After the death of Moses. Don't blow past those five words. For forty years he had been their leader, their anchor, the one who stood before Pharaoh, parted the Red Sea, and brought water from a rock. And now he was gone, and Israel was standing at the edge of the Promised Land without him. Joshua had to step into those shoes with no roadmap and no guarantee, just a God who said move forward. And he did. That's the thing about courage. It isn't the absence of fear. It's taking one step forward in spite of it. So think about the fear that's most present in your life right now. The real kind. The one that sits in the back of your mind all day or wakes you up at 3 a.m. What would it look like to take just one step forward today?

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

An eleven-day trip became forty years. And yet the pillar of cloud never disappeared. The manna never stopped. The sandals never wore out.  Here's what the desert was actually doing: separating a people from the only culture they had ever known, slowly and patiently forming them into a people who could be trusted with what came next.  God is never in a hurry. And the waiting is always doing something. So wherever you are today, here is what's true: God has not lost track of you. 

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

Forty years passed, and almost nothing changed. A brand new generation, the same complaints, word for word. That's what repetitive sin patterns do. They don't just affect you; they get handed down through families, communities, and generations if they're never interrupted. And here's the hard truth: you can spend forty years in the wilderness and come out the other side doing exactly what you went in doing if the heart hasn't actually been transformed. Time and good intentions aren't enough. What's the record you keep playing that's keeping you stuck? 

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

Israel was genuinely close to the Promised Land. The spies came back with an incredible report: a fertile land, oversized grapes, and everything God had promised. But ten of the twelve couldn't get past the giants, and fear started doing what fear always does. It exaggerated the obstacle, minimized what God had already done, and called it a realistic assessment. However, Caleb and Joshua saw the same giants and came to a completely different conclusion, not because they had better information, but because they had a bigger God. Is there something God has been leading you toward that fear is keeping you from stepping into?

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

An eleven-day trip turned into forty years. And one of the biggest reasons why is that Israel couldn't stop complaining. God was providing manna every morning, leading them with a pillar of fire, and they were romanticizing life as slaves in Egypt. That's what whining does. It rewrites history, edits out the suffering, and makes the place God delivered you from sound better than the place He's taking you. And it's contagious. It spreads through families, workplaces, and churches the same way it spread through Israel's camp. Here's the thing: whining is the exact opposite of worship. You can't do both at the same time. So what are you currently complaining about that God has actually already been faithful in?

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

There was a perfectly good road from Egypt to Canaan. A direct route. A few weeks of walking, and Israel could have been home. But God took them south, deep into the desert, for an entire year. Not because He was lost, but because He was more concerned with who they were becoming than how fast they arrived. That pattern shows up everywhere in Scripture. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David. The roundabout way isn't the exception in God's story. It's practically the rule. So if you're living in the space between where you started and where you want to be, the question worth asking isn't, "When do I get out of here?" But the real question to ask is, "What is God doing in me here?"

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

Most of us know we haven't kept all ten. And that's actually the point. The Ten Commandments were designed to show us who we really are and how desperately we need grace. Think about how you use a mirror in the morning.  The mirror just shows you the truth. The commandments hold up a reflection, not a ladder to climb. And when you look honestly, they don't lead to condemnation. They lead you straight to Jesus, the one who fulfilled what we cannot and offers forgiveness freely to anyone who asks. 

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

The Hebrew word for glory literally means weight or heaviness. It is God's full reality pressing into the world, and it is what filled the tabernacle so completely that even Moses couldn't enter. When was the last time you were genuinely struck by who God is, not what He's done for you, but just who He is? 

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

Even after the golden calf, even after the rebellion, God's response wasn't to pull back. It was to draw closer. He gave Moses detailed instructions for building the tabernacle, a portable sanctuary right in the middle of the Israelites' camp, because He wanted to dwell among His people, not just visit from a distance. Every piece of furniture, every curtain, every offering pointed to the same thing: a holy God who desires relationship. But the tabernacle was always a shadow of something greater. When Jesus came, John tells us He literally "tabernacled" among us. And when He died, the curtain separating people from God's presence was torn open from top to bottom. You don't need a priest to go in for you once a year anymore. Through Jesus, you can approach God with confidence anytime. And through His Spirit, God doesn't just dwell among you. He lives in you. So here's the question worth carrying into your day: are you actually living like that's true?

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.

It only took forty days. Forty days since the mountain shook, since they heard God's voice, since they trembled at His presence and begged Moses to speak for them because they were too afraid. And now they're melting down their gold and building something they can see, touch, and control. The golden calf wasn't just an act of rebellion. It was what happens when impatience wins. When we can't trust God's timing, we start filling the gap with something else. Money, success, relationships, comfort, habits. We don't always bow down to idols made of gold, but we all have something that quietly takes God's place when the waiting gets hard. So here's the question worth sitting with today: what have you been building while you wait?

Pursuing God with Gene Appel is designed to help you pursue God, build community, and unleash compassion. Grounded in Scripture and shaped by Eastside’s conviction that God’s grace is for everyone, each episode invites you to discover God’s presence and activity in your life.