Pursuing God with Dave and Gene

God loves the world in three dimensions: a clear vision, holistic love, and an activistic faith. 

You might not be able to change the world, but you can change a life, or two, or three, next door, in your community, and globally. 

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.

Jesus shows a holistic love. We are not only invited to a life beyond the grave in God's kingdom, where there is no more pain, no more sickness, no more hunger, no more disease, no more bloated stomachs, but to actually redeem and restore this broken world. 

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.

We’re exploring how God loved the world and what that means as followers of Jesus. 

Jesus is often moved with compassion for people’s spiritual or physical needs. He looked at people and was moved in a heartfelt way.

Sometimes we can get so busy with our church activities that we don't have margin in our lives for the people who live on the edge. We should unleash compassion for those people who live on the edge next door, in our community, and in some of the broken places in our world. 

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.

Jesus called the religious leaders of His day, the Pharisees, blind guides. They could see, but not with God's eyes. 

When we determine worth based on what our culture says is valuable instead of who they are in the eyes of Jesus, we are missing out. Let’s give ourselves corrective lenses 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.

This week we’ll explore the idea of not hating the world, but loving it like God does.

We’ll look at lessons Jesus taught us to show how we can love the world.

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.

We need to walk by faith, not by sight. It would be foolish to make decisions without wisdom from God, which was Solomon's main blind spot. He failed to see God at work. The absence of wisdom ushered in a long season of misery in his life. 

Only God's wisdom can preserve our lives from pitfalls, and only God's wisdom can provide our lives with perspective.

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.

Solomon says patience is better than pride. One of God's great goals for all of us is that we would replace our prideful spirits with patient ones.

If you're going to be patient in the present, you're going to have to learn to move on and let go of the past. Wise friends can help with this. 

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.

Solomon points out compliments of a foolish person are empty; they’re meaningless. None of us like words of correction, but we can miss out on valuable feedback if we don’t listen.

Solomon's next piece of wise counsel is integrity is better than deception. 

Are you listening to the rebukes in your life? Are you learning from the times of pain? Are you in a place these days where you find yourself dwelling on regrets? 

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.

Through the wise counsel of Solomon, we can learn a lot. 

Solomon says having a good reputation and name is valuable. Solomon also says eternal life is better. There are lessons learned in the house of mourning that can never be learned in the house of feasting. 

Are you in a season of sadness? Are you mourning a loss of some kind? If not, do you love someone who 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.

We learn some lessons only through experience; we gain wisdom over time. As we study a passage this week in Ecclesiastes 7, we’ll look at the wisdom Solomon gained only through experience as he tried to fill the hole in his heart.

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.