A podcast designed to encourage believers that God can use you to impact His kingdom no matter your story. Yes, it requires surrender and trust, but His grace is enough.
Episodes
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Dr. Matthew Sleeth and I discuss how his world view shifted from secular, humanist, scientific to a Biblical worldview after he read a Bible from his ER waiting room. We chat about this shift from being an ER Physician to a Christ-follower who consistently practices Sabbath and cares for the world God created. Dr. Sleeth talks much about the true rest and joy that comes from Sabbath.
5:40Take our listeners back to when you were an ER doctor and share what happened that led you to a career and overall life change.
"My worldview, up until that time, was secular humanist scientific. If you couldn't measure it, if you couldn't reproduce it, I really didn't want to talk to you about it. But evil is a spiritual concept. You can't measure it. Goodness knows you don't want to try to reproduce it. But if anybody's seen evil, they know what it is. You can't explain it away. And so I thought, if there's this evil force loose on the world, what's the other side? Where does something good come from? And I had seen good, because being involved in medicine I think is fundamentally good. It's a wonderful career. I love taking care of sick people. I worked in the emergency department my entire career in medicine. Sometimes I'd kind of step back and we could be having a trauma code or something on somebody that we didn't even know who it was....I'd look in and they're just a dozen people throwing everything they had at trying to help and I said, 'This is good. Something here is fundamentally good'. So I went looking for the source of that good. I read through a number of the world's sacred texts. I read the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran and my kind of quest, if you will, culminated by picking up a Bible one day. I'd never read it. We didn't own one. And I actually took the Bible I picked up in a waiting room.... I said, I've never read this thing and I'm gonna read it."
"In the book of Matthew, I met the Lord, I met Christ and it just hit me like a ball-peen hammer in the forehead that this this person was real and different than anybody else that has ever walked the planet. He is so amazingly human and then at the same time, amazingly inhuman. That's how I met the Lord was in the Bible."
"If our lives are set, and we've got all the knobs tuned where we want, it's kind of hard for the Lord to break into that. It's probably more in the times of chaos, that's when we lean on the Lord that we find out that He's there."
"My theology is that Sabbath keeping is not a condition of getting into heaven. It is not fundamental for salvation. So, Sabbath keeping is not a condition of getting into heaven, it's just a condition that heaven is in if you get there."
17:17After reading through the Bible, what did you discover about God's Words on the Sabbath?
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Dr. Matthew Sleeth on IG, Twitter, and Blessed Earth
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Tuesday Apr 28, 2020
Tim and Darcy Kimmel join me on the show. We chat aboutthe legacy of a grandparent, setting healthy boundaries, and grand parenting with purpose
2:10 Tell us a little about your family and Family Matters.
9:13 Your children are grown and have kids of their own. Long before becoming grandparents the two of you were thinking about how to impact the generations coming behind you for the kingdom of God. What were some of the "notes" you took about grand parenting prior to becoming a grandparent?
"Grandparents, because of the nature of their generation and their age, have a lot of assets they can contribute, whether it's a healthy or a fractured home."
"I think we figured it out. Why grandchildren get along better with the grandparents and sometimes with their own parents is that they share a common source of annoyance." LOL!!
18:10 What are some ways you grandparent with purpose?
Extreme Grandparenting book and video series
"The first thing we can do is give a blessing to our grandchildren. The way we do that is that we help meet three basic needs that all children have. The need for security, the need for significance and the need for strength."
"Three specific ways we can bless our grandkids is always use our words and our actions to appeal to one of their one their three basic driving inner needs. Most parents don't even know their kids have three driving inner needs.... They all need to know they're secure. They all need to know they're significant. They all need to know they're strong or sufficient for the life that they're facing. We can come alongside them using our words or actions, to always give them a secure love, help build a significant purpose into their life, and to represent a strong hope to them for the future. I mean, that stuff's gold to a kid."
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Tim and Darcy on IG , Twitter, and Family Matters
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Tuesday Apr 21, 2020
Jim and I discuss parenting your adult children, how your role changes, avoiding unsolicited advice, and moving them from dependence to independence.
