop, to bail on them rather than to work through the rough spots. Christ-followers can be tempted to join this mindset – you’ve probably seen the results. Pastor Mark’s teaching today will talk about the Christians in the book of Hebrews. They were tempted to go back to their old ways of living. The writer of the book will be giving them good reasons to hold fast.

You like your church, right? You’re thinking, “Of course, I like my church – I wouldn’t go there if I didn’t.” It’s easy to get so attached to your church that you think that everybody should go there. Some denominations have taken that thinking to the point that they believe that you can’t be saved unless you’re attending their denominational church. Well, you’re going to find out today in Pastor Mark’s teaching that the Bible says that salvation isn’t found in a religious system, no matter how good it is. It’s found in the man, Jesus Christ.