Archive for November, 2008

Make a message out of your mess

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Recorded October 12, 2008. This week, Richard takes a look at Acts 17. Paul is in Athens where he discovers an alter to an unknown god. Paul noted how religious the athenians were. They worshiped over 200 gods. Just to make sure they didn’t leave anyone out, they made an alter to the unknown god.

Paul knew who this unknown god is. Before looking at the unknown god in Athens, Richard shows us how Christians often worship unknown gods. For us unknown gods are anyone or anything that takes the place in the preeminence of our God the father. When something becomes more important than Jesus Christ in our lives, we worship an  unknown god.

This ungodly focus results in our being mired in an ugly mess. The more we stop trusting God in everything regarding our lives, the greater our lives become a mess. Thankfully the unknown god Paul preached about in Athens can transform our mess into a message.

No matter how great the mess in our life, God can redeem us and make a message out of our life. We can continue worshiping unknown gods, or we can choose to worship the one living God who sent His Son to redeem us from the mess in our lives.

To listen to this episode and to subscribe to this podcast series, visit “From Richard’s Heart.” Above all, remember God loves you.

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What good is faith without deeds?

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Recorded September 28, 2008. In this episode, Richard takes a look at the relationship between faith and works. Most Christians are familiar with the great faith chapter in Hebrews 11. Like many people in the Old Testament, many of us live by faith too. We have not seen Jesus, we go day by day on the promises of God, and we lack absolute proof about God’s love. Yet we remain convinced in our heart of hearts that God loves us, that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, and we are the beneficiaries of God’s grace. So how do we know we have faith? Better yet, how do others know we have faith?

We know we have faith when our actions reflect what our words say. Others will know we believe Jesus is our Lord and Savior by our deeds. We will never be saved by works, but our works provide the evidence that we really do have faith in a loving God.

You can hear what Richard has to say about how faith and works go together by listening to the “From Richard’s Heart” episode called “What good is faith without deeds?” After listening, we encourage you to leave Richard a comment on this blog page.

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Hooray, i managed to update WordPress :-)

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

i installed a WordPress update today without any significant hitches. This update includes some bug fixes and security upgrades. Thankfully the upgrade instructions on WordPress’s main site are fairly straight forward.

At best i am very uncomfortable installing software on our server. i am not a computer geek. i ran into some annoying problems when i originally installed WordPress. i dreaded trying to recreate all our blog entries. i also realized we needed the newer version of WordPress to combat some security vulnerabilities discovered in the previous version. i must express my thanks and gratitude to the many people developing this software. They have done a remarkably good job of making the upgrade process relatively painless for non geeks like me.

God willing, there will be a post announcing a new episode of “From Richard’s Heart.” i did not want to add a new episode until after completing this WordPress upgrade. i remain humbled by how God has blessed this podcast. We are slowly reaching the entire world through our web site and this podcast. Richard has called me a missionary. i’ve never seen myself as a missionary. My only qualification for working on this web site is my wish to serve God in some capacity, and a desire for people everywhere to hear the things that matter the most to Richard.

To everyone who has supported my efforts through your prayers i humbly say Thank You.

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