Welcome to the first episode of the new year! We hope that 2023 brings you closer to God and, accordingly, greater blessings in your life! However, in order for us to walk victoriously in our faith lives, we have to FIRST decide WHICH force we will give authority to over our lives: the force and impact of the world, or that of the LORD. Because point blank, God’s people shouldn’t HAVE so much indecisiveness and waffling when it comes to determining WHO’S authority we’re going to submit to our lives. Too often, Believers give into our own desires, our own flesh, FAR MORE than we submit to God’s authority in a given situation. So we’ve got to get to a point where we STOP giving AUTHORITY to our flesh, to our desires, to our vulnerabilities, and instead submit our authority SOLELY to the Lord above and NOTHING and NO ONE else.

So goes this episode of Deeper in the Word, where we explore the concept of “giving God top authority” over that of worldly interests, and we use the story found in the text of the Book of Acts 5:17-40 as the backdrop for this discussion. Because that story tells us about how God’s people – in fact, Jesus’s very own Disciples – not only stood tall and courageously in the face of opposition, but how they persevered through it in God’s power….which is something that WE can do, too! So this episode’s topics include how a rap group from Flint, Michigan (NOT Dayton, Ohio….sorry y’all!) relates to today’s theme; how a divine power acted in ways that a parole board could NEVER mimic; and why it’s so outrageous that the very people who committed an atrocious act would incredulously wonder why they would be ACCUSED of doing so!