4:16 Will you share a little of your faith journey with us?
"We've been married a long time [45 years]. We write books together. Some people call us marriage mentors, but we have high maintenance marriage. High maintenance is not bad, it just means we got to really keep working at it."
"The Bible says that you inherit the sins of a previous generation to the third and fourth generation. Well, we want to stop that. You can either recover or repeat."
"Really good parents have kids who make some poor choices, at times.... I always like to say, a sinner married another sinner, and then you have sinnerlings."
"Be ruthlessly honest about your own brokenness. You don't have to always focus on it, but but the truth is when you're ruthlessly honest about your own brokenness I think you parent better."
"We who are studying where kids are going when they become adult children. Unfortunately, a lot of them are walking away from faith, yet there's some studies out right now....that are pretty exciting that say if there are faith conversations in the home, there's about a 300% better chance that they'll stay in the faith."
11:27We are going to chat about doing life with adult children. When our children live under our roof we rarely consider what parenting will look like when they become adults. What were some surprises or challenges you and your wife faced when transitioning into parenting adults?
"Experience is a better teacher than advice."
19:13You discuss 9 principles in your book, "Doing Life with Your Adult Children." A few being: Your role as the parent must change. You can't want it more than they want it. Let's talk about Principle # 5: Your job is to move them from dependence to independence. What are some common mistakes parents make in this area and what advice do you have for them?
"Age 0-2 and say your job with them is caring and you're not going to discipline them. You're not giving them a whole lot of advice. You're just showing care. If they cry, you pick them up. Hungry, you feed them, etc. From two to 10, you do pretty much control them. That's micromanaging in the best way. You aren't going to say to your kids, 'You know what I'm doing this podcast right now, so you guys can go outside and if you want to go over to the mall.' ...By about age 10, you've got to turn into a coach, which means you still lead, you still sometimes take them out of the game....you're still in charge....But at the same time, they've got to make some decisions because they've got to learn you're moving them from dependence to independence. By the time they get to older teenagers, you're almost a consultant. Their day to day decisions should be done by them. There are parents who say, 'Yeah, but you don't understand my kid.' No, I don't and you may have to squeeze in especially if there's addiction issues or sexual promiscuity or things like that, but the truth is they should be making most of their decisions. By the time they're adults, they're going to have to learn to do it on their own....I think a lot of parents miss that. They keep wanting to control. If you try to control your kids as young adults, meaning 18, 19 and 20, when they're not always acting like adults, if you keep controlling them, then you don't give them that chance to experience some of the highs and lows of life and become responsible. No young adult wants you to always give them advice, because they view that as you don't trust them, or you don't think they're grown up enough."
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Jim Burns on IG and Homeword
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday Apr 20, 2020
Monday Apr 20, 2020
Natalie and I chat about her son's diagnosis and how that experience altered the their lives leading them to adopted 3 children with special needs. Natalie shares how her view of life became filtered through the question: Is this going to matter for eternity?
2:32 Will you go back to when you were pregnant with your first child and share with our listeners what it was like to find out he had a congenital heart defect in utero?
"There was kind of an added level of stress on us as a young, newly married couple, but we did have our faith. I remember that first night after me and my husband had cried together and prayed and begged God to heal our baby, just knowing that whatever happened, we were going to give God glory through it, that we wanted our child's life to tell God's story, no matter what that may be, but then walking that out was extremely difficult."
"We went into that appointment having a plan of what our future was going to look like...Then everything was kind of ripped into the unknown. I didn't know who was going to deliver my baby and I didn't know if I was going to be able to hold him after he was born and I didn't know if he would make it through the labor and delivery. So many unknowns and I think that was the hardest part of the pregnancy."
8:04What transpired after Landon was born?
9:50 Eventually, you were led to adopt 3 children who all have special needs/disabilities. I know I am asking you to condense your life into a few minutes, but can you share a little about that experience?
