Life Around "The Fire"

Send us Fan Mail

Most of us walk into a room quietly asking, “What am I going to get out of this?” We wanted to offer a reset that’s short, direct, and practical: the next time you get together with friends, family, or other believers, plan on being a giver.

We talk about what Christian generosity can actually look like in real life. Yes, sometimes it’s money. Just as often it’s a word of encouragement, a moment of prayer, or the courage to let God use you to strengthen someone through the gifts of the Spirit. The goal isn’t a one-time act. We’re aiming for a lifestyle of giving, not because we have to, but because we get to.

From there, we tie generosity to discipleship and the example of Jesus. God gives, Jesus gives everything, and we’re called into that same pattern of love. We also push back on a shallow “faith equals getting stuff” mindset and name the bondage of scarcity and begging. We want abundance for a reason: so we can be free to give. Even if it starts small, it starts with a decision.

We wrap with a prayer asking God for wisdom to maximize the life and provision He’s entrusted to us, so we can show the world what giving looks like. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

Control feels like safety until it starts costing you peace. We sit with one of the most personal challenges in spiritual growth: surrender to God. Not the vague kind that sounds nice on a coffee mug, but the real kind where you hand over your plans, your “rights,” your need to be understood, and your fear of what might happen if you stop managing everything.

We explore why surrender feels unnatural in a culture shaped by rugged individualism, and why Scripture points us toward covenant trust instead. Along the way we bring in Ecclesiastes and the ache many of us carry when achievement still feels empty. We talk about the kingdom of God as a lived reality marked by righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit and how that shalom peace pushes back on anxiety, pressure, and lack.

Then we go straight at the obstacle that stops most people cold: the fear of prolonged pain. We unpack Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” from 2 Corinthians 12 and the shockingly honest promise that God’s grace is sufficient and that his power is made perfect in weakness. We also share how surrender in suffering can lead to deeper intimacy with Jesus and to a life that can carry real spiritual authority with unity, love, and endurance.

If you have been asking God to take something away and nothing is moving, this will give you language, hope, and a next step. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs strength, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you heard.

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

If you have ever done all the “right” Christian things and still felt empty, we are going straight at that tension. We talk openly about how easy it is to slip into dead religion: programs, repetition, and spiritual language without the felt reality of God’s presence. Being a decent person is not the finish line, and going through the motions cannot satisfy the hunger for real faith, real hope, and real love rooted in relationship with God. 

We also make a vulnerable announcement. We have been building toward a teaching series on King David, the life of David, and the Tabernacle of David, including the prophetic relevance many people connect to 24/7 worship and the soon return of Jesus Christ. But we are not launching it yet. Why? Because we do not want to deliver something that is merely presented. We want it to be birthed, shaped by prayer, humility, discernment, and the accompanying presence of the Lord, not just a well-made outline. 

That is where you come in. We ask for intercession, strategic prayer, and a growing base of prayer support so what we share stays alive, God-centered, and strong enough to carry fruit without toppling. We close by praying for intercessors to be raised up and for God’s kingdom to be expressed with power and clarity. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who feels stuck in routine, and leave a review so more listeners can find these conversations.

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

You can talk about the Tabernacle of David all day and still miss the point if you only mean music. We sit down with Dr. Bill Hurst for part two and treat David’s story as a blueprint for a worship lifestyle that forms something rare: a heart God calls “perfect.” That’s not a personality type or a stage gift. It’s the fruit of years of honest relationship with God. 

We walk through why Amos 9:11 and Acts 15 connect the restoration of David’s tabernacle to God drawing in the Gentiles, and why that restoration includes far more than a worship portion. David teaches us to worship through every kind of season: obscurity, monotony, danger, betrayal, leadership pressure, family conflict, and deep disappointment. We also get painfully practical about sacrifice, including Hebrews 13 and the forgotten “sacrifices” of doing good and communication, the kind that can save a home and mature a church. 

