Christians are not immune to hardships, far from it in fact. We know this. We are called to follow in the footsteps of Christ after all, and nobody is going to argue that He had an easy life. But we also know that in the hardest moments of His life on earth, He was EXACTLY where God had called Him to be. The disciples certainly didn’t have a walk in the park. And the heroes of the faith walked on that alone: Faith.

I feel incredibly silly admitting this, but it didn’t even occur to me until recently that Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph & Moses, didn’t even have the Bible to lean on. They had tradition. And they had God. But that was enough. And it still is.

And even though we know the stories and what they endured for the Faith, we somehow fall into a trap sometimes of thinking if we walk by God’s will, that everything will always be smooth sailing for us as modern-day Christians. When we face challenging times, we question ourselves, wondering what we might have done to deserve this. We question God’s love for us. And even our best efforts to block it out may even let the enemy slip some doubt into our minds about God’s faithfulness.

One of my favorite lines from a song goes “just know the Kingdom of God is within you, even though the battles are bound to continue.” But reality is, the first half of that line is all you need to know. God is with you. When we suffer loss, He provides peace. When we face illness, He provides comfort. When others hurt us, He provides love. And when we fail, He provides mercy and grace.

Not sometimes. Not for some people who deserve it. For everybody, always. And when we don’t know how that is possible, He provides Faith. We just have to take Him at His Word.

One of the reasons I believe God opposes the proud is because pride opposes faith, and without faith, it is impossible to please God. Pride stands directly in the way of faith because it is putting your faith in yourself. It is believing that you are in control. It is believing that your needs come first. It is believing that your struggles are more important than others, and it is believing that you know better than God.

Humility paves the way for faith. But it has to be a genuine humility. It isn’t avoiding the seat of honor to make sure you aren’t embarrassed by a more distinguished guest. That's pride. It also isn’t taking the last place at the table so you can be promoted in front of the crowd. That’s also pride. Humility is not caring where you sit because you know you didn’t deserve to be invited in the first place.

It is impossible to have a genuine faith without humility, but until that faith is tested, how can you know if either are genuine? When God gives you a chance to put that faith into practice, it isn’t so you can prove to Him that it’s real. It’s so He can prove to you that it’s all you need.

Ben makes a great point that Christians tend to confront the chaos of today’s world one of two ways: 1) we isolate to keep ourselves from having to deal with it (my personal favorite) or 2) we infiltrate by going on the attack of the evil around us. Maybe the “3rd I” Ben was looking for was that we should be imitating Christ.

For whatever reason, I just found it interesting today that the next book in the Bible after the Gospels is “Acts”. As Christians, our actions should encourage those around us to learn more about Jesus and to want a closer relationship with Him. And that should be true of everyone, regardless of their righteousness or alliance with your beliefs.

Yes, we should act in a way that encourages non-Christians to grow closer to Christ. But we shouldn’t forget that our Christian brothers and sisters should also have their faith reinforced by how we continually act in our faith.

Sometimes I do think we are a little too much like Peter, thinking Jesus needs more of our help. Jesus doesn’t need us to convict others of their sins. He just needs us to encourage them to have a conversation with Him. He’s pretty good at handling sin.

But He does need us to do our part. Information has never been more easily available, but information and truth are two very different things. The information is becoming less and less reliable as it becomes more available. And our complacency condones the world that it creates (get you some of that alliteration Pastor Ben!).

We do have to act. Act in a manner worthy of the calling. Act with humility and gentleness. Act with patience and tolerance. Act diligently to preserve the unity of the Spirit.

“I don’t care” is a powerful phrase I’ve learned works wonders with my kids. I’m sure it’s not popular in today’s world, probably even frowned upon in most circles. But it works great to end conversations about things like who gets the last Oreo, which braincell killing device is too loud and distracting from another braincell killing device, or which NBA team they should play on one day (sorry Gabe, I’ll answer that when you put down the Play Station and start actually practicing basketball).

Please understand, I love my kids more than I could ever describe. But no, I don’t care about those things, and I really wish they wouldn’t. I have more important things to worry about. Like money, checking my email, and figuring out why all these people on the news & social media have lost their minds. Oh wait……

It isn’t that God doesn’t want us to have money, or that He wants us to be rich. He doesn’t care how much money we have. It isn’t that God doesn’t want us to read our emails and do our job. He just doesn’t want our work to come before Him. And it isn’t that God doesn’t care about the sins of others. He just doesn’t care about our opinion of the sins of others.

Now, if my kids come to me with a serious problem, I’m all ears. And so is God. Want to pray for others to come to Him? You have His full attention. Looking for ways to help somebody? He has some suggestions. Want to get to know Him better? Ask, and you shall receive.

I don’t know how Biblical this is, but I’ve started to notice how selfish my prayers are. I’m always asking for what I want or think I need. But when I try to fill my time praying for others, well for one, I never run out of things to say, and also, I don’t have as much time to worry about myself. That also has the huge benefit of keeping me out of His way so He can take care of my needs. It’s almost like the more I do what He asks, the more He takes care of what I need.

Why do I feel like I’ve read that somewhere before?

If you want to really walk with Christ, then you better get comfortable being uncomfortable. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a righteous discomfort. He just wants you to be more like Him, and well, you’ve got some work to do.

When you start working out, that first warm-up routine feels like it’s going to kill you. But over time as you build strength and get in better shape, the workout gets easier. It becomes second nature. But if you keep doing the same workout, you stall out. That discomfort is what grows you. It’s not fun, but it’s necessary.

We can eventually reach our physical goals. We can lose enough weight to fit into those pants. We can get our cholesterol to a level where our doctor leaves us alone. We can stop doing that thing we know is bad for us.

