Word of Life Church Podcast

In the final track of the 2012 edition of Finding God on Your iPod, Pastor Brian Zahnd examines the vision of Jesus and Paul for a new humanity, gathered together into one flock with Jesus as the shepherd; A humanity in Christ that learns to kill the hostility instead of kill one another. From this text, Pastor Brian is able to offer a prophetic critique of the systematic destruction of the indigenous peoples and cultures of North America in the name of Manifest Destiny. "Manifest Destiny" was an American self-delusion justifying the systematic destruction of indigenous peoples and cultures in the name of "progress."

Jesus taught that lamp of our being is the eye. We can have bright eyes or dark eyes. How we look at life has a lot to do with whether our soul is filled with darkness or light. We can look at life with squinty-eyed greed, calculation, and cynicism. Or we can look at life with wide-eyed wonder, love, and acceptance. After four years, Bob Dylan finally makes an appearance in Finding God On Your iPod - the song and the sermon are called Dark Eyes.

The satan is the spirit of accusation, especially fear-based accusation. When people feel threatened in some way, such as their security, their worldview, or their ideology, they tend to channel that negative vibe into an accusation of someone else. This is the scapegoat phenomenon. Instead of allowing the spirit of faith, hope, and love to control them, they seek to dispel the negative feelings by transferring it through accusation. This is the primary work of satan. And it is the opposite of the work of the Holy Spirit! The way you deal with accusation is not to lash out, but rather, to forgive, and when possible, help people see what they are doing. You cannot let unjust accusation turn into self-accusation. That's the devil in your head. In the song Negative Vibes by Irish singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey, he addressing his critics and the spirit of accusation when he sings "I'm never going to let your negative vibes and comments get through to my psyche and cripple me."

For a long time God has been trying to communicate his self-revelation to humanity. We must realize that Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature-the perfect, eternal Word of God! Everything we know and believe must be reconsidered in the last days in the light of God's final word- Jesus Christ! Jesus is the revelation of truth that is superior even to Scripture. Jesus Christ is God's final world to humanity, and Jesus Christ is God's final word to YOU!

Pain in the great equalizer. We have all felt pain of one kind or another, but we do not have to bear it alone. We can take our brokenness to Christ and experience healing of body and soul. Healing and recovery is a part of the life story of Johnny Cash, a true American icon. Six months before his death, he recorded the song "Hurt" originally written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. In this song, Johnny Cash sings in mournful regret of the hurt he caused others through a life in turmoil. While he created a lot of hurt through his life-long struggle with addiction, he experienced healing and wholeness as he chose to live in the kingdom of God. As the story of Johnny Cash demonstrates, God did not turn an blind eye to our suffering, but chose to enter into suffering humanity so that by his wounds we can be healed.

We are God's workmanship, his poem, created in Christ Jesus. God is not a machine mass-producing religious experience industrial style. God is an artist. We are his work of art and we move the life with the grace of Christ. We should desire to be a work of art. This is the longing in The Guggenheim Grotto song, "Philosophia". As we engage our lives with Jesus Christ, the redemptive result is poetic. Our lives gain a graceful structure and poetic expression that is beautiful. Jesus is the poet who can rearrange the logos of our life, the words that tell our story, and do it in such a way that our life becomes a beautiful poem. For your life to be a work of art, for you life to become a graceful poem, the place to begin is to give your life over to the great Artist, the great Poet.

Pastor Derek Vreeland presents a bonus track to the 2011 Finding God on Your iPod series: Barton Hollow, by the folk-duo The Civil Wars. This song tells the story of a criminal wrestling with guilt, forgiveness, and doubt. We are fully aware of our shortcomings and failures and while we confess faith in God who forgives, sometimes doubt creeps into our lives. Doubt is never the enemy of faith, because every doubt is based on an alternative belief. Instead of ignoring our doubts, we need to face them, struggle through them in community with other followers of Christ. Wresting with doubt is one of the ways we grow in faith.

In the fifth and final week of 2011′s Finding God On Your iPod, we listen to hall of fame rockers Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and their latest album, Mojo. The song Something Good Coming is a song about hard times and hope. It is a very human song, admitting that life can be hard, but deep down we hold on to hope that something good is coming. As Christians, we believe that God is the creator and that God is good, and that no matter how messed up life can be, it's not the final word. We know God cares and will ultimately intervene and set things right. When you're poor, hungry, and sorrowful because life hasn't turned out the way you would like and you feel terribly unlucky, Jesus says that you are lucky and something good is coming! But why? Why are you blessed? Be careful trying to explain it or you may find yourself thinking you deserve it. It's the mystery of an unexplained grace. It may be better to just say, "I'm lucky!" There's nothing wrong with saying "I'm lucky" if you follow it with, "praise God."

In part four of 2011′s edition of Finding God On Your iPod, we look at the song "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry. The song is loosely based on the poem The Lady of Shalott by Lord Alfred Tennyson and deals with the subject of your own death. Modern society avoids speaking, or even thinking, about our own demise, but the undeniable reality is one day we are all going to die. And faced with that reality, one must wonder then what the meaning of life is; what is it all about? When death is imminent, there can come a clarity as to what really matters in life. The meaning of life is love. We are created by the God who is supremely identified with love. As you work out the equation for the meaning of life, if it doesn't add up to love, go back and recalculate. "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. So now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

In the third installment of 2011′s edition of Finding God On Your iPod, Pastor Brian introduces the blues based rock of The Black Keys and their song Unknown Brother. It's a simple song expressing one of humanity's deepest longings, that someday we will meet again our departed loved ones and family members. The great problem the Gospel addresses is death. Romans tells us, "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." To believe in Christ and to be baptized into Christ is to pass from the dominion of death and its futility into the promise of eternal life. The great promise of eternal life will be fulfilled in us as it was fulfilled in Christ by resurrection. This is the blessed hope, the Christian hope, the resurrection hope of Easter.