From there we lean into mercy, repentance, and the “sure mercies of David,” asking what it looks like to become people who carry God’s character and dispense mercy with authority from the throne of grace. We close with a clear-eyed look at prophetic ministry today: revelation is not the hardest part, interpretation and application are, and God is purifying the prophetic so accuracy does not inflate pride and mixture does not dilute truth. 

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find Life Around the Fire. What part of David’s pathway feels most real to you right now?

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

We kick off a new series on David with Dr. Bill Hurst, asking why Scripture calls him a man with a perfect heart and what that means for our lives right now. We trace how worship, repentance, and “due order” train us to carry God’s presence personally and as a people. 
• defining the tabernacle of David as a lifestyle of relationship with God 
• pursuing God’s heart rather than gifts, ministry, or image 
• the ark as a picture of the manifest presence of God 
• learning from David’s mistake of the right heart but wrong method 
• searching Scripture to understand how to steward holy things 
• why God may return His presence in an unexpected context 
• tabernacle of Moses, tabernacle of David, and Solomon’s temple as transition patterns 
• the goal of God dwelling with people and God being all in all 
• worship as training to produce the presence with an audience of one 
• “due order” and the call for many to carry the presence together 
• partial fulfillment versus complete fulfillment in prophecy 

If you have any questions, thoughts, concerns, you can feel free to drop us a line at life around the fire at gmail.com. That's life around the fire at gmail.com. Or you can just type in life around the fire and look us up on the web. Stay tuned for part number two. 

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

When God feels quiet, most of us assume heaven is closed. We take the silence personally, try to push harder, and end up more frustrated than formed. We go a different direction here: God is clear in His communication, and when something feels off, it’s often because our spiritual senses have grown dull. That doesn’t mean you’re hopeless. It means you can get honest about what’s happening inside and start healing.

We unpack a simple image with real bite: spiritual calluses. Like physical calluses formed by repeated friction, the heart can harden through daily compromises, stressful environments that clash with your values, and relationship patterns like the constant need to be right. We also explore the Bible’s language around the “fatty heart,” a picture of spiritual insensitivity that becomes resistant to compassion and truth. One of the most searching angles is how pain avoidance can create an emotional buffer that keeps us from feeling much of anything, including the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

The second half turns practical with clear next steps for Christian discipleship and spiritual growth: repent by changing direction, spend quiet time listening and letting God lavish His love, practice forgiveness that releases real debt, and invite trusted people to pray for you so you can move forward with restored spiritual sensitivity. If you want to hear God clearly, sense His presence, and obey without grinding in your own strength, this conversation will give you language and a path.

Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a review with the biggest “callus maker” you’re ready to confront.

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

God feels silent right around the moment you need Him to move. That gap between what we pray and what we see can stretch faith to the breaking point, and it can also tempt us to ask the same question Peter heard in the first century: “Where is this coming He has promised?” We sit with that tension honestly and then anchor it in Scripture, because hope needs more than hype when life gets heavy.

We read and reflect on 2 Peter 3, where Peter urges believers toward “wholesome thinking” while scoffers mock the promise of Jesus’ return. The passage reframes delay as mercy: God is not slow, He is patient, not wanting anyone to perish. We talk about how that perspective changes the way we handle pressure, persecution, financial strain, deadlines, and the inner swirl of anxiety, fear, and doubt. We also name a hard truth: feelings are real, but they are not always accurate, which is why God’s written Word becomes a lifeline when you cannot feel His presence.

From there, we lean into what the early church modeled so well: encouragement, exhortation, and steady love inside community. Waiting is not empty time; it can grow obedience, kindness, gentleness, and endurance, shaping us to become more like Jesus while we look forward to God’s promises. If you’re wrestling with God’s timing or feeling worn out by unanswered prayers, come listen, share this with a friend who needs strength, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

When the world feels like it’s coming apart, what if the deepest issue isn’t politics or headlines, but whether our hearts are ready for God? We talk about prophetic ministry as a mercy, a forewarning that helps us understand the times without getting swallowed by fear. With war escalating in the Middle East and Israel once again at the center of global attention, we explore why Israel is described as “God’s sundial” and how events there can signal larger spiritual realities.

