Garrett Layell, Pastor Ben Pearce and Kenny Lewis discuss the spiritual battles in their day to day lives, and staying connected to Jesus outside of church life.
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Sometimes we give our best effort, and things don't work out. Other times they don't work out because we don't give them our best effort. I've honestly never known which was harder to deal with. On one hand, you have to deal with regret when you know you could have tried harder. But on the other, when your best wasn't good enough, it's a downright …
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There's a scene from an old baseball movie called Moneyball. In the scene, a player hits a ball deep into the outfield and immediately runs as fast as he can towards first base with no regard for the ball. As he rounds first, he trips over the bag into an embarrassing 15-foot barrel roll. Crawling frantically back towards first base, he looks up to…
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What did Paul mean when he said "to live is Christ"? Charlie Kirk knew. Very few people exemplify Christlikeness as well as Charlie did. He spoke the truth with more grace and love than most can manage these days. He stood firm teaching the word of God courageously, never alarmed by the many opponents to his purpose. He worked fearlessly, and patie…
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There's a subtle, but huge difference, between knowing about God, and having a personal relationship with Him. You can know that God is all powerful and all knowing, without experiencing the peace that comes from trusting Him. You can know that God forgives sin, without experiencing the grace of His forgiveness for the worst thing you've ever done.…
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As I grow closer to the Lord, the more I am marveled by His creation around us. I love to point out nice sunsets to the kids, or find a good place to go for a walk away from the man made stuff. But it can be easy to forget that of all of God's creation, we are His most precious. He created the world around us to show us His power, but He created us…
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Serving God isn't an obligation. It's a priviledge, one given by Him and Him alone. God doesn't take church attendance. He doesn't count Hail Mary's. We aren't credited with righteousness based on mission trips or Sunday school. We are credited by grace alone, through faith alone. We are natually born scorekeepers. We appreciate that Jesus wiped ou…
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Have you ever gone out to eat and filled up so much on the bread that you didn't have room for the entree? How frustrating is that!? Load up so much on the free bread that you only have room for 3 bites of the main course. Worst of all, the bread only lasts about 2 hours. Then you're hungry again and settling for a $40 microwaved steak. The same th…
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I'm the world's worst for keeping my car on empty. My theory is that I get better gas milage by keeping my fuel load light. $10 bucks at a time, every day or so, that's my game plan. But apparently the shelf life on a 4-runner's fuel sensor is about 213,000 miles. So I recently started playing the old odometer game. Fill up, reset the odometer, and…
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Awesome to have Brandon Goss join us this week. This was a lot of fun and we hope he'll come back whenever he can. (And the Monster diet does seem to work, by the way.) How much fear, worry, and doubt to we carry around with us? These aren't fun, and they aren't what God intends or wants for our life. He wants us to trust in Him completely. When we…
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God desires truth in our inner most parts. That sure is inconvenient isn't it? None of us want to admit our struggles, maybe even to ourselves. Kenny said people might be shocked to know who I really am, and you might be. So, brace yourself... I cuss a lot. Not as much as I used to, and I'm working on it. But I say a lot of things I'm glad y'all do…
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I've had a lot of opportunities on this podcast to say some things I'd later regret. But of all of them, I think the line I regret the most came from the very first episode. I said "As long as I know I'm where God wants me, I don't care what the purpose of that is." I don't regret it because it was wrong. Honestly, it sounds pretty righteous to me.…
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Christmas In July: (The Lost Episode)
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Sometimes life happens. This episode was recorded just before Christmas. Also 2 days before my computer crashed taking all of my files down with it. Fortunately, the recording was already uploaded to YouTube, so I was able to get my hands back on it. It comes in handy to have some extra episodes laying around when vacations and life keeps us from r…
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Every hour of every day, we face the decision of doing things our way, or God’s way. With so many opportunities to make the wrong decision, we are inevitably going to miss a few steps. But the more we practice walking with the Lord, the more instinctive it is to choose His way over ours. His Word teaches us, His Spirit guides us, and when we forget…
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There’s a great quote from one of my favorite movies: “Good judgement is the result of experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgement.” Certainly, God wants us to develop good judgement. But we get frustrated that He allows us to have bad judgement along the way. Free will isn’t always convenient, but it is part of His plan. When we m…
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Jesus bought our freedom with His blood. Before the Cross, we were bound by our sin, but now we have a choice. But it still our choice. We decide how to use this freedom. Unfortunately, part of having freedom is being free to make the wrong choices, too. But we are not free from the earthly consequences of sin. And freedom shouldn’t be mistaken for…
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One of the threats to our walk with God is becoming so hard-headed and rigid that we forget there are two sides of every coin. Work needs to be done, but we also need rest. We show patience and grace to others, but there’s a time for discipline and hard truth. The joy of God’s love should never leave us, but neither should the fear and awe of His p…
