Posts Tagged ‘idolatry’

Surviving Our Vetting Process

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

Recorded November 23, 2008. Richard looks at Ephesians 5 beginning with verse 15. The U.S. recently finished a major election to recording this episode. Many politicians experienced a vetting process.  In other words their history, personal life, business dealings, moral conduct–every aspect of their lives were under microscopic examination.

As Christians, we too go through a vetting process. Therefore we need to be careful how we live. As Richard puts it, use your God given head. God knows all our secrets. He knows our thoughts. He remembers all of our actions. Nonchristians frequently delight in finding discrepancies in our faith. We can go through our vetting process on our own, or we can choose to use God’s wisdom.

Every day we have opportunities to serve our God. Do we make the most of every opportunity? Churches grow when their members do that. As a community of faith we need to seize the moment.

Richard reminds us the days are evil. Both in Paul’s day and in our time we face unspeakable evil. The underpinning of the American family is crumbling. TV glorifies sex, cheating, stealing and ungodly character. Being a Christian is at best very unpopular both today and in Paul’s day.

Therefore we must not be foolish. We need to understand and do the Lord’s will. Our quiet times provide God the opportunity to talk to us. As we learn to act on what Paul shows us in Ephesians 5, we come through our personal vetting process as people who are worthy of the title God’s faithful children.

You can hear what Richard has to say about Ephesians 5, and subscribe to From Richard’s Heart by visiting our podcast page.

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.