"God opened our eyes to how relentlessly short life is, and that it is more precious than we ever realized. Both me and my husband knew we were never going to be the same after this. We had a new perspective on life. It didn't matter where our children went to school or what clothes they wore, or what sports they played, we realized what really matters in life and that's connection.... We realize that all we can take with us into eternity are the lives that we touch. And so that's really the heart of what God led us to adopt. That's the filter that we based every decision after having Landon through: Is this gonna matter for eternity?"
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Mazi and I chat about how anxiety manifests itself, practices to manage anxiety, identifying unproductive thought patterns, and how to overcome them.
5:34You're here today to talk about some aspects of mental health. Something that we're all hearing or reading on a daily basis, during this quarantine and unknowns, is the rise in anxiety in people. Talk to us a little bit about anxiety and what you have seen as a counselor during these times, and how to identify that in ourselves.
"One of the things that I've been communicating to clients and talking with other people about is that if you are feeling anxious right now, that's normal. If your anxiety is elevated right now, that's normal. The reason for that is because we are living in very stressful anxiety inducing times, because what we're living in is filled with uncertainty."
"The thing that we have to understand is the way our brain works. Our brains main job is to keep us alive. The way our brain does that is by constantly assessing if we're in danger or if we're okay. One of the things that our brain perceives as dangerous to our being, to our security is uncertainty. So whenever our brain perceives that we are being faced with uncertainty, with change, with something that is outside of our control, our brain registers that as a threat to our being. Our brain immediately sends us into fight, flight or freeze mode, also known as our anxiety response."
Anxiety may manifest as:
- anxiousness, worry, panic
- frustration, irritation, more easily annoyed
- heart racing or pounding
- changes in appetite and digestion
- withdrawing, under functioning
- over functioning
- sadness, depression
- and others
13:25 Once we identify how anxiety manifests itself, what are some practices, some tools we can put into place in our daily lives to help us to deal with it in a healthy way?
- Structure: "As human beings, we crave comfort and certainty and structure. What recent events have done is they've taken all that and thrown them up in the air. If you can try to create some sort of structure and routine in your day, that would be beneficial, because it sends a message to your mind of, 'Okay, we're not in control of a lot of things, but we're in control of when we eat lunch. And I know I'm going to lunch at 12 o'clock and I can count on that.' "
- Showering (self-care): "It's a way of sending a message to our mind that the wheels may have fallen off the car, but I'm still worth taking care of in the most basic of ways."
- Emotional Awareness: "Now's not the time to stuff our feelings. We're feeling too much. There's too much to emotionally respond to and so now is not the time to stuff it and not bring it up or think I'm just not going to deal with it. I'm going to sweep it under the rug. It's really important for us to process our fears, to process our worries, to be emotionally honest with those we are close to in our lives right now."
- Remind ourselves of truth: "It's natural for us to feel critical of others. It's natural for some of us to feel critical of ourselves. Why can't I get this routine down? Why can't I figure out this homeschooling. And so just being very aware of when our thinking is turning negative and reminding ourselves of truth? I'm doing the best that I can. This is so unknown. I've literally never lived through this before. So I'm not going to get it right."
- Get outside: "Every day we need to get outside and if you don't feel like you want to go outside, then that's the day you really need to go outside."
- Consistent face to face connection with people outside of our home: "It is so important that every day we are talking and if we can video see someone, because we are not designed to be physically isolated. And even if you are isolated with your family that still isolation and that in of itself is kind of a different stress because you're with us all the time."
Show NOTES continued
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Mazi Robinson on IG and visit Cultivate Atlanta for Free Resources
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Tuesday Apr 07, 2020
Joel and I chat about how the cross defies everything power stands for, the atonement of Jesus, and what the resurrections achieves.
4:30 Share a little of your faith journey with us. When and how did you come to know Jesus?
7:17 As we approach Easter, many Christians are reading the gospels to reflect and proclaim again the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that saved us from our sin. You co-authored a book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross. What is the scandal of the cross?
"That language comes from Paul, from1 Corinthians 1where Paul says that he preaches Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles."
9:36 What is it about the cross of Christ that defies everything power stands for?
