Discover the Word Podcast

Few promises of the Bible offer more reassurance than when God says “I will never leave or forsake you.” Who among us doesn’t want to believe that God is still with us—now? Yes, we see evidence of God in the sky and stars. But here on the ground, we worry. Maybe that’s one reason God asked the huge family that he had rescued from Egypt to camp around His tent in the Wilderness of Sinai. From the outside, this Tent of God’s presence looked more like a portable Bedouin tent than “a house of God”. But on the inside, the detail, color, art, and symbolism spoke of mysteries and secrets, and… far more goodness than God was ready to reveal. And still today, even though so much has since been revealed, there’s so much for us to explore together. Please join us in discovering together what that tent in the wilderness says about "God With Us"… now.  

Justice. What comes to mind when you see or hear that word? We've heard a lot about justice recently, and have so many thoughts, ideas, images, assumptions, and expectations of what justice is and how it works. Understandably, that influences what we think when we read the word justice in the Scriptures. So, this week, the Discover the Word group would like to pause and act as if we've never seen the word before and see how we would define “justice” if we only had the Bible to shape our definition. Join the group as they explore together “What Does the Bible Say About Justice?”

Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope, he discovered, has long been the practice of Bible reading and interpretation that comes out of traditional Black churches. Join the Discover the Word group as they talk with award-winning author Dr. Esau McCaulley about “Reading Hope with the Black Church.”

In the Bible, there seems to be a love-hate relationship with mountains. It was in the mountains that Israel established “high places” where false gods were worshipped. Yet, it is nonetheless surprising how often mountains are the sites where significant biblical events happened. Here in part 2 of this series of the Discover the Word Podcast, we consider five more of those important and dramatic moments that took place on mountains, and what we can perhaps learn from them.

How do you view mountains? Do you see them as majestic? Intimidating? Beautiful? Dangerous?  No matter how we might view them, numerous significant biblical events happened on mountains. What are some of these important and dramatic moments, and what can we perhaps learn from them? This is what we want to consider together over the next two weeks on Discover the Word.

Most of us find prayer baffling. Sometimes even unsatisfying. At the heart of our struggle is a kind of tug-of-war between what we want and what God wants. We have certain “prayer problems.” In one of the most desperate moments of His life, Jesus prayed a specific prayer. A prayer contained in three gospels and mentioned in the fourth. “Take this cup, yet not my will.” A two-sided prayer coin. Take this cup: Honest. Not my will: Abandon. Join us as we consider how Jesus flipped back and forth in this two-sided prayer coin, and how, following His example, perhaps we can as well.

Most of us find prayer baffling. Sometimes even unsatisfying. At the heart of our struggle is a kind of tug-of-war between what we want and what God wants. We have certain “prayer problems.” In one of the most desperate moments of His life, Jesus prayed a specific prayer. A prayer contained in three gospels and mentioned in the fourth. “Take this cup, yet not my will.” A two-sided prayer coin. Take this cup: Honest. Not my will: Abandon. Join us as we consider how Jesus flipped back and forth in this two-sided prayer coin, and how, following His example, perhaps we can as well.

Let’s be real. Modern culture is not a patient culture. We don’t like to wait for anything, and we’ve come up with just about every shortcut we can think of to get things done or in our possession more quickly. Henri Nouwen wrote, “Most people consider waiting a waste of time.” Maybe that’s why we pull out our phones at a red light or while in line. Yet the story of the Bible could be described as a story of waiting. The word “wait” shows up at least 119 times in the Bible. And so we wait. In a broken world, in broken bodies, we wait. But the good news is that the Bible is filled with hope for those who wait on the Lord. Join the group this week, as Daniel takes us to verses about waiting, and helps us discover that waiting is not necessarily a waste of time.

A crisis has been defined as any event that is going to lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society. One teacher described a crisis more personally as any event or circumstance that makes you fundamentally reorganize your life. Either way, crises shake us to our core. In Psalm 34, the psalmist (David) is facing a time of crisis, and offers wisdom about living confidently by faith in seasons of crisis. We consider it together this week on Discover the Word.

In this series on Discover the Word, the group explores the importance of "where" with our Bible geography expert Dr. Jack Beck. Jack is convinced that location almost always shapes our understanding of an event, and so for that reason, God speaks geographically. The Bible has geography on virtually every page. Discover with the group why geography is not just trivia, it is an essential element of God's communication with us. Dr. Jack Beck continues to open our eyes to how critical and meaningful geography is in the Scriptures as he returns to the Discover the Word table for "The Impact of Place--Part 2."