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We tend to use the fruits of the Spirit as a guide for our own behavior and actions, but they also give us insight into God’s character. His power and perfection can make it easy for us to paint Him as a tyrant in our minds. But if God’s Spirit is manifested by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-contro…
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It’s easy to forget that God can hear the subtext of our prayers. We can pray “not my will but Yours be done” until we are blue in the face, but if we really mean “God, I think this would be great so please give it to me”, He hears that part too. So, it does us no good to say the “right prayers” that we don’t really mean (I wouldn’t suggest praying…
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The W.W.J.D. bracelets give us some words to live by, but I agree with Ben’s take on this; it is a tough question to try to answer. The fact is, we are not Jesus, and we cannot possibly expect to know how He would handle every situation we encounter in our lives. For one, we create scenarios He didn’t face because we sin, He didn’t. A more importan…
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When we think about the guidance the Bible offers us, it can be really easy for me to focus on the judgement of God. “Do this, or else” might be the way of thinking about it. And if you are defiant, yeah, it can get pretty ugly. But I don’t think that’s God’s preferred message. He guides us, developing us to be more like Jesus, who was perfect. And…
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A couple of weeks ago I had my first physical in about 10 years. I hate going to the doctor. Most of all, I hate having blood drawn. Judge me all you want, but I hate it. I don’t mind shots, but I can’t stand them taking blood. I started to dread it, and after a day or so I realized that the process that would take 3 minutes was another week away, …
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One of my favorite Episode titles that we’ve had is “He Loves You the Way You Are, But He Refuses to Let You Stay That Way”. I liked the line at the time, but it has grown to mean more and more to me over time. As a non-believer or maybe even a new believer, I think the first half of that line is important to remember. God doesn’t expect us to clea…
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It’s so easy to overcomplicate spiritual matters, and yes, I realize I’m the extreme example. But I don’t believe that’s God’s intention. God went to great lengths to drive home the simple truths He wanted us to anchor to in our lives. The 66 books of the Bible tell a lot of stories and provide a lot of wisdom in a lot of areas. But the common them…
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Followers of Christ are called to follow His example, showing His love to others to encourage them to follow Him as well. But it doesn’t work as well when we forget to follow His example. The world has a lot of misconceptions about Jesus and what Christians really believe today, and the enemy loves confusion. But our countermove in this battle is s…
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We tend to give ourselves more credit than we deserve for the things we do in life. When you woke up this morning, what was your contribution to the process? Setting an alarm, and getting out of the bed when you heard it? What was God’s part? While you rested, God kept your heart beating, brain functioning, lungs working, with oxygen in the room at…
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We can be awfully entitled in this country, and that includes, maybe even especially Christians. We start off knowing that we need God. Then we seek Him, we find Him, and His love changes us. We start walking by the Spirit and seeing Its fruits. Then something bad happens and we start wondering what we did to deserve the misfortune. Here’s a questi…
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Nick Saban has won 7 National Championships, more than any other college football coach in history. How successful would his career have been if he let every player pick their own position, let them play their way, patted them on the back after every play, and helped them blame others for their failures? How many titles would his teams have won? Ho…
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It’s easy to attach our own limitations to God. His knowledge, power, and love are so far beyond our human capabilities to comprehend even individually, so how can we expect to understand the effects of all three? It takes understanding all three and how they work together to be able to truly find the peace and trust in His will. For example, what …
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Knowledge by itself isn’t really worth a lot. I know a lot about football. But I never played past JV and my coaching career stalled out at Pop Warner. There’s a big difference between knowing a lot about something and having the ability to apply what you know. If you read a recipe for French Souffle’, then you will know how to make French Souffle’…
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I’m constantly trying to figure God out. He must find it amusing. Or annoying. It could go either way, I guess. But I want to know what God is doing. I can drive myself crazy asking ‘why is He doing this’ or ‘what is He going to do with that?’ But we don’t need to worry about what God is doing. God’s handling what God needs to do, and He’s doing it…
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The human ego is one of our most self-destructive traits. Thinking we control things that we don’t causes us to fear and worry about things out of our hands. When we set our goals for 2025, I believe the very first step should be asking God to show us what they should be. The workers don’t write business plans and take it to the CEO to execute, do …
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John 10:10 is one of the great marketing slogans for Christianity. The promise of receiving abundant life sure sells a lot better than images of bearing crosses and dying to ourselves. But like a lot of things in the Bible, I think we might let a little too much human play into our interpretation sometimes, rather than reading what it actually says…
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When do you like to let the enemy control your life? Saturdays? Right after breakfast, or do you like to make him wait until after dinner? Following Jesus is a decision that repeats itself more than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. It has to be. He told us that Himself, and if you didn’t read the warning label in the welcome packet, well, join the clu…