"If you look at that text 1 Corinthians 1, why is the cross a scandal to Jews for Paul? The answer is pretty clear, because Deuteronomy 21tells us that anyone who's hung on a cross, anyone who is hung on a tree is cursed by God. So you have this weird, paradoxical, oxymoronic, putting side by side of Christ, which means Anointed One, next to crucified, which by the first century, was read in terms of Deuteronomy 21. Anointed One, cursed one, it doesn't make any sense, right? And you know, Paul picks up on that in Galatians 3, when he talks about Jesus becoming a curse for us."
15:35 There are several theories of atonement, so in your personal study and understanding of Scripture how does the cross literally and effectively deal with sin?
"When 1 Petersays that Jesus bore our sins on the tree, then there's the same kind of language being used... back in Leviticus that speaks to the effectiveness of sacrifice in terms of exchange and representation...[S]in and death are transferred to the sacrificial victim. In this case, Jesus, and his purity and his life are transferred to those who receive the benefits of the sacrifice."
"The problem is not outside of us, the problem is inside of us. And so the cross is the means by which we are cleansed from sin, proceeding through death into life that opens up new life."
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Joel B. Green on Twitter
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Daniel and I chat about various aspects of Jesus life and how it demonstrates Jesus' kingship. We also chat about the woman who anointed Jesus with oil and how she is juxtaposed with the Pharisees.
3:18 Share with us a little bit about how you came to know Jesus and your faith journey.
8:06 Why did God have to kill his own son Jesus?
"He creates mankind in His image, what we call the Imago Dei. That image is distorted when man and woman choose to rebel against Him. And because man and woman rebelled against Him, they could not pay for their sin because now they're fully sinful. God requires a perfect sacrifice because he's a perfect God."
Genesis 3:15 : I will put enmity, animosity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
Romans 5:12"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so debt spread to all men because all sin for sin and deed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted here. There is no law yet death ran from Adam to Moses."
"If I could make it simple I'd probably say this, man sinned. Man had to die, because man could not die, because man is not perfect. Another man had to come. who is perfect to die for us."
13:40 Jesus is teaching parables in the middle of Holy week. He has been anointed with oil by the woman. He eats the last Passover meal with the disciples. There's all this stuff going on before he goes into the garden. What is something that is often overlooked in these verses that significantly adds to our understanding of Jesus as the Promised Messiah?
Continued SHOW NOTES
---------------------------------------------------
Read Daniels blog HEREand listen to Preacher's Devo Podcast
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Dr. Chuck Quarles and I chat about the significance of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey colt, the atmosphere during Jesus final week, the passover meal, the brutality of the crucifixion, and more.
4:56 Will you share a little of your faith journey with us? How did you come to know Jesus?
"What would your answer be? And my sad response was, well, I've been baptized. I tried to keep the commandments. I try to fulfill the golden rule and he [pastor] gently but firmly said, 'And who is the subject of each of those statements? I. So who are you really trusting for your salvation and forgiveness of sin, Jesus Christ, or yourself? And that began the process of exploring what Scripture talks about the way of salvation and coming to an understanding of salvation by grace, rather than through our efforts."
7:18 Let's start simple, what is Holy Week and what events does it entail?
8:47 In Matthew 20, Jesus was going up to Jerusalem when He predicts His death to His disciples. In Matthew 21, He instructs two disciples to find and bring back a donkey with her colt. The disciples place their cloaks on the colt and Jesus rides it into the city while the crowds gather waving palm branches and saying, Hosanna to the Song of David! Hosanna in the highest! These verses are packed with prophecy and details we so often miss. When you are teaching your students about this portion of Matt. 20 and 21, what are you teaching as key truths and minute details that help us better understand the full story?
"The prophecy that's at the forefront of Jesus triumphal entry is Zechariah 9, where the daughter of Zion is told that her king will come riding on a donkey, on the colt of a donkey. The ancient Jews widely recognized this as a messianic prophecy....If you look at Zechariah 9 in context, you'll see that the king who's coming as foretold, is actually Yahweh himself, Jehovah."
