Podcast | The Practical Disciple - Part 3

Posts in Category: podcast

My Personal Meditation on the Cross for Good Friday – Episode #32

In 2015 I pondered the cross for forty days through sketches and studying great works of art about the crucifixion. My heart was moved by the experience. I had intended to create a painting but in the end settled on writing this meditation. I hope it is a blessing to you.

I would encourage you to not only read but to listen. I offer a brief introduction in the podcast before going into the meditation. Blessings.

The Cross

The cross was not a piece of jewelry, wall ornament, poster, or tattoo. The cross was not beautiful. The cross was a blood-stained electric

Read More

How to Escape Spiritual Dry Times [Episode 31]

Image from Ozyman

 

 

Dry times, times of feeling a loss of God’s presence, are inevitable in the Christian walk.  All of the historic saints expressed in their writings periods of longing to hear God’s voice and to feel God’s peace.  Spiritual droughts occur for a variety of reasons.

  • Neglect of the relationship: If you are not investing time in drawing near to God don’t be surprised if God seems hard to find.  God hasn’t moved, but your priorities, time, and attention may have pushed a gap into your awareness of God’s presence.
  • Neglect of duty: I find

    Read More

Six Questions You Should Always Ask When You Study the Bible [Episode 30]



Welcome to the first ever Five Minute Friday podcast!

Every Friday I’m going to release a quick discipleship tip. Each post will be short, five to ten minutes at most. Now for today’s tip.

You can create a quick overview of a bible passage by asking six simple questions journalists ask when writing a story.

Just ask these six questions:

  1. Who?
  2. What?
  3. When?
  4. Where?
  5. Why?
  6. How?

Concrete examples of how to answer these question are in today’s super short Five Minute Friday Podcast.

What you’ll get out of these questions:

1) Greater Knowledge: You’ll spot details you might otherwise overlook.
2) Deeper Understanding: You’ll take more away from the

Read More

Lessons I have Learned about Reading the Bible after 35 years of Daily Reading [Episode 28]


 

 
A recent reader, Kristy, shared the following comment,

I have never found the right Bible reading plan, so have tried to read at my own pace and feel that even though I am not following a plan, that I am behind simply because I still have a lot to read by the end of this year and I have this thing in my head that I have to finish the Bible by December 31. It ever seems like what I read is enough; sometimes I read a lot, but it doesn’t seem like it is enough.

Read More

The Ugly Truth No One Wants to Hear about How to Get People to Church [Episode 27]


 


 
In a prior church I served, one Valentine’s Day we had 27 children attend a parent’s night out program at our church. That figure is remarkable when you consider a couple of facts. We were a modest sized church with four or five children present on Sunday mornings and maybe eighty to ninety people in attendance on an average Sunday. The vast majority of the children who attended the Valentine event weren’t from our church. So twenty-seven is a rather huge number.
 
Why so many kids?
 
Did we pay for a bunch of ads?

Read More

Three Simple Strategies to Refresh Your Prayer Life [Episode 26]


 

A stale lifeless prayer life can happen to anyone. But you have choices you can make to breath new life into new routines or resurrect your prayer life if it’s completely dead. In today’s podcast, I share three simple strategies anyone (and really everyone) should apply to praying to keep things fresh.

In short they are:
 

1. To Keep God Front and Center in Your Prayer by Including Praise

This may sound like an odd thing to say about prayer, but it’s easy for us to start going through the motions of just getting prayer done and treating it like something we need to check

Read More