But our walk with God is the ultimate chase for an unattainable goal. You can read and pray 24 hours a day with the best of intentions and the most receptive heart in human history, and you’ll never come close to full sanctification on this side of eternity. But the overwhelming magnitude of it is enough to cause a lot of Christians to eventually throw up our hands at the fact that “we’ll never get it”. Or worse, we’ll think we actually have.

I love the way Ben said it once: God loves you the way you are, but He refuses to let you stay that way. In fact, He loves you SO MUCH THAT He refuses to let you stay that way. So get comfortable being uncomfortable. And be grateful that He loves you enough to want more for you than you do.

You know that trust exercise where you turn your back to your partner and fall backwards, trusting them to catch you? Until you fall, they can’t prove that they will catch you. Your faith has to come first. Likewise, until we trust God, He can’t prove that we can.

I think this is why it is impossible to please God without faith. Think about it. He can have anything He wants, and the only thing that pleases Him is for us to believe that we are the only thing He wants.

But it’s the ultimate paradox. As long as we doubt it, it’s impossible even for Him to show us. But once we believe it without seeing it, He can make it impossible for us to doubt.

One of the most interesting new technological advancements to me has been the “live photo” you can take with your phone. Not interesting because I’m amazed by it. More interesting because for the life of me I don’t know why we would want it. In all of my live photos, it just shows me how imperfect that perfect moment really was. It usually captures my kids slapping each other out of the way right before or after that brief instant I got of them all smiling at the same time.

Our walk with God is really no different. On the very first episode of this I talked about how we all like to be our perfect selves on Sunday morning, but that isn’t the real us. I wish my faith was as solid as this Podcast might portray it, but reality is I have an edit button and Ben gently redirecting me like the gutter guards at a bowling alley. Put that faith in motion and it gets ugly a lot of times.

No one is immune to this because having faith isn’t a snapshot of one moment in time. It’s an active walk down a path with more twists, turns and mistakes than you thought you were capable of.

But it’s also how God shows His love and reminds us that He didn’t call us because of our perfection. He called us so we could experience His.

Ben and I joke that when God speaks to us, it isn’t the cliche’ of a great booming voice from the clouds. But He has spoken from the clouds before. Take your pick of 3 different Gospel accounts of God speaking to Peter, John and James from a dark cloud during the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35). What message did the Almighty God of the universe have for them?

"This is my Son. Listen to Him”.

God doesn’t hide Himself and His will from us. In fact, His Son said if we seek it, we will find it. And as complicated as we make Him, God’s will is much simpler than ours. Even we don’t know what we want. But all He wants is a loving relationship with everyone He created. And yes, by extension of that, for us to love and appreciate everyone else He created. And that’s definitely hard, but it’s not complicated. He told us how, in a great booming voice from the clouds.

Do you trust God? The Creator of everything you see and everything you never will. Who sent His Son to accept His wrath for your sins and raised Him from the dead to prove His faithfulness. We know we can trust Him (or we better!). But do you?

It’s easy to trust Him on Sunday morning while you sing Amazing Grace. But when nobody is around to hear your answer, do you trust Him to know what’s best for His Kingdom?

How about when His Word says to pray for that person twisting the knife into your back? When you’re waiting for the life changing call from the doctor? When He tells you to apologize to that person you’d rather never speak to again, or to hold the door for the stranger who just stole your parking spot? Do you trust Him then?

What if you never find out how He used your faith to further His Kingdom? Or who He spoke to through your kindness? What if the prayer they never heard you say saved your enemy from being punished for what they did to you? Do you still trust His Righteousness?

You can trust Him. But you have to do it first. Then He can do some really cool stuff.

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'God causes all things to work together for good'. This slice of Romans 8:28 is a feel-good classic from The Bible. But we like to gloss over the meat of that sandwich; the part that says: "God causes all things to work". It doesn't say God snaps everything together for us. He causes, things to work, for good.

I love a nice walk on the beach too, but God seems to be more interested in taking us hiking up a mountain than walking down a peaceful beach. And sometimes there won't be any footprints in the sand because He asks us to climb a rock wall with Him.

I suppose if you follow Him far enough up the mountain, it seems safer to stick with Him than to try to get back down by yourself. But I'm sticking it out for His company at this point. Plus, He said something about a beach on the other side.

The Book of John really boils it all down to the key points. You cannot earn God's love through works, because God's love is free. To us.

But it wasn't without cost. Jesus bought it for us. And it was expensive. He just has one simple request from those who accept His generosity. Love others and give them a break when they aren't nice to you.

Seems like a pretty small ask.

Grief is a difficult and very personal process that we all face from time to time. But regardless of the difficulty of saying goodbye to our loved ones, we can find comfort knowing that He rejoices in their homecoming. Our loss is hard, but it pales in comparison to their gain from being with Him.

(Song reference: Whom Shall I Fear by Chris Tomlin)

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!

It's a long title, but I loved that line. We know actions speak louder than words (or at least, we should). But how can you show Christ's love to others without needing words at all? Do that more.

This one was hard to name because my ADD took over and we went a little bit of everywhere. But humans tend to like to talk about common interests. Except for sin. Sin is the one thing we all have in common, but none of us like to talk about it. At least not ours.

I think most of us have things in our lives that we are so committed to that nothing takes priority over it. It may be our kids. It may be our job, or a spouse or significant other. But you'd do anything for it and choose it over anything that comes up against it.

Some people build every detail of their lives around the development a particular skill. They train crazy hours and go to extreme measures for even the tiniest gains.

But that one thing isn't usually God. Imagine if it was.

Description suggestions for this episode may be submitted to pastorben@fvbaptist.org.

Excited to be back! First episode of 2024 and it was so much fun. Happy new year everybody!