"Psalm 48, where Yahweh is praised as the King of Zion. And remember its Daughter Zion, who was told your king is coming to you riding on the goal to the donkey."
Psalm 149identifies the key of the children of Zion as, "Israel's maker, the creator who has founded the people of Israel."
Isaiah 24:23says that the Lord of hosts a reference to Yahweh, using the Hebrew Divine Name, will reign as King on Mount Zion.
Jeremiah 8:19.... the Lord is the king and her is Zion in the parallel
SHOW NOTES continued
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Dr. Chuck Quarles on Twitter
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Mar 17, 2020
Tuesday Mar 17, 2020
A Prayer Amid an Epidemic by Kerry Weber for America Magazine
Melissa and I chat about the common definition of contentment vs. contentment in the life of a follower of Jesus. We also chat about the enemy of contentment and how that enemy is so often the root of all sin.
4:52 Will you share a little of your faith journey with us? How did you come to know Jesus?
Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Sanderson High School
"Jesus found me in a large public high through the ministry of a woman who was there as a teacher."
"That was one of the greatest gifts- the Bible was never foreign to me."
8:34 What was going on in your life that lead to the writing of your book The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World and eventually the 8 part video teaching?
"I realized I didn't have a circumstance problem back in Scotland, I had a heart problem...My heart is constantly wanting more and so maybe my lack of contentment was less about what was happening in my life and more about what was happening in my heart."
11:25 Contentment is defined as "a state of happiness and satisfaction," but how do we define contentment through the lens of the Bible?
"I think what we see Biblically is contentment is this deep sense of hope and joy in the Lord and in what He has done that really is insulated from circumstances."
"The heart, in a sense, that is reigned in to God's will for His life, that is the contented heart."
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Melissa Kruger on IG and Whit's End
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday Mar 10, 2020
Tuesday Mar 10, 2020
Rachel and I chat about what led them to Africa, her acculturation process, living as a minority and how that has increased her empathy for people who believe differently, what she has gleaned from the practices of her Muslim friends, and her book Stronger Than Death.
3:45 Will you share a little of your faith journey with us? When did you come to know Jesus as Savior?
"The older you get the more people you love. The more people you love the more pain there is in the world. Watching God meet me in those trials and meet my friends in their trials my faith has become more of a sense of being with God, with Jesus and less some kind of conviction of right theology or right dogma."
6:28You have lived in the horn of Africa for 17 years. What led you there?
As newlyweds, she and her husband lived in an apartment complex in Minnesota where most of their neighbors were Somalians.
They moved to Somaliland in 2003 with 2.5 year old twins for her husband to teach at the university.
9:45 To give our listeners a visual share a little about Djibouti....the religion, the landscape, the food, etc.
- Majority population of Djibouti is Somali
- Majority religion is Muslim
- Djibouti is a desert country on the water
- Djibouti is a former French colony
- Djibouti is a stable place surrounded by war and challenges
- The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden meet, so the underwater life is beautiful.
- Djibouti has the hottest climate in the world
13:12 You are a Christian and so often we hear the stories of Christians moving to Africa as missionaries, but for you and your husband it was to teach at a University. In one of the articles you wrote, you share about an early friendship you developed with Amaal, a Muslim woman, which helped you learn much about the culture and religion. Share with us a little about the acculturation process and how Muslim's and other religions interact peacefully in Djibouti.
"I've gone through different thought processes of how I think about the character of God and the words we use to describe God or how I practice prayer. I haven't really adopted any Muslim practices, but I have been challenged by them. For example, in prayer...There's a call to prayer 5 times a day. There's mosques all over, so I can hear from work. I can hear it from my house. The call to prayer is basically, come to prayer. In the morning, the man singing it will say, 'Prayer is better than sleep. God is great. Come to prayer.' I can use that to call my own self to pray, to remember God even if I'm not following the exact same motions as a Muslim would...I can use the call to prayer to stimulate my own spiritual life."
---------------------------------------------------
Follow Rachel Pieh Jones on IG and Djibouti Jones
Follow Grace Enough Podcast on IG and FB
---------------------------------------------------------