From there we move into a sobering theme: the manifestation of God’s presence comes in waves, and those waves don’t land the same way on everyone. We unpack the line, “the same sun that melts butter hardens clay,” and connect it to the difference between living in relationship with Jesus versus clinging to dead religion or false security. As God reveals His majesty, some people long for His glory, while others experience terror because they feel unprepared to meet Him.

We ground the conversation in Isaiah and Revelation 6, where people hide in caves and among rocks, even crying out for the mountains to fall on them to avoid the face of God. That raises an honest question: if you feel dread about the day of the Lord, could that be a spiritual alarm telling you God wants to deliver and purify something? We close with prayer, pointing to Jesus Christ as our refuge, strong tower, and only real security. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s wrestling with fear, and leave a review. What part of this stirred questions for you?

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

Prophecy can mess with your sense of time. One minute you’re confident you heard God clearly, and the next you’re wondering why nothing has changed. We open with a blunt picture that explains the problem: prophetic insight can be like driving down a freeway at 100 miles an hour while looking through binoculars. You can see the mountain peaks, but you can’t see the long valleys in between, and that gap is where discouragement loves to live.

We turn to 2 Peter 3 for a grounded, Scripture-based reset. Peter names the voice of cynicism and spiritual fatigue, the “where is the promise?” question, then answers it with a bigger view of history and an even bigger view of God. What sounds like delay is often patience, and that patience is not weakness. It is mercy that creates time for repentance, salvation, and real inner change.

From there we get practical about spiritual formation: doubts rising to the surface, the dross being skimmed away, and the difference between holiness powered by grace versus holiness powered by self-effort. We talk about “beholding and becoming,” letting the peace of God guard our hearts, and learning to steward the weighty presence of God without trying to earn what Jesus already paid for. We also touch on unity in the body of Christ and end with prayer and a clear cry of hope: Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.

If this message strengthens you, subscribe, share it with a friend who feels stuck in the waiting, and leave a review. What promise are you still holding on to, and what makes waiting hardest for you?

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.

Send us Fan Mail

Following Jesus sounds inspiring until it costs you something real: approval, comfort, and the sense that everyone is on your side. We start with what we love about Jesus, that He tells us like it is. He doesn’t sell discipleship with a soft pitch and hide the hard parts. He names the conflict up front: if the world hated Him, it will hate His followers too, and sometimes the tension can cut right through a household.

We also walk through a sobering scene from the Gospels (Mark 3 and the parallel passages) where Jesus faces pressure not only from religious authorities but from His own family. With crowds pressing in and accusations swirling, they try to pull Him back, worried about what His ministry is doing to the family name. Jesus answers with a defining question: who is my family? His response re-centers everything on faith, obedience, and doing the will of God, even when it feels lonely.

From there we get painfully practical about people pleasing and fear of man. If you’re called to lead, serve, or simply obey God in a hard moment, you will eventually face the test of disappointing someone. We talk about why people pleasing is bondage, how God may even arrange circumstances that purge it out, and why that refining creates real spiritual growth and kingdom momentum. The goal isn’t becoming harsh; it’s becoming free.

If you’re staring at a decision that won’t be popular, let this be your encouragement to please God first. Listen now, share this with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review so others can find us. What’s one area where you’re choosing obedience over approval right now?

Support the show

Loving Yeshua/Jesus, Loving people... Come as you are and you will be loved! 
Feel free to check out our website by typing in lifearoundthefire.com or Life Around The Fire ... We think you'll find some beneficial stuff to look at and apply to your life. 
Shalom to you and your home.