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Gratitude isn’t technically listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Maybe it was a given? How can we not walk in gratitude as Christians? As I’ve prepared for Thanksgiving, I’ve been trying to inventory all the things I’m grateful for. Starting at the top, I’m thankful for Christ. When you let all of that soak in, it’s about enoug…
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My grandfather lived out Christianity as well as anyone I’ve ever known. Well, sort of. The man was the father of under complicating things, to a fault. His faith was no different. It was like he read Matthew 22 one day and said “Greatest two commandments, got it. That’s all I need to know.” I like to say he got the big things right. He certainly c…
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Remember the movie A Few Good Men? It’s the one where Jack Nicholson yells “You can’t handle the truth!” If you know the scene, what seems to have set Jack off was Tom Cruise’s character demanding answers “he thought he was entitled to”. We’re bad to play this scene out with God, getting frustrated that we don’t have all the answers, and feeling en…
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I saw the other day that a church got in trouble for displaying a “Jesus in ‘24” sign outside of their church. As Christians, doesn’t it sound amazing to think of what it would be like if we could elect Jesus Christ as our next President? Can you even imagine it? Lovingkindness for all, peace and joy abounding, generosity and freedom overflowing be…
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What do we have to do to go to Heaven? And once we do it, can we undo it? Is the thing we have to do a one-time thing, or a process over some period of time, and if so, for how long? These are common questions we tend to ask ourselves, and we spent most of this episode on these topics in some form or another. I don’t believe it’s as simple as being…
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Sometimes I slip into treating prayer like it’s some kind of game show. Ask for the right things, get 10 points. Ask for the wrong thing, but with the right motive, lose 10 points. Ask for something selfish, and that little whammy guy comes out and steals all your points and you lose a turn. I have absolutely no Biblical reason for this. God isn’t …
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Several years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted to be on his mud run team. “Hmm, sounds fun”, I said, “but what’s a mud run?” A couple of amusing minutes later, not only was I positive I didn’t want to be on his mud run team, but I was also reevaluating the judgement of my friend selection. That sounded insane! No offense to anyone who has partici…
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One of the few things that all humans agree on is that all humans are all flawed. Ironically, one of our biggest flaws, is our inability to notice our own part in that statement. I used to love refereeing 5-year-old basketball. They all want the ball, even though none of them can dribble, pass, catch, or shoot. It was so funny to watch players from…
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I annoyed my mom to death as a kid asking “why?”. No matter what she told me to do, I wanted to know why. When she answered, I asked why that was the answer. And so on. Week to week, from Ben’s sermons to podcasts, Bible studies and random conversations, a lot of theme words start to pop up. Faith, truth, grace, gratitude, patience, freedom, all ju…
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We follow rules for a lot of different reasons every day. We follow some rules because they align with what we feel is right. We don’t kill or steal, for example, because we know this is just wrong. We follow traffic laws for own safety, and for those around us. Fear can also motivate us to follow the rules. We obey our boss to keep the paychecks c…
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Trying to balance truth and grace can be a big challenge. The truth shows us the standard God wants for us, but none of us will live up to that standard in this life. If we focus too much on God’s standard, we’re blinded by the shortcomings of ourselves and others and lose sight of grace. The guilt and self-righteousness that comes with this also c…
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In all of their various forms, relationships progress through stages. Friendships, your spouse, business relationships, etc. all follow some form of a pattern. There is a beginning, where both sides start to explore whether or not this is a relationship that worth investing in. A growth phase may follow where you get to know each other better. Even…
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The more we love something, the harder it can be to turn it over to God. This can be a sin, a person, or even a Godly virtue. Placing a sin above God on our priority list is a challenging enough starting point. We know it is wrong. But our human nature still helps us ignore God’s perspective and choose destructive paths over God’s perfect plan for …
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Two summers ago, I sat down to watch a live stream to hear Ben preach for the first time in about six years. He preached a great sermon, thought provoking as always. He talked about pride, which of course, didn’t apply to me, but I could see where he was coming from. He talked about prayer, and I had to admit to myself quietly that I probably neede…
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Once in a while, I’ll catch myself playing Biblical algebra. By rearranging or removing certain words from our favorite verses, you start to notice how important each word ends up being. “God works things together for good” isn’t nearly as powerful without the “all”. Surely as Christians, we know better than to play word games with the Bible. Right…
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Suppose you were gifted a life changing sum of money. And the grantor of this gift happened to be a successful stock market investor with decades of 50% returns per year. Suppose they also offered to let you invest your gift in their own private fund. Would you take the money to Las Vegas and see if you could do better yourself? It may not seem lik…
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Jesus’ final recorded command in Matthew is to go and make disciples and “teach them to observe all that I commanded you”. The very last verse. Right before ascending back up to Heaven, parting words from the Savior of the world. I’d almost say He skipped a step, but the step really should go without saying (and He’s Jesus, so I’m not questioning H…
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